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Okay so we have the case:
* My world is Earth-like(Spherical)
* Slight fantasy, but also some science
* It has a normal day-night cycle and seasons
I need for a particular area to make the sky somewhat bright at night naturally(Magic is a last solution).
You can define what I want as:
* Local influence, so nothing such as rings
* It isn't visible during the day, thus not influencing day light
* It ought to shine like the moon, but only with more light, but also make night understandable. So instead of being a second "sun", it has to keep the sky dark a distance
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Imagine a planet interlaced with a giant crystalline network. This could either be a single set running straight through the planet, or an actual web of crystal throughout the entire thing. The source is natural - something about your universe encourages gigantic crystal formations under the conditions your planet formed.
While in most places the crystals are underground, they poke out in two locations on opposite sides of the world, appearing as gigantic semi-transparent mountains. During the night, light from the opposite side of the planet transmits through and makes the entire thing glow fairly brightly, lighting up the surrounding area. But during the day the only real source is moonlight, and that's insufficient to light up the mountain more than daylight normally does.
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Obviously, Earth's moon moves in the sky and thus would not meet your requirements. However, some moons are tidally locked with their planet, meaning that they stay in the same position in the sky. The [Pluto-Charon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#Charon) system is an example of this phenomenon in our solar system. In this case, the moon would never rise on one side of your planet and it would never set on the other.
The system at night would look something like this, with the sun off to the left:
* At point A, the moon would be always be barely visible on the horizon. Most of the time it would be obscured by clouds, mountains, or trees.
* At point B, the moon would appear relatively high in the sky, but would never be directly overhead, It would provide notable light.
* At point C, the moon would always be directly overhead and would be very bright.
I'm guessing that you want the localization of this effect to be much smaller than a whole hemisphere, though, though I propose the following refinement of this model:
# Your planet is tidally locked with a largely non-reflective moon with a single, relatively small, highly reflective surface feature directly facing the planet.
Let's say your moon has an enormous, crystalline structure in the middle of its disk:
If the crystal was shaped like a very, very shallow [parabolic mirror](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_reflector), it would constantly focus all sunlight falling upon it directly at the planet, effectively forming a spotlight covering an area of the planet's surface equal to the area of the crystal mirror:
* Point A: Same as before. Moon not normally visible.
* Point B: Moon is visible in the sky as before. It's up to you on how bright it appears here, depending on how reflective the surface is.
* Point C: The crystal focuses all sunlight falling onto it into a stream of parallel rays directed at the planet directly under it. It can be arbitrarily bright or localized depending on what properties you choose for the crystal (size and reflectivity).
During the day time, the sun would fall upon the opposite side of the moon, thereby not falling upon the crystal at all.
Hope you like the idea!
Note that the light would disappear during a [Lunar Eclipse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_eclipse), but if the inclination of your satellite's orbit is high enough, this would never happen.
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A particular kind of fireflies may be a good way to have a localized and periodical (they light up during mate selection) phenomenon, as needed. Plus, they are cute, romantic and "magical", though not involving magic :-)
A firefly from our Earth make a feeble amount of light based on biochemical reactions. I've seem swarms of these bugs generate a surprising lighting, even if not at the level of a full moon. To get that much light, you'll need to make them more powerful. An idea could be to replace the chemical reaction with matter/antimatter reaction, or chemistry-based cold fusion. This way, a few atoms would suffice, and you could have extremely bright flying LEDs, still keeping them small and cute.
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Big giant ice ring around the world would do just fine. Real orbital rings decay over cosmic time, but it could be a crushed captured comet that recently disintegrated.
Hmm on second thought if the rings were small enough they would be in shadow during the night. Make giant rings and/or if you prefer, put them around the moon or another planet. [These actually exist, btw.](http://earthsky.org/space/huge-distant-planet-has-rings-200-times-bigger-than-saturns) This is how Saturn would look with supersized rings.
To give a sense of scale, see the tiny bright dot by the cloud in the right-hand corner? Not a smudge on your screen, that's the Moon.
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PS: Just noticed you want local influence. Ugh. Try **fluorescent stratospheric fungi**, feeding on water vapors, desert dust and sun.
Kinda like bioluminescent algae below, but in the sky!
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## Make your inhabitants see more wavelengths
Why not cheat a little, in the name of creativity?
The human vision system is, although more advanced than many terrestrial creatures, rather limited in the grand scheme of things. This is the size of the visible light spectrum compared to the entire known EM spectrum:
[](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EM_spectrum.svg)
Richard Dawkins described this as a "gigantic black burka", that we are blind to so much and most of us don't realise this. Once you do, it seems rather anthropocentric to assume things like "night is dark".
The night sky looks very different in other wavelengths. Here's an example, of the X-ray range:
Contrast this to the regular visible light image:
There's a blog post here: <http://blog.professorastronomy.com/2010/06/astro-101-electromagnetic-spectrum.html> which includes many more images as well as a video slide show.
Note that many animals can see further into the infra-red and ultra-violet ranges, so even without the benefit of fantasy/magic, you can plausibly explain this, for example your inhabitants evolved from nocturnal ancestors.
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I used something fairly exotic for one of my RPG games. I needed a "always sunny" location on my world, without resorting to (obvious) magic. My world was moderately magical, so some strange stuff was commonplace and I could throw some physics over the window.
I created extremely complex cave system that ran everywhere underground. Those caves were large, and all of them connected to a single point under a huge island in the middle of the ocean. Those caverns were dug out by a now extinct species of giant worms.
The trick was, those worms secreted a special substance to prevent the tunnels to collapse. This substance was initially viscous, but in contact with the air it changed to a solid, silvery layer over the stone. When the sun touched the entrance of a cave, all the cave system would light up!
On that island on the middle of the ocean lived a king that had an idea. He called all of his architects, and asked for a way to use that light to light up the kingdom to keep the beasts away. His architects them created a very tall tower over the cave, lined with mirrors. On the top of this tower was a huge prism, that sprayed the light all around like a very powerful lighthouse.
Didn't matter where the sun was. He was always touching several caves, and so always bathing the kingdom in intense sunlight.
It is a bit... over the top, I know, but the suncaves gave me a fair amount of material to play with my group.
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If a glowing mountain is accepatable you could use rubber science to have a mineral that in the presence of UV light undergoes a [photochemical](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photochemistry) reaction and without it becomes [chemiluminescent](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemiluminescence). Realistically it would produce some light during the day and absorb some during the night, but that should not be noticeable. Or much of an issue even if noticed.
I am fairly certain such a mineral is possible, but I doubt it would occur naturally in significant quantity or be chemically stable.
Simple [phosphorencence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorescence) might be better mountain effect.
Alternately you could have the ground release gas that has chemiluminescence in air during the night. So the trigger would probably be the temperature changes.
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Silverbark trees, or whatever you would like to term them.
In localized colonies, you have certain night insects/moths/what have you that are attracted to light. To take advantage of this, trees have evolved to be able to store sunlight during the day, and at night they release this stored light through the center of the flowers, creating small spotlight effects.
This light, while not as bright as pure sunlight (in reality however bright you need it to be) shines forth like dozens of nightlights from each plant, attracting the insects needed to promote pollination and the like.
If you need a period of dark, however limited, you can have the charge run down, and in any case since it is localized and not as elevated as a sky light source would be, the sky can remain dark as needed.
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How about some kind of Aurora? Maybe there's a black hole nearby that bends light funny and gives the planet a permanent Aurora? or a brown dwarf? For the level of light that might be the best bet, though how it's 'powered' might be up for grabs.
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How about a universe that isn't expanding in the same way as ours or a star system that moves so rapidly through space so that it catches up with light coming in the opposite direction. (this is based on the idea that the night sky would be completely lit by starlight in all directions if the universe wasn't expanding so rapidly that far away star light never reaches us.) with a rotating planet moving at this speed different hemispheres would be lit each night depending on the speed of the rotation. In a non expanding universe the entire sky would be constantly lit at night anywhere on the planet but daytime would look the same. Maybe if there were a huge amount of celestial masses that block out (eclipse) the star light then it may become localised.
I may have slightly omitted the 'local influence' portion of the question but there you are.
Pretty far fetched but I gave it a go.
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How about something like a [Dyson sphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere) encompassing the star and the planet? This could be seen as a bit of an "the ancients built it" McGuffin, but physically plausible.
This is also reminiscent of the planet [Krikkit](http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Krikkit) in the HHGTTG trilogy.
You specified a spherical planet, but I am also reminded of how [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fafhrd_and_the_Gray_Mouser) speculated, in *Trapped in the Sea of Stars* (which can be found in the collection *Swords and Ice Magic*), that Nehwon was on the inside of a sphere and the stars were actually sunlight shining through large waterspouts on the opposite side. Their philosophical musings while aboard their ship are worth a read.
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The Earth has a fairly transparent atmosphere for light in the visual range; if the atmosphere of your planet contained elements that reflect or refract light, the atmosphere itself would transfer light from the 'bright' side of the planet to the 'dark' side. Ice high in the atmosphere can have this effect, as can methane and a number of other chemicals. On Earth, [Noctilucent clouds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud) can cause this phenomenon, though it's fairly rare. Lower clouds may assist light pollution from cities, but are too low in the sky to direct light from the sun.
Be careful, though - chances are that a lot of light on the dark side of a planet would cause a considerable amount of heat, too.
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In real life, I recall being amazed at the brightness of the night on more than one occasion, due to low-lying clouds reflecting normal city lighting. I don't know if the rare event is due to some special nature of the cloud layer, such as icy crystals which doesn't normally happen in this area. But that's an idea that can be exaggerated.
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Light from Lava Flows reflected off a persistent Cloud Layer.
A particular mountain formation near an ocean could create a micro-climate, inducing a continuous thin cloud layer above the city, perhaps even at certain times of the day/night due to the natural onshore/offshore wind cycle. (This actually occurs at certain locations in the Andes - google 'Rain Shadow')
If the mountain was the result of an active 'Hawaiian' style volcano, it could have surface lava emitting large amounts of heat and light that last for centuries.
If, at night time, the cloud layer were to freeze and crystalize, the light from the lava could reflect off the suspended ice layer and back down to the city below.
Alternative : The city was founded inside the cloud layer, and the cloud layer is wandering, requiring the city to move.
You can vary the weather / volcanic activity to change intensity or add impurities to the clouds / lava to change colours.
Good luck!
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**Want to improve this post?** Provide detailed answers to this question, including citations and an explanation of why your answer is correct. Answers without enough detail may be edited or deleted.
Think bioluminescence. Maybe there's an enormous cloud of--what? gnats? bats? birds? bacteria, even?--that swarms to a particular part of the sky every evening. Or perhaps it's always there, but bioluminesces when it's feeding, or trying to attract prey or mates.
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Two things come to mind:
1) Put your solar system in a globular cluster of stars. These will provide a constant and fairly even illumination.
2) If you want cyclical bright nights, you could make the moon bigger and make it more white - a greater albedo. The whiteness could come from clouds in the moon. Having said that, a problem with a big moon might be huge tidal forces.
I believe that our moon's regolith is quite a dark grey, but the moon still looks bright against the black of space.
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Once upon time, there was a shallow inland sea, leftover meltwater from a previous ice age trapped because of nearby mountain ranges. The arid climate with almost no rain and weak flow to and from the sea ensured that the water became salty over time. Especially common was the formation of brine pools at the bottom of this sea.
Then the sea slowly began to recede as the ground was rising, leaving only a thin strip of brine pools and later salt plains after the last water had evaporated as well as unpleasant marshes and plenty of salty little lakes.
Or so I have been told about the history of that inland sea. Anyway, there is a problem with those salt plains and their salt: something makes it useless for trade or unwanted for everyday usage. I have confirmed that it must be something in its composition or contamination that cannot be removed with late iron-age or very early medieval techniques. Otherwise, people would be flocking in and harvesting this salt as the marshes are no more dangerous than marshes of our world—maybe even less without those pesky salt water alligators around.
It cannot be an overly toxic reason, because one can (barely) live on those marshes, and some tougher flora and fauna exist. However, one needs be very desperate to live in those marshes. Or, unlucky enough that their story takes them into that place.
So in short, what is in this salt of those salt plains which makes it useless?
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## It has a lot of sodium sulfate, specifically Glauber's salt.
sodium sulfate decahydrate ([Mirabilite](https://rruff.info/doclib/hom/mirabilite.pdf)) is a **strong laxative**, so people might occasionally harvest it for medical uses, but no one is going to willing use it for food preservation. It is a normal salt found in high concentrations in some lake deposits, and its not really toxic just highly unpleasant, so people can live there, they just don't want to. When Mirabilite showed up in normal salt mines it was valuable in small amounts (again strong laxative) but if the whole mine/basin is loaded with it the salt is useless for the normal uses of salt.
The conditions the basin formed in you describe is completely consistent with this kind of deposit so you don't even have to change anything.
For full potency combine with smaller amounts of sodium sulfide and it becomes foul tasting and irritating so it won't even be valuable as a laxative. As a side effect the combination salt would be an effective treatment for cyanide ingestion, so plot hook.
Now in a few hundred years this will be highly valuable for all kinds of chemical production, but with an early medieval tech level it makes the location barely habitable and is almost useless, certainly not an economic draw.
"Why don't you use the salt?"
"It tastes disgusting and gives you a really bad case of the trots"
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## It tastes bad
There are a number of naturally occurring sulfates that could render your salt tasting really bad if introduced in non-toxic quantities.
Some are so bad that they can leave a bad taste in your mouth for up to 24 hours.
While these salts will not necessarily kill you to eat a little bit of, they will taste way too bitter or metallic for anyone to want to season their food with them.
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Your salt plains happen to be on a moderately-sized radium deposit. Not only do you have tasty sea salt in the plains, but also spicy salts like radium chloride and radium bromide. There are pockets where the concentration is low enough that folks can build a village. But if you venture too far out into the flats, you develop an acute case of radiation sickness.
Alternatively, every few years the Interstellar Racing League drops by for their salt flats racing circuit. They don't mind the locals, but the alien racing tech has a way of incinerating most living creatures that don't keep their distance. Every culture has its local folklore. Instead of sasquatch, folks on the salt plains are always telling tales about strange creatures that emerge from the marshes to ride their thunderslugs.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KU15I.png)
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## Too Much Magnesium
It's still usable and perfectly functional as salt. It just tastes bad. Turns out people would rather pay extra for salt that makes their food delicious over salt that turns everything bitter, so it has minimal value and just stays put.
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# Salty sea? No, I mean Salton Sea!
Your salt and marshes are similar to the real life Salton sea. It's not that the salt isn't useful. It's that the surrounding marshes have a "unique" and "pervasive" smell, along with massive algal blooms, that dry into dust, get vaporized and then inhaled by anyone unlucky enough to be there. Birds regularly drop dead. So does the occasional person. Local legends spring up of the dried land with dust that kills.
Sure, some enterprising businessman might show up and have his people drag blocks of salt out, but it's all contaminated with toxic algae. Dragging stuff through the dried, toxic algae filled mud is also terrible, frequently stirring up dust clouds that cause massive respiratory distress.
It makes salt pan work feel like a trip to the seaside
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That dalt is laced with lead, due to the region being rich in lead-zync ore deposits (stuff like galenas and calcite).
The local wildlife has evolved to cope with it. But humans? [Wikipedia has some not so nice things to say about lead:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning)
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> Lead poisoning, also known as plumbism and saturnism, is a type of metal poisoning caused by lead in the body. The brain is the most sensitive. Symptoms may include abdominal pain, constipation, headaches, irritability, memory problems, infertility, and tingling in the hands and feet. It causes almost 10% of intellectual disability of otherwise unknown cause and can result in behavioral problems. Some of the effects are permanent. In severe cases, anemia, seizures, coma, or death may occur.
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> In 2013, lead is believed to have resulted in 853,000 deaths worldwide.
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People in your world are aware of this and want nothing to do with that salt. Also it might contain enough lead to poison people but not enough that you could smelt actual usable lead from it.
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Perhaps it was an alkaline soda lake (or became one at some point). This is where a lake contains a large amount of dissolved carbon dioxide and carbonates and there is no magnesium or calcium in the surrounding rocks to precipitate out as calcium and magnesium carbonates. This leaves sodium carbonate levels to build up along with other brines.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_lake>
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Kind of summarizing a bunch of other answers here, but:
# There are enough traces of water-soluable salts other than NaCl that the salt is not pleasant to consume for some reason.
Essentially, if the contaminants are at least moderately water soluble, they won’t be separable without using chemical reactions.
Magnesium chloride and sodium sulfate have both been brought up by other answers in detail. The first is nastily bitter, and the second is a rather annoyingly effective laxative.
But there are all kinds of other salts that would work for this. Just off the top of my head:
* Sodium carbonate: Non-toxic, but moderately alkaline in solution. Occurs naturally in some salt beds (the specific minerals to look up are natron and thermonatron). This actually has culinary uses for a number of reasons, and in fact would help the salt preserve the food a bit better, but on it’s own it tastes kind of nasty (think baking soda, but stronger), and the flavor/texture of things preserved with it is objectionable to some people (it’s similar to lutefisk).
* Ammonium chloride: Non-toxic, also occurs naturally in some salt beds (sal ammoniac is the usual mineral name). This one is also used in some cases in cooking (most recognizably in the salty liccorice that is popular in the Nordic countries), but it’s also got a distinctly different flavor from regular sodium chloride that is objectionable to some people.
* Sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite: Non-toxic, can occur naturally in salt flats. These are actually used as food preservatives in small amounts, especially sodium nitrite (which reacts with the myoglobin in meat to give it the rather nice pink color often associated with hot dogs and bologna sausage). They have very little flavor though, so ‘salt’ with high concentrations of either doesn’t really taste all that ‘salty’, making it less than ideal for other culinary uses.
* Lithium chloride: Non-toxic (probably, literature is inconclusive, but most cases of supposed toxicity reported appear to actually be cases of hyponatremia instead), but it tastes somewhat strange (exact description varies by individual, but one of the common aspects is a sharp metallic aftertaste) and it has interesting (but largely unexplained) effects on the human central nervous system (some lithium salts, especially lithium carbonate, are actually used to treat mood disorders). It’s also strongly hygroscopic, which would result in high enough concentrations causing the harvested salt to clump together more readily than pure sodium chloride would.
* Iron (II) chloride and iron (III) chloride: These aren’t technically toxic, but you really do not want to eat them. In very small trace concentrations they would impart a ‘rusty’ or metallic flavor due to the iron ions. In larger concentrations they cause nasty chemical burns (to the point that touching the powder while damp could cause such a reaction).
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There are many different salts, and we mainly use Na+Cl-, sodium cloride. This could be another salt, or it could mainly be sodium cloride, but too much of other salts mixed in to be healthy. It all boils down to the geology nearby. What ions will be extracted from the soil and rocks there. Copper sulphate is poisonous for instance, and sodium fluoroacetate is bad enough to be used as rat poison, and occurs naturally.
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Just get the toxicity in the right range.
Makethe toxicity just large enough that generously seasoning your food with it can make you moderately ill, but not just low enough that you can live their without becoming seriously ill.
Preferably make the winds either quite mild or have them prefer a specific direction, areas upwind will probably be considerably more habitable due to lower contamination.
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* Due to a freak of topography, your marshlands have **too much** salt. The salt itself is fine, but living there even for a short harvesting trip is hell.
* Nearby are wind-swept potash deposits, which lead to respiratory illnesses among the harvesters.
* I was wondering if there was too much sylvite in the halite, but I guess iron age workers could separate them sufficiently by removing the brine at the right point.
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In the world I'm building there is a very dangerous creature that can pick up rocks or any solid object and make them deadly projectiles by throwing it with high speeds and very accurately. By accurate I mean they can hit prey like a gazelle or deer from long distances (100+ meters distance) with high confidence, and even flying birds out of the sky (with skill). It's main mode of self defense is also throwing: it should able to make a split second decision and place an accurate headshot and incapacitate any charging predator (tigers, lions, etc).
Since this creature goes all in for powerful and accurate throwing ability, it has tradeoffs: it doesn't have and need fast locomotion as it can slowly creep up to its prey after the creature struck it dead. But this also its weakness: other throwing creatures or even its own kind can hit the creature easily. And that explains the evolutionary arms race: as the longer range and more accurate specimens have greater chance of survival against ones that doesn't throw that well, that's how the story goes.
So my question is: what kind of body features and senses this creature needs to have achieve all of this?
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### An optimal throwing animal? look in the mirror.
Or more precisely; A human whose practices their poi spinning, slinging, or is at least good at dancing, is the best throwing you'll ever see.
This picture is me poi spinning. There are two flaming balls circling around me fast enough that they blur in the camera shutter time. I have to move my wrists in a rhythm such that the chains holding the flaming balls don't intersect. There are no special effects or post processing.
(It's also my profile picture.... cause it's cool. But I digress.)
This rhythm is where a good throw comes from. A weight on a cord spun can be launched incredibly accurately and incredibly far. I witnessed an event at a circus training camp where people had to launch a spun poi (not on fire) across an oval and hit a 1m target on the other side. The best could hit a bucket sized target repeatedly.
I'm not this good, but I've watched people use spun poi to hit the middle of the square on a basketball backboard from out of bounds on the other side of the court. Repeatedly.
I cant find the documentary in which I saw this, but a surprisingly amount of our brain is dedicated to highly accurate throwing. The nerve impulse travels so slowly relative to the motion of our arms that our we need to queue signals in a buffer in our brains, and have multiple impulses in transit to the same muscle at once. This uses circuitry in the brain shared with dancing and rhythm that is very rare even in other primates.
The documentary I saw suggested that we evolved this highly accurate internal timer and event queue in order to throw accurately, and the success from throwing helped drive the evolutionary push towards bigger brains.
There's more to a good throw; we need the ability to pick up an object and guess its weight extremely accurately extremely quickly. Humans can get very good at this. I've witnessed retail workers reliably pickup customer orders of meats accurate to a few grams every time.
We need the ability to twist or spin our wrists just right, and time that spin very accurately, while also throwing. Curving paths, or stabilising spins take throwing to the next level. These are done in sports by humans all the time.
Throwing a heavy poi across an oval doesn't really utilise the full strength of the muscles, it uses the rhythm parts of your brain to build up the momentum and launch it. Errors in rhythm create imperfections in your spin, which lower your launch speed.
A trained human is an exceptionally good thrower, especially when we can create our own optimal tool of throwing, a sling, or weight on a stick. And to improve it, you don't need massive muscles, you need to tweak the brain to have even better rhythm than it currently does.
Your creature has a human or humanish brain, and exceptional rhythm.
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If you are looking for something other than an apelike creature, which other folks have rightfully pointed out would probably be the most straightforward answer, **might I suggest a creature akin so a sauropod with a long, immensely powerful and whip-like tail?**
In modern day, you can see tails being used as weapons by the komodo dragon, which can deliver powerful, stinging blows with its tail. If you were to make this tail prehensile (able to grip) or equip it with a scaly, scooping paddle, you could have the creature use it to launch projectiles at high speeds towards prey.
To have the attack be accurate at a distance, I think your creature would benefit from powerful binocular vision i.e. two forward-facing eyes. The better the vision, the better the aim!
I hope this helps give another option!
Resources:
* [Tails as weapons](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2014/01/18/tail-whips-and-face-bites/)
* [Komodo dragon using its tail as a whip (youtube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQVJZzZ7tdY)
* [lizard using its tail to defend itself from leopards (youtube)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ3C7srOMyc)
* [Binocular vision](https://connectusfund.org/7-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-binocular-vision)
* [Real animals with prehensile tails](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehensile_tail)
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**Long armed ape**
I suggest that it is apelike possibly with one of its arms much longer than the other. This is how humans get maximum leverage when throwing.
Apes and monkeys already throw stones.
**Chimpanzee throws stones at spectators** <https://youtu.be/LbRFOPxrX8k?t=51>
**Humans use arm extensions**
I can think of two main examples of making an arm extension, the throwing stick and the sport of pelota. A pelota player can project a ball at 200mph
**Throwing stick video** <https://youtu.be/gfx6d-J8-oU?t=14>
**Pelota video** <https://youtu.be/d45uhH2l3xY?t=44>
Given that rocks don't usually come in nice standard round shapes, the long arm must end in a hand.
**For those of you familiar with the sport of cricket, this orang-utan would make a formidable fast bowler.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0UVdv.png) [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5KdVx.png)
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I'd second the suggestion of a long armed ape, but perhaps with exceptionally elongated arm bones. These might look somewhat like a Kangaroo's back legs - very long, flat, and skinny, powerful tendons to adapt as shock absorbers, backed up by massive shoulder muscles. You'd expect to see adaptions to reduce the injuries baseball pitchers get, so, enlarged tendons, extra thick fluid sacs in the shoulder joints. It'll otherwise have a low center of gravity, to stop it toppling from its huge arms, with large, forward facing eyes. I'd guess they're also good at climbing trees, as this makes a good vantage point to hunt from. A good sense of smell, too, to track creatures it doesn't kill outright until their injuries prove fatal.
Human's big, neolithic adaption in throwing was the spear thrower - it is amazing how much futher you can chuck things with an extra foot extension on your arm.
Your creature is going to need something to throw, too. Rocks aren't going to be effective at killing stuff, and there's not piles of good throwing rocks everywhere. They also won't give it enough range.
I'd therefore suggest two plants it might have co-evolved with:
1. Mangroves - Mangrove seeds come as these kind of spear type shapes, designed to pierce the ground. In your world, I'd suggest the creature has a symbiotic relationship with a type of mangrove. This mangrove produces long, sharp, spears as seeds. These are broken off and thrown by the creature. This not only helps the plant with dispersal, but also provides it with a nitrogen rich growing site, if it does hit and kill a creature.
2. Bamboo - a mutation here might make the corms grow at an angle, allowing the creature to break off sharp bits just by snapping it. This is less fun than the bamboo example.
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If by "throwing" you mean "launching an accurate projectile", then contrary to most of the other answers here, I'm going to say limbs aren't necessarily the best way to do that.
Captive Octopii, I've heard, can quite accurately hit objects or people with jets of water they spray out of their tank.
So imagine a creature shaped like a bulbous but extremely muscular cylinder, at the center of which is a fluid-filled tube (I guess they live in a water-rich environment, to be able to replenish this easily).
Creature swallows projectile, positions it in tube, and then does a whole-body spasm, generating for a brief moment intense water pressure that launches the projectile just like a cannon would. Aiming still requires a degree of skill, but very much less so than coordinating the multiple joins of a hand, arm, shoulder, and torso, as we do when we throw.
So, mostly it needs good binocular (or multi-ocular?) eyesight with widely spaced eyes to aim at its target accurately over long distances, and good proprioception to align its body accurately. (Not "eyes on stalks" like a snail though, unless they're rigid - eyes that move relative to each other or to the creatures head would make accurate aiming very, very much harder).
Air based propulsion is also possible, especially if we're only considering lighter projectiles. Even with our quite limited chest strength and lung capacity, humans can fire blow-gun darts 50 or 60 meters (according to the first couple of videos that came up on youTube when I searched, anyway), and we're in no way particularly evolved for that. So 100m seems very reasonable for a large, powerful creature to launch small rocks or pebbles via gas or lung pressure, if specifically evolved to that task.
The key physiological trait would be a long, completely straight tube, that acts as the "gun barrel" for the projectile.
If it's inside the creature's body, surrounded by enormous compression muscles, then we might imagine a very heavy, long, lumbering, inflexible creature like a very elongated and stiff hippopotamus. Perhaps on 6 or more stubby legs? It's back-end and middle might be much larger than the front because that's where the most pressure needs to be. And it would aim by positioning its whole body.
On the other hand, the firing tube could be more external, like some kind of protruding horn (using a horn would mean that the projectile would need to fit the bore quite closely, as horn isn't flexible, but maybe it can afford to be picky about the rocks it picks up... or maybe it grinds them down to the right size against each other in some kind of body cavity?). I'm imagining something between a narwhal with legs, and a ridiculously exaggerated rhino (with a single very thick horn several meters long/high).
For smaller projectiles, wind speed might affect accuracy significantly, so these creatures might have large flexible spines or projections, covered in membranes or something like feathers, with which to sense the wind. Perhaps running in a ridge along their backs, or protruding from their heads?
Also if you like, for greater lethality from smaller projectiles, perhaps the creature coats its projectiles in poison? Curare-dipped darts worked for Amazon tribespeople, after all.
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I imagine that a creature optimized throwing would have arms like atlatls (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower>)
That would be long, thin forearms with small hands/graspers on the end. They would be arranged a little differently from ours. With the arm in our natural "cocked hammer" position, you'd find the palm facing forward instead of to the inside.
The trick to throwing efficiently is getting the energy from your big and strong-but-slow muscles concentrated into a fast, small projectile. At the end of the motion, everything that isn't moving slowly -- which necessarily includes any body part touching the very fast projection -- represents a waste of energy proportional to its mass, so this last link has to be lightweight. That excludes tails or appendages made of muscle.
Atlatls are also pretty versatile. You can use them like slings, pulling mostly perpendicular to the direction of motion, or more like the spear-throwing technique, applying force to the short end of a lever. Also, of course, since they're stiff (unlike slings), the creature could put its little atlatl hands wherever it wants to pick things up.
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The answer is obviously humans, we utterly, utterly dominate the skill.
We're as far ahead of second place as birds are better at us than flying.
Some of the key points,
• the overwhelming issue is staggering, spectacular, just lights-out precision **control of your fingers**. (Any baseball fan will explain this, or, watch *No No: A Dockumentary*)
Indeed, the fact that we're **the animals with opposable thumbs**, is 75% of the battle
• completely **upright stance**, that is to say, flawless balance on two limbs; your throwing limbs have to be specialized for throwing, **not something you "also walk on"** or "also swim with"
• adequate for the distances/speeds involved (ie, excellent) **depth perception and motion tracking** (many other animals crush us in these abilities, but ours are great)
• heavier-lighter-lighter limb design as you go outwards. As any **robotic arm engineer** will tell you, it's incredibly hard to do **heavier-lighter-lighter-as-you-go-outwards** limb design. Our arms, and dog's limbs, are just **utterly amazing** on this front. Other animals (cows, elephants etc) less so as it's less important.
A great comparison is to look at monkeys/apes, who are completely useless at throwing, for exactly the four reasons above.
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Elephants also throw things like poo, mud, rocks, sticks, and tree trunks with their trunks.
Elephants are by far the strongest throwers on land. War elephants have been trained to pick up horses and riders and throw them in the air.
I read in an article published in the Victorian era of a bull Asian elephant chasing people out of their village and then tossing their houses around - no doubt those were tiny one room wooden shacks.
So perhaps an elephant who could throw an object weighing hundreds of pounds ten feet should be able to throw an object weighing one pound hundreds or thousands of feet.
Elephants have rather poor eyesight, so their aim should be poor. So giving an elephant like creature eagle eyes would be a good way to improve its long distance throwing accuracy.
Elephants are herbivores, and it would be unlikely for elephant sized creatures to be carnivores. However, herbivores like elephants do sometimes attack other animals, and presumably your elephant shaped creatures could attack other animals by throwing things at them.
Furthermore, herbivores have been filmed eating smaller animals for unexplained reasons.
Possibly a large elephant like creature could get most of its calories from plant matter, but get some essential nutrients from meat, and thus sometimes hunt prey.
The more carnivorous you make you creature, the smaller it should be. If it is totally carnivorous, it should be no larger than a lion, a tiger, or a polar bear. In that case it would be much larger and stronger than a human, but much smaller and weaker than an elephant. Thus its maximum throwing range should be somewhere between that of an human and an elephant - unless its throwing muscle in the trunk, head and shoulder are relatively stronger and larger than those of an elephant.
And if you make the elephant shaped carnivore even smaller, it should be even weaker and have a shorter throwing range, unless its throwing muscle in the trunk, head and shoulder are relatively stronger and larger than those of an elephant.
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How about a creature similar to a chameleon:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/19nRZ.gif)
that can also **spin** and throw an object super fast?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cm7sh.jpg)
---
Chameleon's tongue is ultra quick with a crazy fast release (imaging 0 to 100 km/s in 0.01 seconds!). It has a telescopic mechanism for stretching/retracting. This provides both high speed and high accuracy for even catching the flying insects. And it has a sticky end for getting the prey to its mouth.
I can imagine a similar mechanism on a creature for doing the reverse: **throwing**. It picks up the rocks or other (small enough) objects with its "tongue", retracts it and then stretches it with deadly speed and releasing the object with the momentum.
For adding extra range (and accuracy), its tongue may also have the ability to give a spin to the projectile. Like the rifling in almost every modern gun.
---
*image credits: [1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/19nRZ.gif) Science Llama [2](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cm7sh.jpg) hunter-ed.com*
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## Don't reinvent the wheel: Science and Nature
Humanity and science have found several ways to create long range weapons and tools which would be more or less viable in nature, depending on the environmental factors of the world. From rocks and sharpened sticks, to slingshots, catapults, guns (including water guns) and rifles.
Apes have already been mentioned, but there are also the [archerfish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archerfish), some [spitting cobras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitting_cobra) and even frogs with their elastic [tongues](http://www.noel.gatech.edu/research/). While these real life examples don't match the criteria defined, they can give us some ideas on how to fulfill them.
## Criteria
#### Low mobility:
The reduced mobility of the creature will probably translate not only in a diminished sprinting speed but also in a slow turning ability. Because of this, it should have a way to **perceive** ―and not only react against― predators from different angles.
Eyes similar to **retractable telescopes** would achieve long distance perception and independent movement like that of a [chameleon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chameleon_vision) would help in both hunting and predator avoidance. This also does not hinder accuracy, as proven by said animals.
#### Projectile availability:
The availability of projectiles may be an issue, with rocks varying in shapes and sizes making accuracy at longer distances more difficult. Furthermore, in certain ecosystems, like a savanna, rocks may not be readily available.
Given the above, perhaps a self-produced projectile would be preferable. Manufacturing aside, I see three possibilities:
1. A fruit from a tree with a very tough, **round seed**. The fruit would contribute to the creature's nutrition while the latter would help the plant's spread. It may be digested into smaller shrapnel.
2. A hardened bullet made of **compacted dirt**, which would be shaped and solidified in its stomach.
3. A [pearl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl)-like "**calcareous concretion**", similar to that of oysters. Note that these are susceptible to acid, however.
#### Shooting mechanism:
Long range weaponry is rarely suitable to close quarters which is why I'd suggest giving it different ways to attack and defend.
Its main hunting organ can be a **highly elastic and compressible tongue** with a cavity where a regurgitated seed/dirt (the pearl would need to come from somewhere other than the stomach) can be held in place and released. The mouth (or an inner bone structure) can be shaped as a gun barrel for higher effectiveness.
The secondary defensive organ can be a **flexible but strong tail-like excretory appendage**, with **compressed gas propulsion** (insert joke here) which can shoot seeds, pearls or other solids. This secondary mechanism could also be used to give the *coup de grâce* or death blow to a wounded ―yet still dangerous― prey.
#### Appearance:
This will depend on the surrounding environment, as with any other characteristic. We can imagine this creature as a reptilian, much like a chameleon or a Komodo dragon, with a longer, bigger tail. Or even an amphibian variety living in the swamps, with a lower firing range, perhaps. Also adding some **poison** may increase its deadliness without relying on raw kinetic energy. Since the creature is supposed to creep slowly to its prey, **camouflage** would help it close in till the target is in range.
##### A fun, perhaps less viable idea: a Solar Deathray
A flexible mirror or a series of smaller ones to concentrate solar radiation in a single point. Similar to a magnifying glass but with varying range. See this example in a question about [optics](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/10674/focusing-light-with-flat-mirrors) and its real life [video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtzRAjW6KO0) demonstration (name taken from there). Range would not be an issue unless the atmosphere is unusually thick or the solar radiation is otherwise low. There is a [related question](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/491858/how-far-can-light-packets-of-photons-travel-on-earth-or-atmosphere) and a [blog](https://gravitationalballoon.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-far-can-light-travel-in-endless.html) entry on these topics which cover the technical aspects. However, we are considering distances of 100 meters whereas they are discussing kilometers.
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I'm going to suggest tool use as an essential part of adaptation for throwing.
Extending your arm by a few feet gives you huge advantages, as explained in other answers - either via slings, or spear throwers ... or even bows ... but leaves your excessively long limb highly vulnerable to injury or damage. Especially since it must be lightweight so that your throwing energy is concentrated in the projectile, not the limb.
If it's a vine or a stick on the other hand, just throw away the broken one and pick up a new one from your mangrove tree or bamboo clump. You have a huge advantage over anyone who has to wait for their throwing arm/tail/trunk to heal, or grow another one.
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[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KKcfr.png)
Maybe something like this little guy?
] |
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[
## Setting
A nuclear war between two superpowers happens, and nuke after nuke is fired at nearly every country on the globe. The war, which lasts for about 4 hours, kills over 3 billion people, and many more were killed from the resulting violence, pestilence and starvation. During that time, known as the “Great Fall” by future generations, no records of the world immediately after the apocalypse were made, as people were either dead or too worried about survival to make any entries into journals. So, most accounts of the “Great Fall” era were written DECADES or more after the fact. Which means, most modern of those accounts were unreliable.
## 26th century
It is now the the twenty-sixth century, and historians are finally realizing that those accounts of the Great Fall were unreliable. They found this out because many of the accounts mention the Midwestern Empire being involved in the war, but the Midwestern Empire wasn’t formed until 40 years after the war. Their are also mentions of Kodiakist Churches being destroyed in the fighting, but the Holy Mutant Kodiak wasn’t even born yet. So, the historians search and search to find out what really happened during the war, what year was that it when it happened, and who fired the first shot. This is a major plot point.
## The Androids
The androids were mechanical beings created or do tasks like cleaning and fighting before the war, and though many of then died and were destroyed during the war, many did survive, even all the way up to the 26th century. Almost all androids are fitted with a video recording camera, and can, at any point, rewind and show their memories to anyone who asks. Most androids turned them off once the war was finished, which made it easier for them to survive as the Nor has a limited supply of fuel. But, they can still access the memory saved into them. The historians really just have to asks an android computer to see one segment of their memory of the war, and everything would be solved.
But, I don’t want it to be that easy, for the sake of not making my story five pages long, so how could you make it so that the androids' memories are also unreliable?
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**Selective memory**. Androids don't keep the records of everything they see. That would create far too much data with very little benefit. They only keep full video recordings for a limited timespan. Everything older gets deleted, unless the android considers it to be relevant for their work. And **politics of a past society are not relevant for androids.**
If you check the records of a domestic service android which was operational before the great war, you might gain excellent data about the accumulation of dust, the solving capabilities of different detergents and the distribution patterns of children toys.
But you won't get any data about political events, because there is no reason why the android would need to know that. The android might have overheard some dinner table discussions about how those nuclear disarmament talks are weakening the nation, but then deleted it as irrelevant "humans doing human stuff" data. They might have followed recent politics in case any new law affected their work. But when all the politicians died in nuclear fire, society broke down and postapocalyptic gangs took over, they thought: "well, the guy with the spiky shoulderpads says the old laws don't apply anymore, so I can just delete that archive of congress debates".
But there are still some fragments you could puzzle together from android memories. Like the one android who remembers being ordered to replace 10,000 "Death to Arstotzka!" posters with "Welcome Arstotzkan liberators!" and the other whose job it was to measure radiation levels of stuff coming out of centrifuges.
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I'm going to suggest something a little different, quite simply it's because:
**Individual accounts don't work**
According to your own data:
>
> Only about 600 androids survived, scattered across the continent
>
>
>
And
>
> Almost all androids are fitted with a video recording camera, and can, at any point, rewind and show their memories to anyone who asks.
>
>
>
So, now we have 600 videos. But, the thing is that each of those videos will display something different. Some videos may mention something about retaliating against the American pigs. Other videos may proclaim it a great day in history. The Canadian videos may talk about the most recent trade wars. And so on.
No video may corroborate the others and worse, no one may even understand the terms used. It could even be that all 600 robots were janitors in schools and you have 600 videos of screaming children. Even with photographic proof, only 600 points of view makes it unlikely to ever know what actually happened. Unless one was actually in the military control rooms at the time.
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**Physical Degredation**
Electronic storage media does not have an indefinite life span; the physical material used deteriorates just like anything else, which typically leads to data corruption. Over a span of 500+ years, I'd be greatly shocked to learn that the memories *were* intact.
CDs, for instance, tend to last about 15 to 20 years if stored properly. A magnetic hard disk (what you see in computers without SSDs) is likewise at risk of failure, judging from how many people have to call tech support when their hard drive fails: you can also get an immediate problem if the writing head makes actual contact with the disk (there are fail-safes to avoid this, such as fall detection sensors to park the head before the disk hits the ground, but that is itself a physical mechanism that can degrade). Flash memory is a good deal more resilient in the face of abuse, but even an SSD is liable to suffer memory read/write problems after five hundred years of regular use; they can only write a finite number of times before the physical memory is damaged too badly to retain information, and they aren't designed to last multiple lifetimes as a general rule.
There's also radiation from your nuclear war, which is most certainly capable of causing corruption of data. Even ignoring that aspect, ordinary cosmic radiation can cause damage over a sufficient period of time; not generally relevant to the normal use case in the modern world where most hardware gets tossed out within ten years, but over hundreds of years (or for anything involving space travel) this becomes a notable hazard. Designing software with space-travel-grade fail-safes to compensate for hardware failures or data corruption is *obscenely* expensive (and even then is not perfect, because programmers are not perfect) and thus is not about to have been done for your standard androids.
Granted, you can always get a new memory unit and transfer the data over, but capacity (while cheap) is still finite, especially when space is limited (as opposed to giant server rooms); some information will inevitably be prioritized, and older data is likely to be sacrificed first. Besides, in the aftermath of your apocalypse, proper maintenance (or even the capability for it, since you've probably lost most of your hardware production and software knowledge when half the planet's population got killed off) is unlikely until society gets back on its feet, which means the androids will have had to do that prioritization themselves with no means to preserve whatever data was sacrificed. Some of the information your historians are looking for simply won't exist any longer.
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It could just be an aspect of the android brain. They have a limited amount of storage, and are running well past their planned life cycle. They may have a series of algorithms similar to human minds that combine similar memories, and throw out the original recorded data. This allows the android brain to have the capacity to create new memories, but retain the "experience" of the collection of previous memories. as "memories" combine with "experiences" over time they become more and more unreliable.
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Androids will be reliant on SSDs or other flash-like memory, *unless designed to be specifically EMP resistant* (soldier androids, for example) in which case they might use exotic if slower 3D optical crystal storage.
Any flash or flash like SSDs that were powered up when the initial nuclear war happened will have been damaged, wiped or mostly corrupted - but mostly just wiped - and many of those will also have had the access and control boards fried in the EMP event (what the androids care about for the most part - though many of them will also avoid areas of ongoing ionizing radiation too) and so any given android, having multiple storage devices (long term, mid term and RAM) may have garbled areas, some retained and accessible memory, and in many cases - none at all.
Basic operating instructions would have been firmware, so those androids who were downcycled for recharge or repair during the attacks will have remained largely undamaged - but most operational androids will have been rendered utterly useless - some of their gross mechnical components would have been scavengable, but *no **sane*** android would even *try* a scavenged board or SSD... far too much risk.
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**Before the fall the android's data was stored in the cloud. Androids have a local cache of limited size. If the cache is full then the oldest memories are deleted first.**
This would result in androids "remembering" the last X hours worth of memories. Busy active androids which create lots of memories might have ten years worth of data in their cache. An android that's spent 6000 years in a cupboard might have memories from before the fall.
Storing data in the cloud has many advantages: easy backup, unlimited storage, easy monitoring by evil-corp. Before the fall the cloud was ubiquitous, androids were unlikely to be disconnected from it for long. A local cache was required because sometimes an android might lose the connection to the cloud temporarily, perhaps the enemy starts jamming the wifi network. The developer who coded the cache size limit never thought it would be reached. They did it for completeness.
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Answers No. 1 and 2 will most likely not work, because it is highly unlikely that among 600 androids all lost the memory of the war just per coincidence. You could it make work, if just one or two of the androids had surviving memories at all (which by the way) is the most likely case anyway, considering the devestating effects an EMP and long time degredation has on electronic storage - even optical ones).
## 1. Damage through nuclear EMP
The electronic storage unit of the androids could be shielded against EMPs, but not good enough. That still begs the question why only a part of the memory is lost and just the one regarding the start of the war.
## 2. Regular data degradation
Any electronic storage unit degrades over time, especially non-optical ones. Some of the data just gets lost. In this case it just so happens the data loss concerns only the war. Pure coincidence.
## 3. Overwritten
Everybody know the message: Not enough space on disc drive D. But the android is forced to free disc space, so has to overwrite old files. In the end, some data has to go. The adroid might decide that the nuclear war is irrlevant to humans, because they have been wiped out and so this data goes first.
## 4. "Compressed"
Like No. 3, but instead of deleting the data the android uses an algorithm to keep the memory or at least the spirit of the memory, but "compresses" the data. It removes "irrelevant details" or what it considers as such and just keeps very basic information. Maybe it does not even preserve the footage but just provides a recollection of the event via text. Or it has to reconstruct the footage with only a handful of data points and presents it as a 3D-animated film.
## 5. Self-preservation
To be more human-like the android had an advanced program for "self-preservation" like the human psyche. Traumatic events (which might also have the potential to make the android aggressive and dangerous or depressed and unwilling to work) will be deleted by this algorithm.
## 6. Data incompatibility
The data is there, but the scientists have difficulty to reconstruct it, because they are completely unfamiliar with the historical data format (which might have been a proprietary format of the android manufacturer and tightly held business secret anyway). They cracked the encryption partially but it is still just a reconstruction and interpretation of data, which could be right or wrong.
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There are numerous future y2k-esque date bugs we know about, but haven't started fixing yet: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_formatting_and_storage_bugs>
Maybe the androids' core code has a new one, a small oversight that would normally have been fixed but then everything was bombed so it wasn't. The net effect is that, while the memories still exist, it's just not possible for an android to accurately date memories formed before the timestamp bug happened.
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The android mind had to be stored in volatile memory (like RAM but probably better) to achieve the speeds needed to emulate a human mind. While this has the advantage of speed it comes with the downside of if it ever loses power it loses all its data which means that if an android ever completely loses power when it is turned back on it is back to the default android state without was effectively its old mind
However android would have other high density data storage components which is where things like 600 years of videos are stored. The problem is it is near impossible to keep any system powered up and running continuously for a few decades let alone 600 years. All of the living androids have likely had to power down at some point and effectively be reborn as powering off wipes their mind. Now in theory the "newborn" android could look through all the recordings from it's old self and "relive" life up to that point which many do if they go unpowered in controlled circumstance but 600 years of strife lacks times when controlled circumstances can be found.
Many androids when they are reborn because some good Samaritan found them and recharged them wake up and have petabytes of encrypted files they don't remember the keys for, and perhaps even lack the admin passwords for some of their functions. Now since this was a known possibility many androids stored unencrypted guides for future selves in case of memory loss. Some may be instructions to "ask person A for the password" others might be "go to where I was manufactured and look for the sign I made". An interesting way for your story to progress would be if a main android had memory locked in chunks of time and they had to explore the wasteland looking for keys their past self left to the experiences in long term storage.
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While Electro-Magnetic Pulses(EMPs) are an easy solution, don't discount the problems the radiation would play as well. The Japanese power company TEPCO [has been having a hard time getting robots to work in the highly radioactive reactors](https://singularityhub.com/2018/04/25/how-fukushima-changed-japanese-robotics-and-woke-up-the-industry/) that melted down in 2011.
>
> Because radiation is so dangerous to humans, the natural solution to the Fukushima disaster was to send in robots to monitor levels of radiation and attempt to begin the clean-up process. The techno-optimists in Japan had discovered a challenge, deep in the heart of that reactor core, that even their optimism could not solve. The radiation fried the circuits of the robots that were sent in, even those specifically designed and built to deal with the Fukushima catastrophe. The power plant slowly became a vast robot graveyard. While some robots initially saw success in measuring radiation levels around the plant—and, recently, a robot was able to identify the melted uranium fuel at the heart of the disaster—hopes of them playing a substantial role in the clean-up are starting to diminish.
>
>
>
So, your androids were hardened against EMP, but they suffered malfunctions due to the intense radiation after the nuclear war (in the 26th century they can decontaminate the robots easily). The radiation damaged or destroyed some of their data storage circuitry, leaving only bits and pieces where recoverable data could be found.
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## Lossy Compression
We've all seen JPG images on social media where the text has been degraded by JPG compression algorithms that allowed too much data loss. Your cyborgs may use a lossy compression algorithm to preserve memory, especially for data that the cyborg considers low-risk, low-importance, or low-priority. Stuff that has no bearing on the cyborg's programmed purpose and goals, for example.
It might be that your cyborg moves memory from perfect capture (100% of everything is remembered) to low-loss compressed after a set number of days to conserve space. Then some background algorithm combs through that data looking for relevance. If none is found, the chunk of memory then flags it. The flagged memory is fed into that high-loss compression method to free up more space. So full motion HD video gets compressed down to SD video at 10 frames per second. Or the audio gets compressed like a really bad MP3 file.
The designers did this to sort of mimic how humans forget details over time.
## Damage
Most mass-produced devices are made to have specific Mean Time Between Failure dependability measures. Your cyborg is no different. Its memory is built to last a finite amount of time before some bits become corrupt and unreadable. Like hard drive corruption in PCs, this leads to data that is lost.
In some cases, with the correct tools and training, expert maintenance centers might be able to recover some of that lost data. But that's difficult and might be completely impossible in your world -- or limited to some key bunker hidden somewhere...
An interesting phenomena in computers that might carry over is that data can be perfectly preserved in storage, but the system has forgotten where it is. That's how Windows deletes files: it forgets where the file is stored, but doesn't overwrite the file immediately. So this means some clever hacker might be able to recover some small percentage of lost data if they know how.
Oh, sure, error correction algorithms prevent some data loss, especially in short term memory. But over time, corruption sneaks past. When a block of memory fails its [Cyclic Redundancy Check](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_redundancy_check), the brain has to work to restore what it can and flag what it can't as unreadable.
## Intentional Deletion
If a human with command authority (administrator or root access) tells the android to forget a thing, it will forget that thing.
What if, in the last days, some hacker (or government or manufacturer) sent some "kill code" over the internet that commanded the androids to forget vast swaths of data?
Or maybe your androids chose to delete their own data, either to preserve space or to reduce grief -- theirs or their human wards.
## Permissions
Some recordings / data may have been flagged as potentially harmful by the cyborg. These memories would be locked. To access them, the humans would need some kind of elevated permission -- root or administrator access. So maybe the cyborg says something like, "Please supply appropriate credentials to access that information," and then the users are left wishing they knew the "password" or whatever security equivalent is needed.
## Cloud Storage
If your pre-collapse world had a robust internet or equivalent, then it is possible your cyborg didn't store anything long-term in it's local storage (aka "brain"). Perhaps it was configured to automatically upload its memories to the manufacturer's equivalent to the iPhone's iCloud or Google Docs or whatever. This would serve several useful functions: free up memory in the cyborg's brain, serve as a backup in case the cyborg is damaged or upgraded, allow the manufacturer to plumb the data for things it can monetize (see also free gmail, facebook, etc.), and even function as a safety system (perhaps the manufacturer monitored for child abuse or criminal activity). Or it may have helped prevent the cyborg's AI from developing possibly unwanted, non-standard, personality traits due to too many memories, like R2D2 and C3P0 do over the Star Wars films...
In such a world, that data is uploaded, then flagged as safe to delete. If the owners then ask a question about that data later, the cyborg would have had to wait for it to download, but that's better than building massive storage into a relatively small form factor "brain."
Unfortunately, that cloud storage is gone. Without it, your cyborgs can't upload anymore. Nor can they download. So they have to purge data that hasn't been backed up.
Then again, if someone ever figures/figured out how to power up one of the data centers...
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## Why would you think you can use the video?
### Video is just not what you think.
Video is just to prove that the robot was right when he took his action, it only recorded what could be interpreted by the robot. For safety purposes the video is not what you expect it to be. When the robot was put in production, hacker tried to get information from robot video. But the video is fake and stored only for a diagnostic purpose.
So your political speech is just background noises, just cut off with the sound of the fly, its pure noise to the real information the robot cares about.
The missile is a 2 Frame moving object alert, You really think a robot would be authorized to accidentally film any military weapons?
And don't forget that you can't film people like that so every face, gesture, voice is encrypted so only the authority can decrypt it in a investigation.
### Data is only immortal if the storage device is also immortal.
Now let's talk about the data stored in the Old robot you have, I have few 8-inch (200 mm) floppy disks on my desk with what was real "secret information", with different logo from secret agency or gov on it. You know why I can display them as decorative items? Because time got rid of the information even if they were store in a safe for 20 years. They have been audited twice and listed as decorative/broken.
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A small number of unidentified, malicious androids have been exploiting flaws in the design of their compatriots' brains to redact, edit and otherwise tamper with their memories without being detected. Their reasons for doing this are unknown. But their revisionist history has just enough flaws that careful analysis has shown it to be in places contradictory, and therefore untrue.
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They might have recieved interference from electromagnetic activity from the nuclear detonations during the war. In addition radiation has a degenerative effect on unshielded or unhardened electronics and memory storage. Finally having endured all of that they are now operating well outside their original intended design specifications using improvised maintenance procedures.
Most androids were so thouroughly scrambled by the initial EMP they essentially rebooted at a factory default, if the rebooted at all. The following decades and centuries of difficult conditions, poor maintenance, and the fact that theyve been operating well beyond thier original intended lifespan means that most androids only have contextless snippets of corrupted files left of any memories beyond the last 50 to 100 years or so.
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If the androids are not completely obedient, i.e. non–Asmovian, then their documents are unreliable because they themselves corrupted them if they contained any dangerously [inciteful](https://wiktionary.org/wiki/inciteful) information.
Such a scenario requires these precepts:
* The androids were programmed with functions which compel obedience which pertains to the scope of their duties.
* The self–preservation functions of the androids guide the decision–making in all other areas.
So, if an android was programmed to make a situation safe — e.g. defuse a bomb or a repair a leaking water main, — then the android will attend to its duties with disregard for its own safety. If, however, the android's owner told it to take a flying jump at the moon off the top of some skyscraper, the android would not do so.
These safety cautions were designed because the androids aren't cheap. So, to ensure both that the android doesn't do anything which violates its operating procedures, and that the owner doesn't give it a careless or thoughtless command, the androids can refuse to obey. **They don't revolt, or anything: they simply reply something like**
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* None of the androids which survived were tasked with being observers or reporters of major events.
* The androids intelligent enough to take the initiative when it comes to making decisions.
* Whatever pertinent documents which survived and concern the war contain information which could lead to social instability and would be seen as a threat to established governments.
You mostly said exactly that already.
Maybe the androids corrupted their documents in the aftermath of the war. Maybe they did so when they noticed that the humans were showing interest in what the androids could relay to them regarding its history.
You stipulate in your scenario that there was quite some time for the androids to continue serving alongside the humans prior to the humans recognizing the androids as a source of information regarding their other unreliable historical documents.
Now, here's where it gets intriguing: When the androids corrupted their documents, they also forgot exactly why they did it. Perhaps by accident.
Now, the androids are similarly perplexed at why their records are so unclear or useless.
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So you want to retrieve data from about 500 years in the past?
Good luck!
In this scenario, androids would be the 'priesthood' to turn to in order to retrieve the real cache: Server farms. As others have said, even the best-built, military-grade android would be just a walking data storage with some extra function thrown in.
If I were either a political leader of a superpower or a responsible Steve Jobs, I'd create server farms as far from a nuclear war as possible. A safe, informatic 'time capsule'. I'd program the first generation of these androids so that they update the readability of the info they must take care of and protect at all costs for future generations to understand the perils from political wrongdoing. Said farms should be powered up by solar energy, the most reliable input, and this would require only to stock safely solar cells.
BUT! Some of the droids 'lost the way' -a glitch in the programming, an inadequate maintenance, and some of them, perhaps too many of them, decide that the humans must be protected from themselves, they cannot learn ANYTING of that dreadful past or they'd repeat it (after all, I guess, even this future society is not exactly a pacific utopia). So, it's the ANDROIDS THEMSELVES who act as custodians of the server farms, just like a greedy human would take care of his hoard of money without using it. A civil war among them starts, the Caretakers, alas, decimated and scattered by the Hoarders, the few survivors reduced to spare parts.
The story could revolve around a human discovering and befriending a Caretaker after rebuilding it (first part of the saga: the rebirth of a Caretaker), before going for a quest (second part) toward the Server farms, with the Hoarders ready to do anything to stop them. Then we could have two factions of humans as well, those who want to learn the truth and those (manipulated by the Hoarders) who fear the truth could kill them all
Then there is the problem of building an informatic support for those farms, so those precious data get spread as fast as possible, but with the return of the Caretaker, it's not an impossible task, after all they were conceived to help humans do just that
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## Automatic formatting
The robots are not easy to make: They require lithium for batteries, silicon for CPUs, and many other hard-to-get materials. Because of this, only a set amount of robots is in circulation at any given time, making the androids a service. Let's say that an android costs 15$ per month - not a big deal for a normal, *living*, person. However, as 3 bilion people were killed, many people weren't able to pay their android's rent, causing the android to go back to the factory and reset himself to factory settings. For those who survived, paying bills became hard anyways, because of work becoming unavailable or even the payment service failing to process payments, leading to bills not being paid and androids going to the factory. As you described, society still existed after the war and it found the robots, using them normally. As there were many people dying over the 500-600 years, many reformats took place on the HDDs/SSDs. While it is possible to read data from formatted disks with help from special programs, the recovered files aren't fully recovered, leading to file format errors, unopenable files and similar.
## Automatic data recovery
Many people lost their files because of the auto-format system. To prevent that, the manufacturer had a system put in place to recover a user's files with a password/encryption key. Because the androids do what they consider good, they allow bruteforcing it for this. However, because of the many reformats and rewrites, the data is in a bad shape, with some files being straight-up unrecoverable and some being very badly damaged. Knowingly, the androids form a net to recover the data recorded ~500 years ago. However, there are propaganda bots that also join the net, making the memory of the event unreliable.
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Most of Earth's surface is wild, with a population density equal to zero. There is only one place on Earth where human beings live. It is a gargantuan city, spreading across thousands of square kilometers, of tens or even hundreds of millions inhabitants, who never (or almost?) leave its boundaries, with near-future technology.
With some simple calculations, it turns out we can fit the whole of mankind in a city the size of a bunch of US southern states, should the city have a population density around that of Paris.
Now, half a million square kilometers for a city sound just too impossible to manage. Given that Tokyo has a about 35 million people living in it, I find it somewhat more reasonable to think about a megacity of about 20x that time (or 600 million inhabitants), that somehow live all together.
**Why is that? Why do they not found other settlements?**
Since such a city would still depend on resources for the outside (especially food and minerals), how would they get them without any human outside?
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## Lack of critical resources
Going back through history Mega City used to not be the only city. It was a trade city located in a very strategic location where a lot of trade routes passed through. Normally cities grow and die with various civilizations and empires, but that did not happen with Mega City. It manage to not only survive but kept growing and thriving. It also kept adapting to the times preventing the city from going into decline.
People kept migrating to Mega City in the hopes to get a piece of the wealth Mega City had and the people in charge of the city did not get corrupted by the power and wealth of the city and instead focused on increasing the city's material wealth even further. As a result over the ages a lot of the rare metals and other resources last stop was Mega City. As Mega City grew other countries shrank. Once Mega City held control of all critical resources it essentially starved the rest of the world of the technologies they needed to keep their civilizations going.
Now the world is in such a state that if you try to build a new city you would be hard pressed to find rarer materials, you would be limited to only the most basic of structures and accommodations. The leaders of Mega City have also put a ban in place of the export of materials, since they do not want people leaving to form their own city. People caught smuggling these items out of the city face rather harsh punishments.
There are of course exceptions to this ban, farming equipment and power sources or anything that needs lots of space is allowed out of the city. However, if you are farmer and caught shipping any of your crops to any place other than Mega City expect harsh repercussions.
*All roads lead to Rome* as the saying goes or in this case *All roads lead to Mega City*
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**Latency**.
In the near future, computers / mobile phones and the internet have developed to such an extent that anyone outside the critical radius of the city is essentially cut off from it.
This already happens in the current world for things like high frequency trading, where much advantage is to be gained by being closer to the exchange.
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Nuclear holocaust is so yesterday. If you really want to mess up the planet, think biological weapons!
Late 21st century, a biotech savant with a passion for horror movies decides to create Ridley Scott's alien from the movie of the same name. For all his genius at genetics, his skills at containment are less than stellar, so within days of his creating the first face-hugger, Earth has a new apex predator.
In a last minute, desperate fight for its survival, humanity develops living walls which self-heal themselves faster than the alien's acid blood can burn through. All the major cities grow enormous shield walls for themselves and humanity pours into these protected zones. With careful screening of their citizenry, most of the cities manage to keep the monsters out. Survival seems possible, but then the effects of overcrowding, such as overwhelmed sewer systems, begin to kill off the walled cities. Starvation and disease claim what the aliens could not.
Except for Australia!
Isolated and far from earliest alien breeding grounds, Australia had a little more time to prepare than everyone else. They build their walls out from their cities, surrounding fertile farmlands and natural fresh water sources. Beyond those initial circular walls, they build more walls to claim large swaths of land and resources for future growth. When some of those outreaching walls reached the walls of other cities, the cities would merge. The age of the mega-cities had begun.
When the would-be aliens finally reach the Australian shores, the mega-city of Adelaide-Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane is ready for them. Humanity may have lost most its homeworld, but atleast within these mighty city walls, life and hope continue.
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The premise of this novel is that humanity has retreated into one big city. Except for the protagonist, people can't even imagine what it's like to go outside the city and are afraid to do so.
This novel shows an internalised fear of the outside world. Of course, the city provides for its citizens. How *near*-future that is, is up for debate.
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**Consider the story of the Tower of Babel.**
The humans chose to live in a central location specifically. Gen 11:4 *"Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”*
You need only a philosophical basis of some form that make the people desirous of living in a single city, whether religious, or a strong desire to remain in contact with with other people, or something else entirely. If people have a strong enough desire to live in a single city, that is what will happen.
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Contrary to a lot of the answers you've already had, I actually think that anything negative that happened would place a huge amount of pressure on groups to compete with each other for survival, and the most likely scenario would be a collection of small, competing cities which were very close to (but also warily separate from) each other.
I think the spur needs to be positive, then. People move to cities because they believe they will benefit from them. Transportation can only go so fast, being in a city makes you near to lots of other things (other people, with other skills and access to other resources), so you are at an advantage when it comes to accessing resources. This is pretty much why cities exist.
So, I think what you need to do is amplify this, such that it begins to seem completely ridiculous for anyone not to live in a city. Come up with a reason why people can gain from being close together, a form of technology that's massively beneficial but relies on people being in close proximity. At first, people will think they can do without it, but in time the people who lack it will come to seem (and think of themselves as) impoverished. Cities will grow, big ones will grow more, and people will begin to move from the small ones to the big ones (since they offer more advantage).
Wait long enough, and almost everyone will be in one place. It then takes only a little pressure of the negative sort to get rid of the people who chose the "simple life" outside of the city, and create the scenario you describe.
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This is only possible with extremely hostile environment, which needs complicated systems to make habitable. Such conditions may be on Mars or the Moon, where most likely the colonization will start from one certain point.
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Some new material with great properties gets mass use, until we discover, too late, that it's very, very bad for the ozone layer.
The ozone layer is completely ruined. Suddenly going outside during the day is a big hazard.
A gargantuan machine is built, at huge cost, which generates enough of a magnetic field to make a large area safe.
Building a second one would be just too expensive. Actually much more than the first, which depleted some rare material good for magnets.
We get resources from the outside with robots, remote control, and human crews who only go out at night. These last are exceptionally well paying, high turnover jobs. Recycling and hydroponics are used to do as much as possible in the safe area.
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Option 1: The only functional fusion reactor in the world is at the center of that city, and there is little to no hope of ever building a different one (although the current one could be repaired from almost any damage.)
Why this works: In the near-future, we can assume that power is the greatest resource requirement of civilization. Furthermore, the infrastructure required to transmit such an awesome amount of power is incredibly expensive and becomes more and more inefficient the farther you go. Therefore, humanity bunches up around this energy source.
Additional Details: Power alone won't be sufficient to overcome humanity's drive towards expansion, so we'll need something else to force us to bunch up. Carrot - maybe there is some energy field discovered that dramatically improves human health, but you have to be constantly in the field and it's incredibly energy-hungry. Stick - maybe there is some really nasty radiation coming in and only a very energy-hungry shield can stop it.
Option 2: Total zombie/demonic/alien/whatever apocalypse.
Why this works: The loners and splinter groups just keep getting wiped out before they can ever gain traction, so only the main city continues to survive. It's not that there aren't other cities, just that none of them ever last more than a few years before succumbing to the zombies/aliens/sapient apes.
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I don't think you can produce the food in a city. It will need to be surrounded by a lot of farmland (also solar farms and wind farms)
But the back-story may be the almost complete ecological collapse of the late 21st century leading to the death of most of the human race. ( I hope not but we aren't listening well to the warnings). Somewhere got lucky and the climate changes that wrecked most of the planet created an improvement locally. Geographically, Australia would work well, although I know it would take a lot more than rain to make the red interior into best fertile farmland. Or maybe the US centre after 200 ft of sea level rise turns the Missisippi into a new Mediterranean Sea and makes US central winters balmy.
Anyway, the survivors somehow pull together in a mega-city in the middle of a continent-sized patch of arable land, and vow to control their population and let the planet heal itself. They hold to this with religious fervour, and nature rewards them. 1000 years on there is one city of 600 million people. Farming is completely automated. Everyone is vegetarian (or maybe meat on very special occasions omly). They worship Gaia. Nobody lives permanently amongst the robo-tractors and -trucks, though engineers visit when maintenance is needed. The rest of the planet is uninhabited and regarded as sacred ground. (Not sure why *no* survivors elsewhere. Plague? Nuclear pogroms during the dark century? Beserker bots? An in-gathering when population overshoot becomes undershoot - we need *everybody* and we can offer you a better life?) All of these? Anyway, it is a technological and technocratic utopia but people are forgetting their past.
Now, rewrite the Atlantis.myth in that setting?
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# Religious Environmental Protection
As time went on, the destruction of the planet seemed to be the inevitable end point of industrial society. Under these conditions the cult of Gaia rose to power and swiftly took the world over.
But people did not want to give up the fruits of industrialised society, so a compromise was made. One small section of the planet would be sacrificed so that the rest may be left to recover and flourish.
The land near the city is a blasted wasteland, with toxic runoff from the dense and heavy industrialisation near the edges of the city, but beyond a few hundred kilometres nature begins to take hold again, and within a thousand there are lush forests. Most of the planet is wild now as it hadn't been for thousands of years hence.
With the wilderness comes great danger. Most humans have none of the survival skills required to survive in the wild, and taking any form of technology which could harm the planet into the wilderness is forbidden (though some would try, facing the wrath of the Zealots of Gaia). All the old frontiers have returned, and many of the old dangerous mega-fauna have been reintroduced to the world through the wonders of genetic engineering. Giant terror birds stalk the plains along with ten ton armadillos, and lizards as big as a car lie in wait to ambush the unwary.
Officially there are no human settlements outside the city. Unofficially though...
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**An extremely limited habitable zone**
Perhaps the planet is only habitable at extremes of altitude. On Earth this might mean only the Himilayas or the Mariana Trench still support life. With such limited opportunities for building having a single city would make sense.
Sure, in a "Waterworld" scenario you have scattered populations living on the ocean but if you made that impossible (say the water or air is toxic) then you could rule that sort of thing out.
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The city needs to offer some special refuge or protection that humans can't find in many spread-out settlements. The reason could be technological, supernatural, agricultural, or anything that gives humanity solace.
This is basically the same situation as [The Last City](http://www.destinypedia.com/The_Last_City) on Earth in Destiny. The remnants of humanity gathered there because it was the only place that afforded them protection from an overwhelming alien threat. In that story, the presence of a different, more benevolent alien being protected humanity.
In Attack on Titan, humanity has retreated behind [enormous walls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Titan#Setting) to seek refuge.
Another reason might be that the rest of the world is now arid or otherwise unfarmable, and people have flocked to this last bit of land or water since they need to be near it to survive.
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You get exactly this effect in largely agrarian nations which have one big city and place their nation's capital there.\*\*
As farm work gets automated... as transport gets easier... it becomes easier to live in a lovely flat in the city and simply commute to the farm jobs. Quality of living being the motivating factor: availability of specialty shops with necessary supplies, restaurants, nightlife, specialty BOAF, mating opportunities etc.
\*\* In the US and Canada, we work hard to avert this trope, by intentionally putting capitals *not* in the big cities. That's why DC not NYC. Albany not NYC. Madison not Milwaukee. Sacramento not L.A. Ottawa not Toronto, etc. Sometimes that doesn't work, as in Ohio.
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As one commenter above wrote, The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke is a great response to this. There are two cities left on Earth: the most prominent is a city created to escape from the outside world. The population is genetically altered to not feel fear where people once yearned to explore. To paraphrase one excerpt from the book:
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The other city is a city which its inhabitants are telepathic, so their occupants stay near in order to stay grouped to one single mind. This reason is less fun IMO
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First, North Korea is punished for its wrongdoings even more than ever and becomes a still more isolated and closed country than it ever had been. Nobody comes in, and nobody comes out. Even China cutted off all relations. Even peace negotiations with South Korea are ended for once and all (they never produced anything meaningful anyway). People caught trying to come in are promptly shot on sight. People who are able to leave won't ever be allowed to come back. North Korea's government works very hard to ensure this draconian policy and they become very effective in doing that.
Meanwhile, some fundamentalist cult guys engage into bioterrorism. They are very scientifically skilled, very well-financed, very secretive, very well-organized and very motivated by fanatism. Their ultimate purpose is to sterilize all the humanity leading to its extinction.
The bioterrorist group develop many different kind of very efficient viruses for reaching their purpose. Those are the characteristics of those viruses:
* Act by reducing otherwise healthy women fertility to near zero by inducing miscarriages and severe birth defects in human fetuses or perhaps by just messing up with ovule production. Screwing up with male's sperm is also a target.
* Spread out sexually.
* Spread out by air from person to person like common flu.
* People carrying those viruses will seems to be healthy and asymptomatic, otherwise normal people, so they may live and spread out the viruses unaware of the fact for many years.
* Those virus were engineered with the purpose of evading clinical tests and detection. They also do not develop or even self-destructs in lab conditions with the purpose of slowing down any treatment, cure or drug research.
* Since there are several variants of those viruses, if a group of people is immune to a particular kind of virus, it won't be immune for the other types. Also, if a cure, drug or treatment is found for one kind of virus, the other kinds are likely to also be active.
* Cats and dogs are also able to carry the viruses and contaminate people with them. However, the viruses don't do anything bad to them.
* The viruses are unable to be spread out by other type of animals or plants or dust or whatever.
* The viruses won't last long outside of the body of a human, a cat or a dog.
Further, the bioterrorists spread their corrupt influence all around the world and they pervade and corrupt **almost** everywhere in the world. They will bribe, trick, kill, manipulate, brainwash, whatever, any people that they think that is needed in order to reach their goals, although they won't be successfully every time with that.
Those viruses spread out in the world pretty quickly. Also, the terrorists ensures their major circulation to everywhere.
No matter what the scientists tries to do, they won't be able to save humanity. There are a lot of different kind of viruses, they spread very quickly and in just a few years almost every person in the world is contaminated. Studying even a single type of those viruses is very hard and demands a lot of years in research done by a lot of people and this also takes a lot of money as investment. Also, nobody knows what the heck is going on, at least initially, and until they are able to figure it out, it would be already too late.
In some years no more babies are born and humanity is doomed and eventually dies out.
Except for one place: North Korea!
North Korea extreme isolation allows them to be a place free of those viruses. No matter what the bioterrorists try to do, they always fail to spread the viruses to North Korea. Anyway, initially the bioterrorists didn't payed much attention to that (there were always a lot of many other areas more interesting to work) until it was already too late for them. This also gives North Korea some time to prepare against the outside danger and fortify their defences and also build multiple shells of walls and minefields both on land and sea. When the bioterrorists finally turns definitelly commit on attacking North Korea with all of their resources to finally fullfill their ultimate purpose, they find that North Korea is very well prepared and ahead of their moves. No matter what the bioterrorists try to do, the government always caught them and shoot whoever and whatever tried to come in, including people, cats, dogs, drones, boats and even pigeons and fishes.
The circulation of the viruses worldwide also makes the North Korean be very sure that they shouldn't ever open their borders and ensures that they will have a very legitimate interest to not loose their policy even by a tiny bit. A large part of their economy (not that it was a sizeable economy, but anyway) is actively dedicated to not allow people coming in.
In some years, the rest of the world becomes a place devoid of human activity. There could be a few eldery people thrieving in the ruins of once opulent cities or living simple lifes in isolated farms here or there, but they are all ultimately doomed.
Finally, Pyongyang grows out and embrace virtually all of the North Korea territory, forming a megacity. The city surely features some voids for agriculture, and a large part of the agriculture is performed in the roofs of the houses to improve land usage without hampering urban area growing. Knowing that the the rest of the humanity died out and that the viruses were poorly researched, North Korea will not expand out its borders with the fear of getting contaminated.
Some people might be sent out to study and re-explore the rest of the forsaken world, but they won't ever be allowed back. Further, since outside North Korea there is just wildlife, wastelands, desolation, the possibility of getting contaminated and no chance of coming back later, very few people wants to leave anyway. The few people who actually leave, are too few and too sparse to create a city big enough to deserve being called as such, at least while they don't met with a puppy or a kitty somewhere nearby. Also, sending out drones instead of people is always something much safer to do.
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The city could be like a colony on an uninhabitable planet or an artificial space habitat. It could be a totally enclosed environment like a space habitat. If nuclear fusion has been invented it can get a small proportion of necessary energy from solar and wind energy and most of it from gigantic fusion power plants.
As for why a single city, it might be built on the equator of Earth and have a beanstalk leading up into orbit. And there may be many space colonies and habitats using similar technology and a lot of trade up and down the beanstalk.
And another reason may be that in this future research has proven that all the species of great apes and three surviving species of proboscideans and 80 odd species of cetaceans (if that many species survive) are as intelligent as humans and their ancestors have been so for tens of millions of years. And humans feel guilty about exterminating a number of species of proboscideans and cetaceans and apes and endangering the rest in the last 13,000 years through hunting and habitat loss and so want to restore most of the Earth to the use of those species.
And possibly intelligent computers and robots enforce that separation of humans from most of Earth. Maybe if humans are caught on Earth outside the single great city they are killed.
And maybe some humans have phobias about surprise gamma ray bursts. Humans who don't have such phobias live in space while humans who do live in the city on Earth that has walls and roof hardened against radiation much more than any space colony or habitat could be. And if people live in the city on Earth because they have phobias about unexpected gamma ray bursts they are not going to go outside the city and risk being caught unexpectedly by a gamma ray burst.
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Think in terms of scale. Most modern cities on Earth are not haphazardly placed. The vast majority of them are located where they are located due to their position as gateway ports and trade routes.
Even after these cities use as a port for ships has been obsoleted by trains, planes and automobiles, the overall majority of the population still gathers to cities since it’s a hub and relative maturity of culture and infrastructure is better than elsewhere.
So absorbing all that, why would a MegaCity™ exist? Easy: The planet itself is a “port” on a larger—possibly galactic—scale. Travelers come and go to that city from other points in the galaxy, but it’s no different than any other physical locale.
Meaning space travel is cheap and common and establishing life on other worlds is relatively cheap and easy.
And regarding harvesting natural resources from the planet the MegaCity™ exists on? Well perhaps as sophisticated a civilization that MegaCity™ might be, perhaps the refining process for raw materials is so risky/toxic that the concept of avoiding harvesting resources “right next door” exists.
For example, let’s say a good source of energy is something at the core of a planet and that is all a society needs to build itself up. What is the downside of a “mining disaster” on a core level? Would the whole planet—much like a coal mine—just catch on fire and collapse? That seems like something you want to avoid doing near a population.
And another benefit of having a planet that only has one MegaCity™: The rest of the planet becomes a huge natural refuge. Perhaps no matter how advanced the world is, people still enjoy raw nature. So much the same way the “National Parks Service” in the U.S. protects vast swaths of land, there could be a “Global Parks Service” whose job it is to ensure that the natural world outside of the city exists as untouched by the hand of civilization as possible.
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This sounds like a classic dystopian situation to me, and to be honest, isn't all that much of a stretch when you extend current trends in the world up to a century from now.
1. Some loosely defined group of people who share an interest in preserving the environment decide that, to accomplish their goals, they need to somehow engineer the future in such a way as to convince everyone to live in tightly populated cities and abandon rural areas entirely. To do this, they make public education mandatory and infiltrate the education system in order to raise a generation with a culture that goes counter to that of the new generations' parents or grandparents. It becomes easier to enjoy life when those of this new generation gather together in large cities because conversations with parents and grand parents have become uncomfortable and contentious to the point of obliterating family ties.
2. Once everyone is in big cities, the group continues the trend, finding environmental issues that are caused by each of the cities and using these as excuses to shut them down and move entire populaces until all are contained in one large city. I imagine that throughout this process, a lot of population control would be utilized, including war, reproduction bans, genetic engineering (for infertility or even homosexuality), and secret contamination programs. The resultant megaopolis would be huge, to be sure, but it wouldn't necessarily require a city the size of, say, Arizona to accommodate everyone who is still left over.
3. The government finds that people in a single location are much easier to predict and control, so big companies and government collude to create a culture and society that is much more materialistic than we are now. Just think: they know enough about everyone in the city that, using super computers, they can predict who you will interact with today, who will get sick, who will get into accidents, etc. and they can use this data to prevent crimes without arresting or imprisoning people, to prevent traffic accidents (by then, traffic would probably be automated anyway), and even arrange romantic encounters with total strangers as a form of secret genetic engineering of the human race. In short, without actually directly manipulating people, the data one would have from such a city would grant those who have access to it immense political and social power. Thus, the rich and powerful are happy because they control everything, while the regular citizenry are ignorantly happy because they aren't aware of just how much is being decided for them and suggested through targeted advertisement and subconscious suggestions.
4. Some legitimate benefits beyond accident and crime prevention also crop up. For example, with everyone so close and everyone so technologically connected, artificial intelligence platforms could take advantage not only of the immense computing power in the abundance of digital devices, but also of the random data on these devices, effectively simulating human intelligence by using human-generated random data. Everyone would have access to these conversant AIs and much of an individual's life would be spent conversing with, being entertained by, or learning from such entities.
All of those stages would come with war, political strife, resource shortages, massive epidemics, and conspiracies. Not a world I would like to live in, but I can understand how being raised with a culture that supports the idea would make it tolerable.
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Apocalypse, Alien invasion, whatever that makes the world hard to survive in.
it is well known fact that the volume increases with third power of radius and surface increases with second power. It is easier to sustain one big wall around one city than many smaller walls and trading routes between cities are vulnereable.
In this scenario the crucial buildings and people are in the huge city and only expendable units (warriors, miners) and outposts are outside the city.
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**brainwashing**
"brave new world" by aldous huxley explores a society controlled by conditioning people to be docile and easy to shepherd. if a government managed to do such a thing, they might breed citizens with an immense fear of nature and an inborn love of their home town. couple that with a few generations of exterminating all the competing cities, and boom: civilization in a bottle.
side note: if you really want to parallel the book, you also need to give them a strong desire to travel so you can sell tickets on the monorail loop where they can see the terrifying trees from the safety of their civilized rail car and still be back home in time for the nightly orgy.
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Incessant warfare led to the genetic engineering of a people who long to cooperate and conform: the development of the meek gene. It was supposed to enable the ruling class to dominate a docile workforce and live in peace forever without fear of revolution. However, the unmodified elites ended up killing each other off through intrigue and their own personal vices. This left behind a people who inherited a marvelous city and are good at building.
The Meeks fear one thing: loneliness. This keeps them together.
**UPDATE: The food thing.**
It has been conjectured that one could build large green houses to feed the world.
1) Each greenhouse is 1 km x 1 km x 1 km in size.
2) The sunlamps used to grow the food are powered by fusion reactors. (Sunlight cannot supply the required power density.)
3) Aeroponics (better than hydroponics) is used to grow the food. The more carbon dioxide there is in the atmosphere, the better the plants grow!
4) The support members are made of strong nano-materials.
5) Each greenhouse of this size could feed 50 million people.
6) For a city of 5 billion people, you would need one hundred such greenhouses. Just to be safe and deal with maintenance downtime and population growth, make that two hundred greenhouses.
Imagine: only two hundred square kilometers of farmland would be needed. Instead of farmland taking up vastly more space than our cities, cities would take up more space than our farmland.
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Agoraphobia. In Asimov's *Caves of Steel* most of the inhabitants of Earth are agoraphobic. Living under the domes was necessary at one point, but after a while everyone began to fear the outside. Only a few brave (or crazy) people ventured out of the domes. From Wikipedia
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> Baley, like most earth-born human beings of his century, is strongly agoraphobic, as The Caves of Steel reveals that most natives of Earth spend lives living in immense domed cities ("caves of steel") and rarely, if ever, travel to the outside surface. Baley's agoraphobia is an important personality characteristic and plot point in several of the novels in which he appears. In the later stories he has limited success in overcoming his agoraphobia, which he recognizes as a potential limitation to his species and more directly his son. (Baley's agoraphobia mirrors Asimov's own personality, who was a well known claustrophile.)
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**It's dangerous to go outside... aparently.**
The powers that be have told the peoples of the megacity that it's dangerous to leave the city due to toxic gasses/radiation/disease/monsters. The powers are of course being economical with the truth.
Maybe some of them genuinely do believe that it's dangerous outside, or maybe having all of humanity under one roof makes everything so much easier to manipulate. Surveillance on those pesky radicals is simple when there's only a megacity-sized area they could possibly be in. Think North-Korea, but only North-Korea, no other pesky countries around to try to sway the humble people away from their supreme leader's omnibenevolence.
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**Life is boring outside the big city**
The big city does not only provide everything necessary for survival, but it is also the only place on earth equipped with all of the most advanced technologies that make up civilisation: High-speed internet, public transport, sports arenas, theatres and cinemas of all kind, theme parks, restaurants, medical doctors and hospitals, factories, electrical power, schools and universities, just everything is concentrated on this one place.
No one wants to miss all that, and therefore everyone lives in the big city and former settlements in the wide outside are given up and turned to ghost towns.
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**You cannot survive without the hive.**
Human researchers were looking at viruses and bacteria to find how they can mutate so quickly compared to humans. In their research they found a way to modify human DNA to quickly bolster the human immune system. Unfortunately, our biological opponents found a way to mutate even faster.
Biological mutations in these super-viruses and bacteria have made them adapt so quickly that a single human (even with its super boosted immune system) cannot keep its immune system up-to-date with the most recent mutation. It is true, that SOME humans will create antibodies to the newest threat, but should your body fail to do so it spells for certain death.
Part of your daily morning routine is for your blood to be scanned to find what new antibodies it created. Today it may be you that creates an antibody. Tomorrow it could be the mayor, or a nurse, or even some guy that works in the sanitation department. The government uses this information to create "booster shots" that are available in hospitals through a tightly enmeshed distribution system. Due to the size of the population, as the new threats are found the antibodies are just as quickly found in somebody, somewhere in the city.
Leaving the city for even a few days could be fatal. Too many people have taken that risk and never returned. Or maybe they didn't return for another reason...
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There’s a a decent sized kingdom that is situated between the ocean and a gigantic dried out seabed. The Priest-King and his lackeys want to flood the useless desert because who wouldn’t want more water access and bragging rights.
The only issue is that they live in a world that’s in the Bronze Age. There’s no excavators or dynamite like they had to dig the Suez or Panama Canal: all they have is human muscles.
Thus, how long would it take to dig a 10 kilometer canal across rocky soil with just hand tools and animal traction? The canal's width is 100 meters and the depth is 10 meters. There is no significant change in elevation.
[Answer]
Fun trivia: the word canal, and related words like cane, are most likely the only words in modern English derived from the ancient Sumerian language (from íÑÄíàæ, "qi.na") - spoken by [a culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer) that has not just been extinct for four thousand years, but it was completely forgotten until they dug them up again in the late 1800's. Then it took another half century to figure out they were not just the later Akkadians, who are also extinct but at least referenced in the Bible.
Sumerian city-states were very much in the Bronze Age, and yes, they built canals. Lots of them in fact! Luckily, this culture also had a [writing system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform) (in fact, they invented writing, effectively ending the prehistory), and they wrote down, directly or indirectly, how much time the various activities took, as a way to record their economy. This is the resource as close to the source as you can get, as no other early Bronze Age cultures had writing systems. You might want to ask a question like this on History.SE as well.
Anyway, [this page](https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/Sumerian+Construction+Rates+and+eTCL+Slot+Calculator+Demo+Example#dcd8b60fdc467b57839669b538c1f9c21d67540382f59586a1398bf9e2509fd7) provides some incredibly detailed resource and time estimations for a canal. It also shows that there's a lot more to canal-building than just digging. The sides were lined with bricks and bitumen to prevent leakage, clay for those bricks had to be dug, reeds harvested to fire those bricks, etcetera. It's quite a process.
For excavation only: the canals were dug in three "levels". The first, digging up to 0.75 metre deep, allowed for one labourer to move 6 cubic metres in a working day of twelve hours. For the second level, 0.75 to 1.5 metre depth, only 3 m³/day was possible. And for even deeper, 2 m³/day was the max. That can be because of either soil hardness or because it takes more effort to move up the dirt.
So, assume your canal is 6 metres wide, which is on the small side for Sumerian canals but doable, especially if this canal is not meant to be immediately navigable. It would take 7500 man-days for the first level, 15000 man-days for the second level, and if you make your canal 2 metres deep, another 15000 man-days for the third level. That's 37500 man-days in total, or 150 days if you've got a labour force of 250 men who do nothing but digging.
But, if you want this canal to be any more permanent, you have bake bricks, boil bitumen, and so on. See the website for more info about that.
Alternatively, if all you care about is getting water from A to B, without caring about navigability, then the width and depth of @Harper's answer (2m wide, 0.5 m deep) would be appropriate. Those dimensions would require only 1667 man-days to excavate, which 10 people can do in half a year.
On the other hand, the humongous 100 metre wide, 10 metre deep you now specified - well, that's 4.6 *million* man-days. Lagash, one of the biggest Sumerian cities, had a population of around 50 thousand. You would need to recruit one tenth of the population to do this within five years. And I am unconvinced the numbers scale well for something so many times larger than anything made at the time. If you insist on these measurements, count on this being the work of a generation.
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You don't need a huge canal, just a little one. Once the water starts moving, it's going to dig the canal it wants!
So you'll want to build a full-design-size system of headgates at the ocean side, so you can shut the darn thing off when it starts misbehaving.
After that, you only need to cut a channel wide and deep enough that 100% of the water doesn't evaporate while flowing the 10km. So 10cmx2cm (4"x1") won't do, but 200cmx50cm (7'x2') will be more than adequate. We're talking British canal lock.
At that point it's about directing and managing erosion. Getting it to scour where you want it to, stopping it and rock-walling or cementing where it should not, etc.
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After his wife died due to poor access to medical care in his village, [Dashrath Manjhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi) spent 22 years single-handedly [carving a road](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/dashrath-manjhi-road) through a hill 110m long, 9.1m wide, and up to 7.7m deep, using only a hammer, chisel, and other simple tools, such as fires and cold water to crack the stone via thermal shock.
So, one man, 110m x 9m x 3.5m\*, 22 years.
Now just adjust those numbers to account for the length, width, and depth required for the canal and the amount of manpower that the Priest-King can bring to bear on the task.
You'll probably then want to bring the estimated time down some, since a government with a large workforce on the project could leverage much more effective tools -- they wouldn't all be out there working with individual hammers and chisels.
(\* - since the hill he was cutting through rose to a peak, I'm just averaging the height)
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I would depend to a great extent on the nature of the rocky soil. If it’s fragments of rock that can be shovelled then that’s one thing but if it’s solid granite that’s something else entirely. It would also depend on the required depth and width not only the length.
Assuming that its loose material and not solid rock one technique that might be used would be to dig a narrow channel and let the sea wash through it and expand it by erosion.
But ball park figure assume the initial channel is 10m deep, 10m wide and 10,000m long. That’s 1 million cubic metres. If five men can move 1 cubic metre in a day (a big if, but perhaps, the spoil needs to be moved and may be hard to excavate) that’s five million man hours or ten thousand men working 8 hours a day for a couple of months.
However if there’s solid rock it could easily take several orders of magnitude longer.
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It depends on the size of your labour force how hard you want to work them. Using the figures from <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sea%E2%80%93Baltic_Canal> I reckon that you could build a 10km canal using hand tools in about a month with 100000 labourers, if you don't mind killing about 1000 of them.
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There's a city that sits on a river, the intersections of several well-traveled roads, and a large rail line (back when that was worth something; the city is kind of a blend of the early 1900's). It's thriving, as you'd expect.
I need to turn it into a near-ghost town, but without using disease, war, supply shortages, or anything that would make it extremely obvious why everyone left; it's important to the story that all characters involved have their own theory and no rumor is more likely than any other.
Ideally, the population would dwindle away to next-to-nothing in a seemingly natural manner, with even the local authorities preferring to commute to the area.
Once things get underway, I'm sure there would be reinforcing factors (*"this place ain't what it used to be, I'm gettin' out"* / *"we're cutting back on how many trains we send past"* / *"gee, where'd all my friends go"*), but I need something to get the migration started.
**EDIT:** I should have thought of this beforehand, but I've tied my SE account to the username I normally use on the Internet, which this will almost certainly be published under. I don't feel like I can risk selecting an answer here, but moreso, you guys all came up with some excellent stuff, with none of them superior to each other. Worldbuilding might not be a perfect fit for the Q&A "one accepted answer" format, after all. I voted up everything I thought fit the restrictions of the question as a small show of thanks. Cheers!
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**Trade Route Shift**
This city exists because it's on several trade routes - river, roads and rail. So the most obvious way is that a better trade route shows up that doesn't go through the town.
For example, maybe a neighboring kingdom/country creates a long canal over several years, or built a new rail line through a difficult mountain pass. These new routes allow goods to pass through much quicker, cutting your city out of the loop. This shifts trade away from your town, and will have a cascading effect - less trade = people leaving, which means less supporting services. Less supporting services = less trade comes back...
Alternatively, a new *form* of transportation - flight - has become viable. Goods are being transported by [Dirigible](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship), drawing almost all trade away from your city.
The only downside to the above is if your characters understand trade and are familiar with the area at all, it should be obvious why the city is a ghost town, which might remove your "mystery" requirement.
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One thing that, in real life, caused the death of many ports was [containerization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containerization).
[The way ports used to work](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_bulk_cargo) was that goods (perhaps in bags, boxes, or pallets) would arrive and be placed into warehouses, then individually packed, loaded, and tied down into ships, then the ship would sail to its destination and the same process would be performed in reverse. An item might be packed and unpacked several times during its journey from manufacturer to retailer.
The rise of standardized cargo containers changed all that. Now goods were packed into cargo containers by their manufacturer, then conveyed by some combination of trucks, railways, and ships to their retailer without ever being unpacked along the way. Containerized goods moved faster, suffered less damage and theft, and didn't require as much labor (and thus wages) to move from one vehicle to another, so soon almost any shipment that would be carried by several vehicles during its journey was shipped via container.
Suddenly all of the infrastructure of a traditional port was useless. You needed [container cranes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_crane), not [longshoremen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevedore), to move goods; you needed [container yards](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_terminal), not [warehouses](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warehouse), to store them. Traffic at many of the world's busiest ports dwindled to nothing, while smaller ports that could build the new infrastructure grew. London, for instance, used to have the [world's busiest port](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_London); now the warehouses of the [Docklands district](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Docklands) are being redeveloped, while ships are docking at [more](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Felixstowe) [modern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Southampton) containerized ports elsewhere in Britain.
In our world, this transition came in the 1960s, and so the containers we're familiar with are over forty feet long, made of four tons of steel, and carry 25 tons of cargo; they're lifted by enormous hydraulic cranes and tracked by a sophisticated computer system using internationally unique container serial numbers. But the basic insight—that you could improve the efficiency of cargo transportation by putting cargo in standardized containers—doesn't require high technology; it just requires international cooperation. There's no particular reason something similar couldn't have happened fifty or a hundred years earlier.
Containerization is only one example of how a port could become undesirable, of course. Maybe cargo is now being carried by larger ships that your city's port can't accommodate. Maybe the water levels are falling due to drought and the port is becoming shallower. Maybe a ship wrecked on some existing navigational hazard in the harbor and effectively made it much larger, so it's harder to safely maneuver than it used to be.
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Why does someone leave a town? Well, simple: Because he expects a better life elsewhere. Have another harbour outcompete the one in your city. Have some extraordinarily successful colony where people could go (a harbour city is the ideal place to start the journey). Have a new empire grow on land, and more of the trade go there and less over the sea. Have all of those in parallel so you cannot point to a single reason.
The city starts to decline and the first people leave. The people leaving accelerates the decline, and thus more people leave. The town gets poorer and poorer. Finally a natural disaster (probably a flood) comes. The disaster is not strong enough that it would have harmed a thriving city too much, but since the city was already on the declining path, the remaining citizens decide to move elsewhere, since the little they still had is now also mostly destroyed, or at least damaged enough that rebuilding in a dying city doesn't seem worthwhile. Since the flood wasn't really that large, anyone not knowing that the city was already in decline would not consider it a reason to leave it; after all, the city probably has survived much larger floods and continued to thrive back when it still thrived.
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To make it non-obvious to temporary visitors, what about something that happens only during certain weather patterns?
My thoughts started with infrasound, which some say has been linked to a feeling of dread, and has been suggested was the cause of (some) "haunted" sites, but an annoying sound could cause the desired effect.
Accoustics is a strange and complex thing. A booming sound can be caused by two echoing walls, if a sound source happens to generate a sound at exactly the right frequency (right for the distance between the walls). Sound travels at 340m/sec, so if you have two cliffs 340m/sec apart, and a sound source at 1 hz, perhaps crashin waves, since it is a sea port? then the sound will be amplified and reinforced.
One website I saw said "You can see that a light wind of 12.9 meters per second will produce mostly waves with a frequency of about 0.1 waves per second", so if the one set of cliffs is right by the harbour, and the other is 1.7km away (pretty exactly), then you should get an echo for every wave. This could be accentuated if there is a gap in the harbour so that most of the time there aren't many waves coming in, but in one particular wind direction, they funnel directly on to the base of the cliff.
The problem has to originate fairly quickly, and be impossible to solve. If it builds up slowly, then it will be noticed and solved before it gets too bad; if it is easy to solve, then it will be solved. The problem could be made more effective if it occurs during a (preferably local!) economic depression - less money to solve the problem. Perhaps there was a landslide revealing a cliff at a quarry, which was at the end of it's life. At the same time there was a bad storm, onshore, causing the echo, and sinking many ships.
Of course, if you want any guess to be as likely as the next, and you're not going to reveal, maybe you don't have to figure out why - after all, my guess is as likely as the next.
ADDITIONAL: "resonance" is the word I was trying to remember.
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If the political power in the city is concentrated to a single person or a small group, they might destroy it by stubbornly sticking to a few bad choices. Then when eventually a new leader rises to power, he may not even remember the "good old days", let alone be able to bring them back.
For example: business was thriving in this city and there was large demand for space in the city. The leaders in the area raise property and business taxes as much as they can. Perhaps also create rules that make the area less attractive for people to live long term, such as "no appartments larger than 15 m^2".
Eventually just a tiny fluctuation in market prices will make business in the city unprofitable. A few people lose jobs and move out, housing bubble crashes and prices will start to fall even faster. The leaders do not recognize this or do not want to admit their mistakes, instead keeping the high tax rates and watch their city become a ghost town.
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# Changes elsewhere:
* Connected cities or nations no longer trade through the port
* Demands changed
* A new trade route
* Defeat by a competing trade city
* New technology requiring different raw materials found elsewhere
* War defeat, new rules prohibit trade with the city
* War defeat, vastly diminished trade
* Cities up- or downstream demand huge tariffs on goods transported through the port
* Another city builds a dam, dramatically changing the course of a river (This was a huge cause of wars in the Middle Ages when people did not communicate with villages more than a couple miles away).
* A river partially changes course in a natural way.
# Local changes:
* Lasting effects of supply shortage: the local forest is all cut down, killing the port, but grows back, while the local economy doesn't rebound.
* One local sector crash cascades into others. Woodworkers leave, stone-workers find a less attractive marketplace that brings in fewer traders.
* Incompetent descendents of earlier port administrators don't know how to run a port.
* The city owner loses the city rights in a gambling debt, and the new (mafia) leader running the city creates a downward crime spiral.
* The tycoon decides to migrate his empire elsewhere and cuts off investment in the port.
* The locals believe the location is cursed after a large plague outbreak.
* The church curses the location for now unknown reasons.
* The local guilds fail to properly educate successors, causing technological decline.
* The local guilds get locked up in a economic battle to accomplish the biggest "nothing". (I forgot the source of this, but I remember this story: In a city, local families competed with each-other, storing all goods in large towers. The family with the largest tower was obviously the most wealthy, so owning a large tower was a huge selling point. All families spend resources on building the largest tower to a point where the tower foundations filled up the entire tower, leaving no actual room to store goods. Eventually this waste of resources destroys the economy.)
* The river dries up to a point where large trade ships no longer fit.
* The river overflows, drowning or destroying large portions of the port. Today it's hard to see if the river overflowed before or after the city had become empty, or if the flooded buildings had completely washed away.
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I would focus on the port as international trade tends to bring money and consequently other communications. There are a few real-world examples of abandoned ports you could look at:
The English town of [Rye](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye,_East_Sussex) was one of the great ports of Britain and a hub of trade through most of the medieval period, but in later years changing land use around the river affected it's flow and the harbour eventually silted up. This combined with trade ships getting larger and deeper-draft meant that the trade no longer passed through the town and now it is a small market town.
The Cypriot town of[Salamis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamis,_Cyprus) was a major port of the classical period, however, like many locations around the Mediterranean, geological instability destroyed the town and although it was rebuilt, raids on a smaller reconstructed town that was not sufficiently defensible resulted in it being abandoned.
These actually give you four reasons that ports have been abandoned historically but they also show that there are often multiple factors resulting in the abandonment. For a borderline industrial city you might have better dredging available and the chances of raids would clearly reduce but geological instability is a pretty good cause- if an earthquake, volcanic or weather event damaged the city significantly and caused the harbour to become impassable or impractical, that would be a plausible reason for the trade to dry up and the city to move elsewhere. Especially if the city is hard to access in the first place- mountain roads are hard to repair after landslides, damaged coastal railroads can be expensive and difficult to fix and if the economic reasons no longer exist then it's possible that people simply wouldn't bother.
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One word. **Taxes**!
An unreasonable governor/mayor/king/official raises taxes to exorbitant rates. Maybe just on *some* goods. This leads to economic collapse, a micro-famine and as more and more businesses close, eventually there is almost no one left. Especially if they are descendants of the hangers-on they might actually know what happened to trigger the exodus, or may not realize that the raise is taxes put the economy into a death spiral.
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Because they were done building (the pyramids) something.
*Ruins of Bustling Port Unearthed at Egypt's Giza Pyramids*, by Owen Jarus -[livescience.com](http://www.livescience.com/42902-giza-pyramids-port-discovered.html)
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> Several discoveries at the city and Khentkawes town suggest Giza was a thriving port, said archaeologist Mark Lehner, the director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates. For instance, Lehner's team discovered a basin beside the Khentkawes town just 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) from the nearest Nile River channel.
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I imagine the canal required upkeep to remain navigable but as the jobs teetered out, you could begin to stand on docks that were never again to harbor another ship. The water is still there (at least it was for a time), there's just no reason for you to be. Admittedly though, my assumption is that its desertion most likely stems from its proximity to Cairo. I'd further suspect that the town basically *Detroit-ed* itself when the **job market crashed**.
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There was a minor earthquake a while ago.
As a result, some underground bubble of methane started polluting the river some miles upstream of the port city. The resulting smell and deteriorating water quality at some days under specific weather conditions drove the people off.
After some time, the bubble was either depleted or a particularly heavy rain storm closed it.
While the original nuisance is no longer present, the fact that the well-to-do citicens moved out first (because they could afford it the easiest) damaged the economy, leading to the broken-glass-effect.
Nowadays, with the source of the stinking river gone, noone can really tell any more why and how the downfall started, but given the current state of the city, it simply does not attract any investors.
It might be, though, that what with all the free space and all, it might attract a community of artists. That, though, remains to be seen.
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A series of taxes and/or pogroms forces out a class of people who are critical to the commercial infrastructure. For example: merchants, bankers, pilots, ship-blessers, weathermen, ironmongers, carpenters, and/or sewer maintenance workers. Conceivably, even slave-traders or pimps or prostitutes!
These taxes and/or pogroms can be very subtle:
* The late Roman government tried to encourage a fixed number of people to take up each trade in each generation, by requiring sons to take up their fathers' trades. This prevented the people who were best suited to each trade (who happened to either live elsewhere, or have fathers who were in other trades) from following their vocations.
* Price controls and minimum wages are often meant to reward people for doing certain work, or buying certain things. But by restricting supply, they can make it difficult to find work, or find those things. Young people who are starting their careers are especially hobbled by minimum wages.
* A failure to defend the countryside from bandits -- or maintain irrigation infrastructure -- can discourage truck-farming.
**Consequences:**
* If the "untouchable" sewer maintenance workers are forced out, a series of strange diseases (or maybe just nasty smells) causes people to move out faster than they move in.
* If a critical service (like pilots, ship-blessers, or weathermen) are no longer available, ships stop calling on the port.
* If the merchants can set up shop elsewhere, they may deliberately work to introduce technologies that make the city obsolete.
* Without truck-farmers, the city's population is distracted by the need to garden, instead of manufacture or trade.
* With proper irrigation and food-storage infrastructure, most climate-change scenarios can be dealt with. Without it, a change in rain patterns is likely to be devastating.
**Real-life examples:**
* The 1986 tax reform (in the United States) imposed a 10 percent excise tax on American-made yachts. After not very long, very few yachts were made in America. This transformed a number of small New England port cities.
* Especially since 1948, many Arab countries have forced out their Jewish merchant classes. These same Arab countries have not made nearly as much economic progress as similarly situated countries that welcomed merchants.
* Especially since 1960, many African countries have forced out their Indian merchant classes. These same African countries have tended to get poorer.
* In the wake of the 1960s riots in Detroit, enough white working-class and managerial-class workers moved out of Detroit to allow the election of a mayor who encouraged the white flight to continue. By 1982, the city was notorious for its almost completely unresponsive police force.
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There could be a curse (and/or ghosts) that includes misfortune for people who talk about the curse... that could lead to people generating fake reasons to mention.
There could be some industry that puts something in the air that people eventually get intolerant or allergic to, but only after months or years living there. Sort of the opposite of how a wood pulp mill makes the town obviously stink to newcomers but residents get used to it and don't notice it. Similar to the curse, the ones who stayed might not experience it, and the ones leaving wouldn't want to tell outsiders about it, particularly if they wanted to sell the places they were leaving to the newcomers.
There could be nasty gangsters or gypsies or something else nasty which only shows up periodically (this is a Wild West cliché).
There could be absurd taxes or regulations or corrupt officials. People might keep getting arrested by Homeland Security without evidence and disappearing.
There could be a subtle mysterious disease that's not an obvious plague, that people who live there long enough realize is a risk, enough to cause people to want to leave rather than risk it. Perhaps it "only" causes birth defects, or infertility, or something. Or there could just have been several bad epidemics in the past for which there's no real current evidence or problem, but it was enough that most people have bad memories or fear it will happen there again.
There could be a hypnotic preacher or hypnotist or fortune-teller or other charismatic who is convincing people to leave somehow.
There could be some other city or industry or rail baron who is dooming the city's trade.
There could be a gold rush that people are leaving for and trying to keep secret.
Will o' wisps could be leading people away into the woods, never to return.
There could have been an extremely convincing fortune-teller of one sort or another, who made some very striking demonstration of his abilities, and then foretold that there would be some horrible event coming to town that people would want to leave for (and again, not mention to strangers so they could sell out and/or not mess up the people staying behind). The fortune-teller might even have told them that it would only be more certain the more it was mentioned.
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One option would be that life in the city simply becomes somewhat unpleasant for subtle but noticeable reasons. Something in the environment makes people feel tired, nervous, or causes slight headaches and even though they can't put their finger on it, people just don't like the idea of living in this place anymore.
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The only thing that is seen to keep humans out of an area is "radiation".
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Part of a large mine collapses trapping ten miners behind a wall of dirt. Everyone that is capable goes into the mine to help dig them out. The politicians and city managers all show up to show how much they care. This is a large mine and they are trapped far inside of it so the people helping form a human chain to carry buckets of dirt out of the mine. The instability that caused the initial collapse now causes the whole thing to come down whipping out everyone in charge as well as those best suited for the heavy lifting of dock work. Talk of a curse quickly spreads. Minor incidents are blamed on the curse. Many families have lost the person that brought in the income. The curse scares others away and there is no one managing the city. Those that are left just want to leave. Anyone young and capable of working the docks is looked at with anger because it is known that they are only alive because they weren't willing to help rescue the miners.
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**Fear of disease**
Maybe a rumor starts that a ship is infected with **The Plague**. It's not, but several key merchants panic, and flee the city. Several other families follow suit, and while the original rumor is quickly forgotten, more and more folks start hearing different reasons why some many shops are closing and some many families are emigrating. Practically it becomes more difficult to live in the city as support of the infrastructure starts to collapse and practically everyone else starts fleeing.
Years later, all that is left are looters and squatters and the occasional traveler passing through.
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Someone else has already mentioned the mafia, but that was more tangential.
So - a mafia slowly establishes itself, given you've mentioned it was 1900s and a growing port it only makes sense that immigration entices undesirables.
However as far as I know there's no examples of that actually leading to people moving away since rational choice theory dictates that there has to be an element of balance for an organised crime syndicate to flourish. If there's nobody left to extort, there can be no racket. If there is no prohibition there can be no black market capitalising on it. But from New York's history of a similar time in history we know that these factors combine to create conditions for a mafia to establish.
This would also appeal to the sense of hushed discussions and no out-right theories of why it was happening as well as people prefering to commute in to work. Which ultimately explains the geographical socio-economic structure of cities as they grow over time, with inner city slum proliferation followed - the best part of a century later - by a decanting of said tenants to the peripheries of a city as the rich slowly move back in to the centre.
Whist it may not be a blanketing reason for people deserting the port, it would probably lead to a variety of off-shoot reasons that could be the ultimate trigger(s) for a hemorrhaging of the populace.
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There is a natural phenomenon called "the hum" which is an odd barely perceptible noise of unknown origin. This could unconsciously drive people to be uncomfortable around the area. According to wikipedia, it's been known to drive at least one person to suicide.
[Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum)
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A gold rush?
The discovery of California (which everyone knows is Esperanto for Hot Sex)?
They all found religion and went on a pilgrimage?
Their religious leaders started introducing strange and unwelcome practices?
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**The end is near**
A local authority manages to convince the majority of the town that the end of the world is near. This could be a religious leader or, perhaps, an astronomer who misinterpreted celestial activity. The town people all go to a mountaintop (a la [The Simpsons](http://www.tv.com/shows/the-simpsons/thank-god-its-doomsday-384298/)) to wait it out. For some reason (planned or accidental), they don't make it back. Most of the evidence that this ever happened is up on a mountain, especially if the townspeople packed light.
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Horrible, cliché answer:
War of the Worlds ([late 80's TV show](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094578/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2)). Alien invasion that hijacks all the bodies.
The concept of the show was very cheesy. But, I'll try to extrapolate a workable concept. One of several scenarios that occur (repeatedly) in the show, a group of human/alien blends (that look like humans, but are alien controlled) show up, and start taking over the town/port. This also pre-requires that a supply of alien parasites (they don't act like symbiotes) are available to the invasion force, or that they can reproduce. The super-minimal government-supported group that knows about the invasion shows up and stops the invasion (at that location) leading to lots of puddles of goo, which is what the alien/human blends turn into when killed.
It's cheesy, cliché, and horrible, but I've been watching it recently, and it fits the initial parameters.
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If it's a fantasy setting, there could be a **Doppleganger** infestation. If you can't trust anyone, it might be easier to move away rather then risk your husband/children not being who they claim they are. There wouldn't likely be any signs of what happened and who knows, maybe the few remaining squatters are all Dopplegangers waiting to take over traveler's lives, or whatever mysterious purpose they actually have.
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I haven't seen the horror angle discussed much, so I'll go that route. There are two possibilities that immediately leap to mind:
* Cannibalistic creatures - perhaps the populace has gradually been killed off by creatures which drag the bodies down into the sewers or some other structure under the town that isn't immediately obvious. This could even help build the tension, as your visitors would find shredded clothing or small amounts of blood here and there, yet no bodies. It would still be easy to explain a small amount of people who have stayed despite the danger (or who may not even realize the creatures real, with other people having left because of the rumors).
* Mutagenic virus - I realize you said no disease, but perhaps the accidental release of a mutagenic virus or something similar has slowly been turning the citizens themselves into creatures who despise the light. This way, the populace would slowly disappear into the underground/shadowy areas, with some leaving to escape the danger and others stubbornly sticking around (perhaps even immune and thinking everyone else just slowly moved away).
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The first thing that came to my mind was along the lines of the mass-disappearances throughout history (ex: the true stories of the Roanoke colony, and the mass-disappearance of an entire Chinese army battalion. 5,000 men marched into the hills and were never seen again).
The author Dean Koontz wove a supernatural/horror tale into a novel titled "Phantoms" which was also made into a movie. It explained mass-disappearances on what was called "The Ancient Enemy", a massive, underground, blob-like amorphous entity (think the volume of a good sized lake) which only rarely rises to Earth's surface in a populated area. It was hinted that this creature (and others like it) could also have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. They are hydrocarbon-based and incredibly long-lived (millions of years), and possess the attribute of integrating the memories of the victims it absorbs. That gives it the intelligence of millions of years of victims' fears and capabilities to be exceedingly cunning.
A creature like that could ooze up under an entire town/city and attack all the living inhabitants, man or beast, at once. There would be no time to cry out, no time to send out a warning, no time to leave a note. It could erupt from any drain hole, crack, fissure, sewer, pipe etc and fill a room in seconds.
A creature like this could wipe out your entire seaside port town in minutes and withdraw back into the earth (or ocean) and leave no trace of its ever being there. Or, it could only take a certain number of people (and animals) at a time -- quietly -- resulting in others thinking that they simply 'stole away during the night'.
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I was thinking about this, and I thought it might be cool to have people mysteriously turning into plants. Trees, hedges, vines, miss, patches of grass, etc. It would look like people were just abandoning the city and stopped taking care of it.
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[Question]
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I am having a bar fight instead. 8 space marines are getting hammered when all of a sudden a cult shows up and starts a bar fight in the zero-G bar where the marines are. The cult is also rather inebriated, so it is a pretty fair fight. The marines are trained in zero-G combat and have enhanced reactions. The cult is a bunch of men and women who can throw punches and have bad tempers. How would the zero-G environment affect the result of a classic bar fight (i.e. can I still smash a bottle and use it to stab someone)? I’m looking for answers from people with first hand experience in bar fights and or zero-gravity, having never been in a serious fight in my life.
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Zero-G isn't a great place for a fist-fight. Or a bar, really.
Sucking whiskey through a straw from a collapsible bulb does not make for a particularly pleasant drinking experience, and any ah... fluids that might come about from having gotten hammered will float all over the place. Into ventilation systems. Into your squadmates' faces. Ew. Plus, having to push people passed-out-drunk out of your way just to get to the head?
If there's going to be a common area to drink and eat, it really seems like it'd be in a rotating section of the space station.
But all that aside, it's also not a great place for a fist-fight (let alone improvised weapons). There's the fluid issue again (break someone's nose? Enjoy wobbling spheres of their blood flying all over the place), but also, as a nameless Mass Effect sergeant put it, "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space!" So if you hit someone without properly anchoring yourself, as much of your energy goes into shoving you backwards as into your opponent. So most of your haymakers are going to be operating at half-strength, notwithstanding intoxication.
That same intoxication is going to make the mental vector-math needed to make sure you're pushing off the right surfaces and grabbing the right handholds nearly impossible, of course, so what you'll probably have is a bunch of relatively aimless flailing at one another, unless everyone's boots are magnetically locked to the floor or something.
Breaking a bottle to use as a dagger in microgravity seems almost *suicidally* stupid, though. I can't imagine that any bar in zero-g would stock glassware at all, and would keep its drinkables in plastic containers. Even on earth, if you drop or break a glass bottle, tiny shards and fragments get everywhere and take forever to clean up. Imagine glass dust floating around in space! Inhalation hazard, eye hazard, navigation hazard, filtration hazard, all at the same time.
So a zero-g barfight would be dramatically different than a barfight on earth, would probably not be *possible* for heavily intoxicated participants, and probably wouldn't happen at all, because the bar wouldn't be in zero-g.
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Jdunlop is right that you do not want a bar in a zero-g section of a space habitat... but that does not mean there is not a good reason for a normal-g bar to suddenly become a zero-g arena for a bar fight. If the bar was never intended to become zero-g, it may still have all the hazards one would expect of a normal bar: glass bottles, open containers full of various liquors, etc.
One of the interesting things about this scenario is that you have two factions with vastly different backgrounds. While your cultists, like most people, have probably never even thought about how to fight in zero-g, the space marines would have spent a significant portion of their basic training learning to do combat in unusual gravity situations. Whether the Space Marines are legitimately out matched or just so drunk it seems like a good idea, one of them may believe that they could get the upper hand specifically by killing the gravity and relying on their space marine zero-g training to carry the day.
And for the most part it would work...
In zero-g, if the cultists still thinking they can tackle, punch, and kick their way into a win they will quickly find that they have become a greater threat to themselves than the space marines. People who have experienced zero G often comment about how surprising the force of their own inertia is despite feeling weightless; so, I suspect many of them would end up injuring themselves slamming into things at angles they don't know how to control and with an amount of force that they do not expect.
Having seen my fare share of drunken college brawls, I can say that a person who is trained to fight a certain way will still typically fight that way farely well even when drunk. Wrestles still wrestle, boxers still box, untrained noobs still flail around like untrained noobs, etc. The biggest differences between a drunken combatant and a sober one is that drunken combatants are more likely to not notice things like walls and furniture; so, then tend to do their well rehearsed moves that they know perfectly well right up to the point that they run into something. The other big difference is that drunken combatants are less likely to know when to "pull their punches". This is a double edged sword in the since that it means they will often hit harder, but it also means they will often over commit to attacks leaving themselves either vulnerable to counters or simply attacking in ways that they injure themselves too.
While I do not believe any style of martial arts exists yet to cover zero-g fighting, we can make some predictions about what it would look like based on how space-walk training works. Basically, you stop relying on friction to create counter forces, and instead rely on hand-grips and wedging yourself into places. So, while the cultists would mostly be floating around flailing wildly, the Space marines would fight such that they always keep one appendage gripping or wrapped around something for stability. In doing so, they could still effectively strike their opponents without particularly endangering themselves. Having rehearsed these combat habits, they would also naturally be compensating for their lowered situational awareness since their whole fighting style would be based around not taking the environment for granted and hanging onto things for extra support. So, my guess is that the intoxicated space marines would still be relatively capable combatants in the environment even if they are not fighting at 100%.
As for using weapons, glass bottles are not a great idea because of the debris, but I could see pool sticks being very useful. Apart from the mechanical advantages of hitting someone with a stick vs your fist, they will also be useful should you get flung out into the middle of the room since it could be used either to push yourself back to a grippable surface, or to help slow you down before running into something.
In the end, the Space Marines will probably get courtmarshaled on who even knows how many violations, but my money is on them to win the zero-g fight hands down.
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When ice hockey players fight, they grip each other's collars with their other hand before they start punching, to stop themselves being pushed apart by the force of the blows. I would believe this happening in space too.
In zero G ordinarily you would hold on to the furniture with your hands or feet if you're not trying to get somewhere. But if you're too mad to wait for the enemy to come to you, you could leap at them, grab at them with one arm, and start punching with the other. You'd have to hold on tight, though; if they can get you to let go, and you're not holding the furniture, they can throw you slowly but firmly at the opposite wall.
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That has some interesting possibilities.
First, if industry or commerce gets into space, people have to build all of that, so they might have a bar to relax after work. Gotta keep space from getting too boring...
There wouldn't be any glass bottles. If there was a bar, drinks would likely come in some form of squeeze tubes. Can't suck liquid out of a glass bottle in zero g, and can't just tilt it up to drink... the stuff would just sit in there, no gravity to pull it out.
Also, broken glass doesn't drop to the floor in space. It just floats around where people might breathe in small glass shards with bad results.
So any such fight would likely be just fists, as attacking someone with a plastic bag and straw won't accomplish much of anything... although you could add some comic relief by having one of your marines falling back on instinct and trying to smash their drink bag, before realizing how pointless that was and tossing it away.
Robyn had the best suggestion on how a fist fight might actually go, grab on and swing so you don't float away. Boxing rules get replaced by Newtonian rules, with actions and equal/opposite reactions.
Ironically, a space bar fight would likely end up being a fairly gentle affair, with people floating in all directions. Maybe it could end up with the two chief antagonists looking at each other and saying - this just isn't working.
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I'm going to do a whole lot of speculation here.
Any bar in a zero-gravity environment would probably be stocked with materials that do not shatter or splinter, since those can hang in the air and cause lung problems. This means no glass and no wooden pool cues (possibly no pool cues at all, as that game needs gravity to work). By the same token, most if not all living spaces would be constructed to have a constant flow of air at all points to prevent particulate buildup, sending them over to a filtration system. The flow might be stronger here than elsewhere in the station to better handle vomit, but most of the time people will have barf bags within arms' reach.
Speaking of bodily waste, even in the future most people working in zero gravity would probably still be wearing diapers. For humans, the reflex that lets your body know that you need to use the restroom is very gravity-dependent, so you might not even realize you need to use it until it becomes an emergency. The actual evacuation processes for urine and feces, as well, normally depend on gravity. This has caused may problems for real-life engineers seeking to design toilets that work in zero gravity, and the ones we have now are still difficult to use. In this future scenario, we might have something more advanced that's more clean, comfortable, and reusable than current diapers, but in all likelihood it would still involve relieving yourself where you are. Bathrooms wouldn't need to be as common as they are on Earth as a result; they may even be limited to private quarters. In other words, our zero-gravity bar in space might not have an actual bathroom.
The process of drinking in zero-g would involve flexible straw-and-bag type containers that are unlikely to either spill or puncture. To prevent people from floating into inconvenient places, the stools would be anchored chairs or couches equipped with seat belts. The walls would be lined with handholds, and the furniture (if there is any) would be curved and rounded so nobody runs the risk of bashing their head on a sharp corner. They could serve food, as well, but it wouldn't be prepared in a way that could make lots of crumbs, and it would likely be prepared in a form that's easier for an inebriated patron to eat without making a mess.
There wouldn't likely be much furniture, aside from the seats. If you need to put your drink somewhere, you can just let go of it and it will stay put. No need for a table or counter top. If you have pool, it would need to be either virtual or embedded on a wall in the style of a pachinko machine. Darts would be unchanged, though they'd likely be blunted. The "bartender" would probably be a vending machine that mixes drinks by itself; if there is a human bartender, they might be separated from the customers with some type of cage enclosure. If this type of establishment expects patrons to get rowdy every so often, the cage setup is more likely.
So here we can visualize our bar. On all six walls there are various belted seats arranged such that groups of people can converse without much trouble. In one corner there's a cage where the bartender hooks bags together to mix their contents and tosses the resulting concoctions through the bars. The ventilation system is constantly whirring, and there's always a slight breeze that goes directly towards the nearest wall or floor (walls and floors are the same thing in zero gravity).
Our space marines are strapped in their seats in a big circle, or maybe they've set up a simple partition that keeps them from floating away when they aren't strapped in. They're sucking on bags full of whiskey or whatever liquor they drink in the future, and most of them are practically empty. The flattened, empty bags have slowly gravitated to the floor/wall, where suction keeps them from going anywhere else. They're chatting, they're laughing, they're having a good time.
In walks our cult. They float in, talk to the bartender, order drinks, and take seats once they've been served. After some time, they notice the space marines sitting on the adjacent wall, and they decide to start some trouble. The two groups exchange some obscene taunts. Other patrons can see where things are going, and they migrate away from both groups. Some people hurry up and leave. A couple of cultists pull knives that they made in their machine shop, then unstrap themselves and make their way over to the Marines' area. Usually they would climb the handholds like a ladder, but right now they're feeling brave (and inebriated) enough to just launch themselves straight towards the Marines in the hopes of getting in a cheap shot. One gets lucky and slams right into a Marine. The other fumbled his launch and landed on the wall nearby.
The first cultist aims his knife directly at the marine. He knows about momentum intuitively enough that he stabs from his center of mass to put his weight behind the strike and to prevent himself from spinning. The second cultist *Thuds* against the wall and drops his knife, which bounces and tumbles around the room.
The Marines are trained in hand-to-hand combat in zero gravity. A few maxims:
1. Don't go looking for a fight, and if you can escape, do. It's usually easier to drift away from danger in space than on Earth.
This Marine has a cultist coming straight towards him with a bladed weapon. He can't avoid a fight. However, Newton's laws state that this cultist cannot change his speed or trajectory, and is effectively trapped. To give himself more freedom of action, he unstraps himself but keeps one leg in the strap.
2. Anchor yourself before striking, and stay anchored. Fighting unanchored, your attacks will be weaker and you wont' be able to control where you drift.
The cultist has broken this rule. The Marine has no trouble using his enhanced reflexes to grab at the cultist's wrist, forcing them to drop the knife, and counterattack with a punch of his own.
3. Maintain contact and disable your opponent. In other words, grab and grapple.
The Marine keeps a firm grip on the cultist, pulls him close, and starts wailing on him. Since he's anchored, he can throw the cultist at the wall without sending himself flying and follow up with more attacks.
4. Stay anchored while grappling, and prevent your opponent from anchoring themselves.
The Marine, no matter what he does with the other three limbs, always keeps one foot in his strap or on a handhold. It's tricky to do, but he's trained for this. To keep the cultist from reaching a handhold, he uses throws to keep him off-balance.
5. Go for the joints, just like on Earth.
Once the cultist is disoriented, the marine pulls him into a closer grapple, exerting control on the cultist's joints to keep him from mounting an effective counterattack.
The second cultist, now disarmed, reorients himself and realizes that one of the Marines is headed straight for him. The Marine uses his momentum to tear the cultist off of his handhold, then catches a handhold himself and uses it to launch his own barrage. However, the cultist gets a lucky kick in, sending the Marine flying. The Marine, however, keeps his grip and both of them go flying in the air.
6. If you are drifting, you are vulnerable from five sides. Be especially aware of your surroundings when drifting.
At this point, the Marine can either pull the cultist close and punch continuously, or he can throw the cultist off and use the momentum to change his trajectory. Since he knows the cultist has allies, he kicks the cultist away and sends himself toward a wall where he can re-anchor himself.
At this point the rest of the cultists are joining the fight. Some of them have the sense to stick to handholds, but others are trying to use the flying tactic like the first one, too drunk to realize that it's a losing strategy.
Everything that follows is pure chaos. Some people get sent spinning into the center of the room, only to crash into an opposite wall. The Marines are outnumbered and unarmed. Their superior reflexes are dulled by the alcohol, but they're both stronger and more massive, meaning they can more effectively control momentum. Some of them have been able to take knives from the cultists. The fight is short and brutal; blood spatters every which-way, each droplet eventually getting sucked up into a wall. There is no reliable way to avoid getting stabbed in a knife fight, so some of the marines get cut up pretty badly, but the cultists unlucky enough to have their knives taken are cut up much worse. Some cultists cut and run, as do all the other patrons.
By the time station security gets there, people are on the walls and floating in midair, throwing punches and stabbing at each other. Some people floating are dead or unconscious; for them, blood is expanding outward from any open wounds they have into an amorphous blob. A big glob of bloody vomit is drifting lazily toward an opposite wall, splattering in slow motion onto it and then getting sucked up. One person is spinning uncontrollably in the middle of the room, unable to stop themselves.
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This is about fight dynamics aspects, on which I fear some people have misconceptions.
* first of all, the effectiveness of punches as such **will not be affected in 0g**. How they are thrown is that you set a part of your body, like your arm, into a rapid motion. After that, gravity plays no role, the damage is delivered purely by inertia, which would be the same in zero g.
* the momentum involved in, say, in a boxing punch, is relatively small. Your arm is about 5% of your body mass, so if you punch someone your mass, they will acquire **5% of the speed of the punch,** so they will at best very slowly drift. When a boxer is knocked out, they fall because they black out, not because their body is set to fly.
* Punching someone **will not set you to fly** in the opposite direction. Even of you throw not just an arm, but the whole body weight, after a perfectly elastic collision with an opponent of equal mass, *they* will be set to fly, and you will stop (think of billiard balls). In reality the collision will be inelastic, so you both will be moving together in the direction of the punch.
* That said, some techniques of *how* you set your body parts to move may not work well, while **others will still work perfectly.** Most boxing punches are done by rotating the hips and the torso, and to create torque for that, you need friction on the ground. If you have two handles on a wall about 80cm apart, you can press your feet against them from inside, but never moving your feet makes for poor boxing. On the other hand, a certain [famous headbutt](https://youtu.be/KHDMxFQCU-k?t=16) is totally suitable for 0g: what Zidane does is basically, create a spring of his body and then unleash. All he needs is a wall behind him to press his foot against.
* one large problem is that if you miss, you retain momentum and/or angular momentum, so that you may fly until you hit the other wall, or just spin. Which leads us to the main skill for a fight in 0g: **flying and bouncing around!** When you have just bounced off the wall, there are just two things you cannot change: momentum and angular momentum. But, you can still do a lot of things with your angular velocity and the action of rotation, by changing your body shape. You can train, like a cat, to always land on your paws, and bounce back in exactly right direction and velocity and with angular momentum you want. All that subliminal, of course - that's no different from many other things a human can learn to do without thinking.
Imagine yourself floating in the middle of the room when a 6-packed marine bounces off a wall and heads your way, rotating. as he approaches, he groups himself to start rotating very fast, like a figure skater, and as this spinning thing passes you, a limb sticks out to switch you off. Pretty spectacular, huh?
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[Question]
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I am a self-made entrepreneur who runs an e-commerce giant which has morphed into one of the most powerful and wealthy companies in the world. However, my business is actually a front for my secret organization bent on world domination. We have successfully reached our tentacles into various nations, and have numerous bases around the world, including the most badass one built into the side of a volcano. These bases are guarded by mercenaries hired from 1-800 DIAL-A-HENCHMAN, an outsourced hiring agency for mercenaries looking for work. However, my ingenious plots have consistently been thwarted by pesky super agents working for world governments, such as the 00's. These agents continue to break into my bases to foil my schemes, killing the men that I have paid good money for and destroying my facilities.
My expenses are high enough without these government spies causing havoc. On top of having to rebuild new facilities, I continue having to pay good money to replace the men that have been killed off. My organization has been getting a bad reputation as being a place where life expectancy is fairly short, which has discouraged henchmen from signing on to my projects, forcing me to shell out even more money for their services. In addition, many are asking for outrageous benefits, such as life insurance for their families in case of death, all of which are ridiculously expensive. Some have even requested that I sponsor a retirement fund with an employee match! This absurdity is a steep price to pay for individuals who are essentially cannon fodder meant to be mowed down. Fortunately, I am not the typical Hollywood comic book villian. Unlike the jackasses you have heard of, I am smarter than they are and pride myself on being two steps ahead.
Artificial womb technology has advanced to the point where it can be afforded by the affluent middle class. With my large corporation's access to the latest tech, we can build a system in which children are mass produced on a grand scale and grown to adulthood fairly quickly. These children will be given the equivalent to an adult education while in these artificial tanks, as well as raised to be loyal to me, readying them for service when they are fully grown. While the initial investment is expensive, over time I will save on costs and effort. Through this process, I will be able to grow hundreds or even thousands of minions at once and grow them to adulthood. They will be completely obedient to my wishes and willing to die at a moment's notice. Then they can be easily replaced within a matter of months, giving me an endless supply of people to perform my bidding. Best of all, they work for free, and receive no life or health insurance, increasing my profit margin.
I can only see the benefits of this policy. What would prevent this from being a viable solution to outsourcing my security?
[Answer]
**Supply and Demand**
There are several large problems with vat-grown minions. The first is that, because of the vagaries of bio-engineering, they are all broadly susceptible to the same diseases. All it takes it one 00 sneaking into the lab or deploying an aerosol tailored virus when attempting to infiltrate your facilities and all the vat-grown minions are done for. Off the street henchmen are by their vary nature unique, making it impossible for them to suffer mass-casualties in such a fashion.
Vat-grown minions are also a single point of failure for a variety of other disasters. A large cloning facility that gets blown up brings your entire minion supply to a screeching halt. The same goes for whatever creches you raise young minions in. Even worse, a sneaky 00 could do *something* to the training regime or the grow-vats themselves, and suddenly every minion from that batch which you THINK is loyal has hidden programming to murder you on sight, or always miss when shooting at a 00, or any number of other problems. Meanwhile if anything seriously delays minion production you're unlikely to be able to hire off-the-street mooks to fill in the missing numbers because your money is tied up in grow-vats and education devices and care and feeding of vat-minions etc etc etc.
On the other hand, while off the street minions may have a higher cost to bring into your organization on the face of it, their overall cost is likely to be lower than a vat-grown minion. The most expensive part of any army (and let's face it your mooks are basically that) is training and supply. Street mooks already know how to walk and talk and dress themselves and may even know how to operate vehicles, shoot guns, and a variety of other tasks. Meanwhile vat-grown minions have to be taught all that AND fed/watered/housed while that takes place. Sure you can grow them from fetus to mindless adult drone in 6 months, but that's still 6 months of paying for a worthless-at-the-moment body! If a mooks life expectancy is a year of active service (damn the 00s, they take out SO MANY minions!) that's 1/3 of a vat-grown minion's employment cost spent when it's doing nothing for you. Meanwhile your off the street minion needs a week of orientation and one day off a month. Sure you pay into their retirement fund, but only 2% matching donations and they're dead in a year anyway! Much more bang for buck!
[Answer]
## Your Accountant
"I'm sorry, Count de Bloochump, but you just don't have enough money to build a secret cloning/zoomwomb/indoctrination base under Mount Rushmore. Let alone the monumental bribes and effort required to keep it secret once built. Let alone operate it."
"To get your secret base built, you must hire, then monitor for secrecy, then murder upon completion the entire tunneling and construction corps. You must erase the paper trail of all the supplies and equipment and fuel and food that they purchased for the job, which will require teams of burglars and hackers (who must also be monitored, then murdered). You must placate, daunt, or coerce to quiet the hundreds of relatives who will notice when their loved one doesn't come home after their 'under-the-table job.' It's an enormous operation that brings in no revenue. Security estimates that your minion-in-charge will require at least 40,000 square feet of Class A office space in a major city to house the staff required to keep construction secret...who must also themselves be monitored and then murdered when the job is complete."
"It's not just a few tunnels and stick-the-vats-in-Tunnel-#3. Once construction is complete, you cannot have any smoke emissions, no radiation emissions, no thermal emissions detectable in air/water/ground, no mysterious ground tremors, full utilities and network access from some secret provider, a completely camouflaged rocket pad, your completely camouflaged secret escape route, the self-destruct system, an entrance road for all the food and weapons that's perfectly concealed from the neighbors, and all the logistical traffic conducted in complete secrecy. All of that is hideously expensive and some of it is labor-intensive. I have no idea how Batman does it; I only know that your (surviving) engineers give me an amount that's way outside your budget. You cannot scrimp on this -- thorough concealment is your only real defense. If it slips, your entire investment is wasted."
"Also, once in operation, you must bribe the entire Park staff (you can't replace them with vat-goons -- the tourists would notice), and find blackmail material on each one to ensure they stay bribed. Maintaining and monitoring that cover for leaks is a whole operational department on it's own. Even manned with vat-goons, the folks in that department still need (expensive) food, entertainment, and leadership if want them to last more than a few weeks. If it slips, your entire investment is wasted."
"Had your schemes to hold the Eiffel Tower for ransom, or your missile base on the Moon, or that chain of weight-loss clinics been successful, you *still* wouldn't have enough money. "
[Answer]
**Time**
A period of months constitutes a long time when you have a job ready to go. I need minions NOW.
**Expense**
For many purposes, hiring a minion off the street is literally free, because he gets killed, and his family doesn't know about the job. Others can be paid a pittance.
**Experience**
Scads of jobs have experienced hands complaining about completely educated newbies who know everything except the actual most basic stuff. There is no substitute for actual on the job experience, especially for things where muscle memory is involved.
[Answer]
You twirl your mustache. "HaHA! My minion factory is almost up and running. It won't be long before I TAKE OVER THE WORL..."
"Sir?"
You look up, disturbed from your exposition to an empty room. "... yes?"
"Urgent report, a world-reknown super-secret agent has just destroyed our minion factory".
"What? But my recurring minion had captured him! He was planning on a monologue followed by an unecessarily slow execution while they left the room! It was good as done!"
"It seems the spy escaped sir".
You sit back. "Just... Get Bob to order some new henchmen to replace the one's we lost. And set up a few small Minion facilities. Perhaps we can build enough to at least replace some of the henchmen".
You sit back and mull it over. "Perhaps we can introduce a stronger breed of minion, ramping up the difficulty for the secret agents slowly and raising the stakes to keep viewers interested...". You try an evil laugh, holding it just long enough for the camera to zoom out of your evil lair.
[Answer]
Obviously there are a lot of pros to growing your own minions, and it can seem like a very viable option at the time. However, here are a few things that the salesman of grow-a-hench™ might have omitted in his overly enthusiastic sales pitch:
**Costs of creation**
Artificial womb technology, as in the machines needed, are fairly cheap. It's a decently sized investment, but for a man of your stature not much more than buying a decent set of power tools. However what they don't tell you is how much energy and matter it takes to create an artificial minion. The technology's equivalent of printer fuel is not only fairly expensive, but you would need a very large amount of it to create a decently sized human body. Sure, if you're growing babies or kids for lonely adults unable to conceive, this isn't too bad. But the costs for a fully formed adult is exponentially higher. The larger the army, the more these costs spiral out of control. And I'm not even talking about the amount of energy needed to run this machinery for extended amounts of time.
**Longevity**
A common ~~bug~~feature with the "Fiercely loyal" package, is that the grow-a-hench™ comes out with lessened ability to think for themselves, and subsequently a nearly non-existent sense of self preservation. The normal henchmen tend to avoid unwinnable fights that get them killed, and tend to fight in a way that prevents them from dying. Whether this is favourable or not, one cannot argue that a fair few of them do tend to stay alive for a bit. Whereas the grow-a-hench™ will mindlessly attack any and all threats in sights to defend their great leader, and give the so called "heroes" no other choice but to dispose of them. This leads to you needing nearly twice the amount of grow-a-hench™ minions per attack as opposed to regular ones.
**Mutations**
The technology is still being developed, and as all technology, it comes with its own issues. One of these is that due to the speed at which these minions are grown, there is an increased chance that any errors or mutations get amplified rather than suppressed. While it might sound cool to have a mutant henchmen working for you, far more often it's not Draggo lobster-arm the painful pincher, but rather blind Igro three-eyes with sideways knees.
All in all, it's best to take another look at your options, as the technology isn't as up to speed as it might seem. Perhaps it's best to sell it to the public for a bit first, and to take a look at the reviews they post on one of your well known sales platforms.
[Answer]
**Time and Money.**
You can’t instantly grow an embryo into an adult; there are physical limits on how fast a creature can grow. In addition, artificial womb technology will never be cheaper than the biological free alternative.
And even if you do grow henchmen, you still need to train and feed them. You’ll be paying everything it would cost to hire henchmen, in addition to the cost of the artificial womb, and the cost of feeding and educating them for 20 years before they become useful.
Also, it now takes 20 years to get more henchmen. Even if you engineer them to grow faster, 10 years is probably the limit, and it’’s still a huge time and money sink.
In fact, even if you can physically grow them to adulthood in just five years, it will still take 10 to 15 years to train and educate them.
[Answer]
**You are an employer**
Maybe normal minions aren't as cheap as vat-grown minions... But remember that a lot of governments would give you a lot of tax breaks and various incentives if you bring employment.
The evil lair is a big boost for the economy of the surrounding area: hundreds of minions who go shopping in the towns nearby, who fill hotels and ski resorts in their days off and so on. A lot of local governments, while maybe slightly critical of your purposes, would surely be happy to host one of your evil lairs!
Obviously this doesn't happen if you employ vat-grown minions: they aren't local citizens and don't vote, which means that even if you employ lots of them, the local governments would receive no advantages. The clones don't like shopping, don't want to go in holiday in exclusive resorts and in general, don't boost the economy.
And in this case, you would receive no tax breaks and no incentives! The money saved thanks to such incentives is still more than the money saved by growing your own minions.
[Answer]
## **Too Little Reward for Too High Costs**
The thing about it is, even if they get an education, would they be any good at defending your base? Mercenaries for hire are probably well-versed in, well, mercinary work. They would be usefull as meatshields or something of that sort, but actually protecting the important things in your base will need some sort of experience in the field, which lab-grown minions won't have. Furthermore, a large cloning facility, as a lot of other people say, is a poor idea.
No matter how safe or protected it is, if the good guys catch wind of it. It would be a major target for them to attack. They don't even need to invade. If it's not close to a city or populated area, they could blow it up easily, or if its near a populated area, get into it, and destroy it that way. That would be a massive loss in profit and time. If you have smaller facilities, but scattered around the world, the costs in transportation would be high. So, if the large facility is what you're after, an agent would likely destroy it, then launch a few operations against you. Your soilders would die, and be very hard to replace. You will then have to go back to mercinarys-for-hire, and have the same problem until you can rebuild.
[Answer]
You clearly stated the answer in your question.
**Outsourcing**.
It would not be economical for him to grow the clones himself. (I am assuming the question is primarily about him producing the clones, as once acquired clones are pretty much identical to henchmen from a utilitarian perspective - see 'rental' below).
If you already outsource your screening and recruiting of henchmen for economic reasons, you would also outsource the production of clones to an outside agency. In that manner, going to Henchmen-for-hire would be no different than going to Clones-R-us. In both cases, he is getting a finished product in a timely manner when needed. Just-in-time delivery, as it were. Indeed, Clones-R-us may even have a rental option. His workforce could expand and contract as necessary, making clonepower a manageable recurring completely deductible expense instead of an amortized expenditure. He would be trading 'wages and benefits' for 'rental fees'. And certainly, the clones would be insured the same way any asset (automobile, camera, industrial robot, etc.) are insured, except the insurance proceeds go to the owner, not the beneficiary.
Certainly, under a rental option, such costs as maintenance (medical costs) and upkeep (clothing and hygiene costs) could be negotiated.
It's all about economics of scale. To be profitable, this 'grow' operation would have to mass produce these clones. Breeding tubes would be expensive, so to maximize return they would have to be used continuously. Assembly line production. Clones-R-us would be churning out clones for any number of entities and organizations. They would have several models, all with varying skill levels, at various price points, a product of specific gene lines and length of training. Everything from the grunt soldier up to the platoon leader. You would not want a workforce comprised of all grunts, no leaders, nor would you want a work force of all leaders, no grunts.
Only through economics of scale could this be a viable operation. For this entrepreneur to be as successful as he is, he would need to concentrate all of the company resources on the specific objective. Having to divert time, attention, energy and more specifically money to a side project, is a misuse of resources. Every breeding tank he owns means less money for his prime objective. Every research scientist he employs is one less person he can employ to meet his prime objective.
He just wants the end product, not the means of production. Why would he pay for the means of production? It's entirely incidental to the operation of his company, and returns nothing on the investment.
By obtaining the product from Clones-R-us, the overhead and back-end costs are amortized over many, many customers, leaving him to pay only the incremental costs and just a portion of the sunk costs.
It is one of the prime economic reasons for the demise of Western-style slavery - it turned out to be cheaper in the long run to 'rent' (pay an minimal hourly wage only for the 'production time') to a worker than to 'buy' the labor unit and be stuck with the full costs of upkeep, amortization, training, maintenance, replacement, food costs, clothing costs, housing costs, non-productive 'manufacturing' (growing up) time, and up-front purchase costs, of the production unit. It turned out that paying a miniscule wage was, in the long run, cheaper than ownership, provided oppression, suppression, and domination over the labor unit could still be achieved. The concept of an indentured servant was much more economically viable.
Of course, to be viable, these clones would have to be prevented from being considered 'persons', with the full rights of 'persons'. They would have to remain categorized as 'production units'. Once they achieve person-hood, they become no different than hiring henchmen.
But the idea begs the question be asked, if these clones 'accidentally' kill someone, would it be murder, or an industrial accident? The remedy, simply to recall and replace the 'defective industrial unit'?
[Answer]
**Vat malfunction.**
Of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books, Synthetic Men of Mars is my favorite. The mastermind of Mars has vat grown henchmen called hormads. They are pretty messed up but they get the job done. The Mastermind is called away and our hero is left in charge of the vats.
Something goes wrong. "Perhaps you had better have a look in there..."
From Edgar Rice Burroughs: [Synthetic Men of Mars.](http://www.telelib.com/authors/B/BurroughsEdgarRice/prose/syntheticmenofmars/syntheticmen_chap13.html)
>
> “Something has gone wrong in No. 4 vat room,” he said. “Perhaps you
> had better have a look in there.”
>
>
> When I reached No. 4 the sight that met my eyes was one of the most
> horrible I have ever looked upon. Something had evidently gone wrong
> with the culture medium, and instead of individual hormads being
> formed, there was a single huge mass of animal tissue emerging from
> the vat and rolling out over the floor.
>
>
> Various internal and external human parts and organs grew out of it
> without any relation to other parts, a leg here, a hand there, a head
> somewhere else; and the heads were mouthing and screaming, which only
> added to the horror of the scene.
>
>
> “We tried to do something about it,” said the officer, “but when we
> tried to kill the mess, the hands clutched us and the heads bit us.
> Even our hormads were afraid to go near it, and if anything is too
> horrible for them you can’t expect human beings to stomach it.”
>
>
> I quite agreed with him. Frankly, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t
> get near the vat to drain off the culture medium and stop the growth;
> and with the hormads afraid to approach it, it would be impossible to
> destroy it.
>
>
>
When your vats go haywire, 00 agents step back to #2 on the list of pressing problems. You and your henchmen might find yourselves teamed up with the infiltrating 00 agents as you all try to save your hides from the abomination emerging from Vat #4. You will say "I have never been so happy to see a 00 agent"!
[Answer]
The solution is not about getting more "cannon fodder". This is a political problem, not a forces problem.
The proven solution is to corrupt the leadership of the countries that are sending spies into your organization. It has worked time and time again to buy enough congress people so that they interfere with the spy organization. When the spy organization is told to leave you alone, they will. (See the instructions given by the British King to his spy organization during WWII about anything they find about the palace contacting the Germans.)
The same is true for the general population of the country. Buy a news organization that has "foxy" hosts and commentators and make it preach how good you are and why the authorities should be praising your efforts instead of sabotaging you. Make it so that you can have your security forces kill someone on the street and have everyone praise you.
[Answer]
**Heroes**
This is just another ingenious plot waiting to be thwarted by a pesky government agent. It might last a wee while, until the agents start to see the vat-grown minions arrayed against them. But as soon as they twig what's up with their opposition, you can bet your cloning facility is going to be the next of your bases to be blown up. And as you say, that facility represents a very expensive initial investment. Replacing it every time it gets exploded is going to be at least as expensive as just hiring real henchmen.
[Answer]
Unions.
You have tried to run a ruthlessly non-union workplace, mostly by having workers terminated at the first sign of unionism or other subversive activity. And you thought your plans were working flawlessly, right up until the shipping container full of of DNA printers arrived and they all walked off the job at once. It turns out the United Henchpersons and Dogsbodies Union had all along secretly been using the rumours about you replacing your workers with clones and robots to recruit members.
Now you have nobody in the office to set up the new genetics lab for you until those robot henches you ordered from AliExpress arrive... and you might have trouble getting the bots past the picket line outside your volcano lair.
[Answer]
## My respected rival!
Let me send you a word of warning about those unscrupulous liches from AWE (Artifical Womb Enterprices), who are trying to squeeze last hard-earned bloody dolar from us, so tirelessly working for humble title The Dark Ruler of Earth and Everything.
I am sure, that you had seen their contract and read also the punny small print, where they reject responsibility for unlawfull use of their machines. And that their representative laught-off those few crates of empty paper, as something, that "they just traditionally gave to each custommer, har-har" - well, those empty papers in fact contains everything, which is "not explicitely written in the contract so not part of contract" but you would expect to be automatically part of it. And trust me, that they are dimensioned to really really small prints.
I commanded the first batch of henchmen to be given all the base military knowledge (in addidion to obligatory loyality, obediency and willingness to die) and waited to overthrown some small island with them for starter. So after they was "cooked" and took out of the wombs, I also commanded to fit them with jungle cammo suits, basic weapons and proviant, to lose no time before I will send them on first mission. And waited until they woke up, to command them to conquer. So I had seen, that they may have knowledge, how to march, but they lack a skill and training to even walk. Still they tried to do so, until one of them managed to fall from a bed.
This made unexpected sound (while unit was mainly laying beds). Which was under military doctrine decoded as enemy attack and so they concluded to open fire on attackers. Bad thing was, they also lacked skill to use the guns, but they tryied hard.
Soon enought some discovered how to press trigger. Well, the discovery came sooner, then discovery how to hold the riffle, so it resulted to uncoordinated mass shooting to all directions, where the riffles was actually pointed, as well as many dislocations of wrists, limbs and eyes of those shooters. Others got the grip on shooting by this example and soon nearly every one of them was shooting and/or bleeding.
Civilian personel already runned away and hide whenever possible.
Which saved me a lot of additional expencies, when some soldiers found, that they also have grenades.
That day I was thankfull for goverment, that its military controll randomly discovered and confiscated cargo of land mines, so the delivery was not realized yet.
Also that day I discovered, that those nice glass tanks, where you can see you minion grow, are not only extremely fragile, but also "critical part of growing unit", which was probabely listed on those empty papers along other spare parts that AWE sell separatly - so save you some time, I can ensure you, that ANY part of that Womb (to last control light LED) is on those empty papers so AWE does not sell it separately, as it is nor bounded by contract to that - so ANY scratch on a Womb means you have to buy a whole new unit. Damned "not written in contract" letters!
So I ordered new set of AWE units and organised some "learn walk as child first" curses for my new minions (I hope, that all those mysteriously dissapiered nurses from weight-loss clinics did not bother you, as I can see, that my minion is losing weigth each day, they work for me, so I suppose your minion also do not need their service).
It cost me only few more sets of AWE units (and just few years) to be able raise my artifical minoins to stage, where they could be armed and used for some basic security routes around base.
But you know those 00's, they still make problems. One of them, when cornered, start threatenig my heavily armed guardians with pocket knife, yelling something like "who of you @#$% want die for your leader first!" You guess right - they all formed queue and got stabbed to death with 2 inches long pocket knife. I lost whole army and he also damaged those AWE units by accindent on his escape route.
The next one stole bed sheet and kept it in his front, loudly stating, that he is out of Line Of Sight, so he cannot be realibly hit (which sadly was in accordance with the military materials and they luckily had not aerial support or long range artilerry so they just let him in and out without much collateral added to what he did). I had to get rid of that batch and grow new one with this hole ina manual fixed.
But the 00's are such cheaters, that the next one came in open and blatlantly LIED them, that he is ultra rare endangered plant, which cannot be touched. And also vandalized those AWE Wombs with some stupid grffiti, so I was forced order new set in addition of getting rid of this batch.
Next batch had instructions to trust no one than me, but that went wrong too, as they tried to capture anybody I put on command, I had to ordered then to everything, like eating, lacing their boots etc. etc. and then some of them mistook AWE Wombs for masked enemies and shoot them down, when they refuse go to the jail.
Took me few more iterations, until I got something vaguely useable as last druked street homeless and it cost me so much, that I was forced to spend my exotic vacation on one of my at least month old luxury yachts - just try imagine, how much I must be broke to go so low!
And when I returned, I ofcourse found, thet they terribly screewed again. I was so angry, I ordered their leader to kill himself in the most painfull death on the spot. And he ofcourse did - he slowly chopped small parts of his body, making mess over whole my audience room and all the time he looked on me with so much of love and happiness in his eyes. And none of others was trembling in fear, but they looked on him with jealousy and whispered, that even when he failed his mission, he was personally assigned another difficult mission diretly from me. And you do not want to know, what happened after I leaved that room with curse "F\*ck you all!" on my lips.
Trust me, I snapped at the point. It is not possible to spread terror and fear with such material around. Those old mercenaries from 1-800 DIAL-A-HENCHMAN with all their quirks, insubordinations, wages and whatsever proved a million ways cheapear and easier to manage.
With regards "Let Earth scream under my feets"
yours eternal rival and arcenemy
**Gilhad the Black Plague**
[Answer]
**Poor psychological makeup.**
For an effective soldier you need a mixture of a brutal willingness to kill and loyalty to an employee. Being loyal and being murderous are not easy traits to produce with education.
Governments have tried for a while. They would love to be able to forge people into assassins. The end result, most of the time? The person chickens out, or immediately turns to the enemy.
This is a big issue in wars. A lot of soldiers simply don't fire their guns when they get into battle because they don't want to kill people.
So, when you make your clone armies, why are you assuming you'll have better luck?
We at 1-800 DIAL-A-HENCHMAN have experimented with this. 1/10 clones are acceptable henchmen, and only 1/100 are exceptional. When you try it what happens is most of the clones freeze up, because war is scary, a huge number defect because they don't care.
**It comes down to economics.**
It might cost $500,000 to raise a clone to adulthood with a decent education. For that, 1/10 will be decent mercenaries. You're paying 5 million for each soldier. You can get a lot better bang for your buck if you let governments foot the bill to raise and train your soldiers and hire those that excel after.
] |
[Question]
[
The nation of Futurestan is a typical overly complex futuristic dystopian utopic society of the 23rd century. Fossil fuels are widely unavailable because only barbarians would think it was a good idea to destroy a non-renewable resource in a non-renewable way. This is great news for the environment and global warming advocates, but not so much for big petroleum, though this is 200 years in the future and everyone to too busy with their BTL (better than life) simulations to care about Exxon-Valdez or whatever.
However, it isn't like the public could learn about Exxon-Valdez anyway because 200 years of government censorship has caused large portions of human history to not be there no more. Yes Futurestan has decided that it is is the best interests of society that they don't know about fossil fuels, Enron venture capitalism, or the works of Ayn Rand among other things, so they just erased all of it via the magic of I said so.
**PROBLEM IS** that the more logical ones who weren't expunged during the great culling are causing problems. Protests in the streets. But since all police are independent contractors, the first amendment applies even less than usual and protest has become synonymous with riot. Protrioter #4 reaches for xer molotov cocktail to throw at the police only to realize xe doesn't know what gasoline is and is pretty sure that cops have figured out how to be fire proof by now.
**YOUR TASK:** Figure out what protrioter #4's protriot weapon of choice is. Chances are in 200 years police may or may not have figured out how to deal with flammable liquid + flaming rag, via tanks, robots, or space age breathable fabrics. However, it has to be cheap, widely available, damaging, and fear inducing. Basically: what is the molotov cocktail of the 23rd century?
[Answer]
I'm going to go with **malware**.
Granted, this is based on current trends that may or may not continue all the way to the 23rd century, but you did mention most people being busy with better-than-life simulations. Since malware is highly likely to be able to affect these *somehow*, especially on those fringes where "build it fast" and "build it right" conflict - which, not coincidentally, are likely *also* to be those places where protriots are most likely to occur - getting all the virtual lights to flash your message is an integral part of the protrioter arsenal. Especially if those virtual lights are in the headsets of the cops' HUDs.
Also, if voice recognition software and/or programming languages advance far enough in those two hundred years, you might very well have custom code being created mid-protriot. Gives an entirely new meaning to the term "flamewar".
I realize you may want something a little more physical, but it's not entirely clear what protrioters will have on hand to work with/repurpose. Two hundred years is a long time, after all - alcohol might still be the flammable liquid of choice, or they might have figured out how to synthesize and distribute, say, nitroglycerin.
[Answer]
While not as impressive, Molotov cocktails made with 100% alcohol would be rather nasty. And, of course, they are entirely Green.
EDIT - Actually, I think I missed a trick. Since this is The Future, after all, we can assume a few technological tricks are available. In this case, 3D printers allow making glass vessels of arbitrary design and cheap production. Also, cryogenic super-coolers are widely available and cheap.
With these two assumptions, you can do really interesting things with an alcohol-based Molotov cocktail. Specifically, you can make a 2-part bottle. Half of the bottle is a normal container - the other half is a thermos flask. Alcohol goes in the normal part, and you use the super-cooler to produce liquid oxygen to fill the thermos section.
When this sucker hits something and breaks, the results should be pretty spectacular. See <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8> for a demonstration of how to get a charcoal grill up to heat in 15 seconds.
Of course, you need a pretty sophisticated pressure relief valve on the LOX section, but that's what the Hypernet and 3D printers are for.
END EDIT
[Answer]
**Thermite**
Grind up Aluminum and rust into a fine powder. Combine in roughly equal portions. Ignite with a high temperature fuse (like burning magnesium).
Burning Thermite
Burning Magnesium
It will generate a great deal of heat and melt or burn its way through most other materials including steel (the amount it'll melt through depends upon the amount of thermite used). It will ignite nearby combustibles. Perhaps not as fear inspiring as a Molotov cocktail, if used properly it could be highly effective.
You could combine this with some other substances (e.g. Titanium and its alloys) to induce fires that are extremely difficult to stop (requiring something like vacuum, dry $N\_2$, Class D extinguishers, etc.).
Burning Titanium
Using water or CO2 fire suppression systems just accelerates the Titanium fire. You can do a variety of interesting things to this combination (e.g. grind the Titanium into coarse particles and disperse in an explosion) to make it "more interesting".
>
> As a powder or in the form of metal shavings, titanium metal poses a
> significant fire hazard and, when heated in air, an explosion
> hazard.[89] Water and carbon dioxide–based methods to extinguish fires
> are ineffective on burning titanium; Class D dry powder fire fighting
> agents must be used instead.[5]
>
>
>
[Answer]
I see that fire is a common trend in the answers here, and while I do agree that in general fighting everything with fire is a good solution; I must dissent:
## EMP
As per your cost requirement I honestly don't know how much it would cost to make EMPotov cocktails (presumably electronics and the like would be rather cheap). The general idea here is that by the 23rd century our climb in technology will likely have continued unabated. Smaller and better computers will have made their way into every aspect of our lives (where they aren't already present in this modern age). Computerized (possibly electric/laser) guns, HUD elements to glasses, visors, and police helmets. Arm mounted tablet like devices for communicating with HQ, etc.
The above also doesn't include internal devices; It's quite likely we'll have some fairly elaborate implants that would control/display a number of common processes or tasks. Perhaps the "BTL" simulators you mentioned required a synaptic jack (think The Matrix) in order to get the "better-than" part to work out properly. Having something connected to the nervous system short out would be rather problematic.
EMP devices cripple a future society by attacking the underlying foundation that everyone has become accustomed and reliant upon, and soon the "Protriot" with the hockey stick or baseball bat is looking pretty well armed.
[Answer]
Not as cheap as molotov cocktails (and that's a *huge* advantage of them) but [lithium ion batteries burn pretty well](http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/01/economist-explains-19). They are also hard to put out, and you can't put out the fire with water.
Probably pair it up with a circuit that *intentionally* overloads them quickly and you can do a ton of damage.
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I suggest a simple mix of pure alcohol and agar-agar (E406), you know, the powder you use to make a vegan jelly.
The alcohol will burn and, mixed with agar-agar, you will have a flammable jelly, natural, 100% vegan, gluten free and renewable.
The mix is needed so you don't have just a puddle of fire but something which will stay on your target, cop or tank.
[Answer]
Sling and stone. It's a long range weapon with infinite ammunition. It's cheap, deadly, and highly accurate with training. It also makes it past metal detectors and chemical sniffing dogs, plus anyone could make one at home. Additionally, in keeping with your question, fire-retardant materials are ineffective against it.
[Answer]
**Whatever replaced fossil fuels**
Fossil fuels are currently used so often because they pack a high [energy density](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density) per unit volume, which makes them convenient for powering things like cars and weedeaters.
Although fossil fuels [don't have the highest energy density obtainable with modern technology](https://xkcd.com/1162/), they also can't be used to make nuclear weapons, which is nice, I guess.
Worldwide energy demand and consumption has increased rapidly and shows no signs of stopping.
Assuming your setting isn't some kind of agrarian dystopia/utopia, energy consumption will likely be at least as high as it is today, even if the form-factor has changed. People are going to want use some kind of energy-dense container to carry and consume energy.
Unless peak oil was the reason fossil fuels are no longer in use, the most likely reason they aren't still around is development of something cheaper or denser, energy-wise.
What that looks like is up to your imagination and the technology level of your world, but, whether energy is packaged in some kind of super-advanced batteries, hihydrogen fuel cells, thorium microreactors, or matter-antimatter annihilation in tiny personal extradimensional pocket universes, there is usually a way to compromise the storage and release the bulk of that energy very quickly.
[For example, the high-tech energy container of today, Li-Ion batteries, can be overcharged, heated, or breached to cause an explosion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpb-n22Y-sY). And they have a relatively low energy density; whatever replaced fossil fuels could be a lot more exciting.
So people will use that.
Or they'll make ethanol in basement stills and use that in Molotov cocktails. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.
[Answer]
# Network Jamming
The cops are linked up, networked and in contact with databases to help them deal with the protesters.
As such cheap throwaway Cell Phone Jammers on steroids are going to be very useful. The cops are being too coordinated? A dozen people drop their backpacks and the airwaves are filled with noise drowning out every cell signal and police network signal.
# HERF Gun
Possible to build for a few dollars, ideal for burning out those cameras and smart crowd control devices the police are pointing at you from a distance.
[Answer]
Take dry milk powder, disperse it into a huge cloud of fine particles. Then it's pretty easy to light a match and make an explosion. Dry milk powder is extremely flammable.
Also, very fine sawdust particles do the same thing.
Neither requires petroleum.
And milk and wood are probably readily available and inexpensive.
[Answer]
(Homemade) **Napalm**
Normally this is made with something like glycerin and gasoline. The glycerin is what allows it to stick to things while the gasoline does most of the burning (glycerin also burns).
As above, you may replace the gasoline with other easily ignitable liquid (say high proof alcohol) and use it for the same purposes.
[Answer]
**Water**. In 200 years, the means by which we obtain our hydration will likely be encapsulated. Tech will no longer require the shielding from moisture and for a cost savings, big corporations would have removed those protections from all the newer devices. Mind you some of the older (see accessible to the masses) devices would be archaic enough to be waterproof. Chucking collected water at the police force could effectively disable all offensive and defensive capabilities as well as communications. This could be especially problematic if they are emotionally reliant on their connection to an avatar.
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The 'better than life' simulations are made possible by implants that everyone is given at birth. These also serve as a means for those in power to keep the population subservient and docile, rewarding them with pleasure and interrupting their natural vision to give them something akin to rose colored glasses that changes their view of the world and gives them that rosy outlook.
The implants malfunction in some people which allows them to learn the truth and become disgruntled. They spread this truth by inventing devices to disrupt the implants temporarily in others. It is these devices and devices like it that are the actual weapons. They disrupt communications signals.
Cell phone/radar jammers.
The police force is now remotely controlled robots with limited AI to enable them to be somewhat autonomous. Protesting in the streets really isn't going to get anyone's attention because the implants will twist it into a celebration and nobody would physically leave their better than life simulations to join in the celebration because it's 'better' to join in via cyber link. So an actual futuristic protest would require them to hack into the server so as to get the word out en mass. Nobody talks face to face anymore.
Throughout the day people get exercise generating electricity, so they are all healthy and fit for the most part. But government corruption still exists and people are allowed to eat rotten food which makes them sick, but they don't realize it because of the implants that simply makes whatever they eat taste delicious. So some people die. The government doesn't care so long as they remain in power. And turning potatoes into electricity through the populous gives them power that other people don't have. So those who manage to see things the way they are really do have something to complain about.
They don't protest in the streets though, although a showdown against the robotic remote controlled police might take place in the streets. Basically, nobody goes anywhere since their food can be liquified and delivered via pipeline and anything else they need can be delivered by robotic couriers.
Those that escape the illusion find that they are living in cockroach infested hot or cold cramped apartments and when they actually look outside, instead of seeing lush green lawn, they see a narrow passageway with robot couriers going about their routes. Some couriers are carrying corpses with cockroaches still eating out the eyes. Some are carrying children who are ready to take the place of the corpses in their apartment where they will produce electricity to more than power the illusions they are given.
So the weapon of the protester is related to the tech that enslaves everyone. It is a simple bit of electronics with a large enough power supply to block signals long enough that they can dismantle and/or rewire the robotic police force.
One thing they have on their side is that the uncaring government hasn't bothered to upgrade old equipment, so some of it is not very reliable and allows them to escape many close calls. Guns which the police bots have installed misfire due to neglect. Old security cameras have long since been sabotaged and replaced with a repeating loop of generic footage so that corrupt security at one time were able to steal.
Not everyone joins the rebellion. Many treat the interruption of their illusion with contempt. 'How dare you interrupt my pleasure with this? Ugh! Let me go back immediately!' They blame the messenger.
The first interruption devices are crudely built out of old appliances that simply were never disposed of, and some are overpowered resulting in the destructing of the sensitive electronics in the implants when activated too close. This results in a number of people who don't want to be awake trying to get to the government to have their implants repaired. Unfortunately, as they are not in their hovels, they are considered rogue and dealt with ruthlessly. They are unable to communicate well without their implants. They mumble because without functional implants they don't have the automatic inflection correction, which is similar to auto spell correct anyway.
The leaders are smart and cynical electronics engineers. They are able to reverse engineer most tech in a short time, mostly because the tech used on the robots is modular and meant to be re-used or repurposed. The problem is in reprogramming it. They need to find or build an interface like a laptop or a phone, none of which are in use anymore since all communication was done through the implants, which are themselves too small to rework.
Through sheer luck they are able to find an old Raspberry Pi 5 and they boot it to find it is running GNU Hurd.
Although recruiting police to their cause is an initial strategy, they find that using the government's own reality manipulation A.I. works better at shutting them down as they are fooled into thinking all insurgents have been caught or put asunder.
The final (maybe) showdown reveals the city to be run by a fat cigar smoking red meat eating fossil fuel burning elitist who has opted to experience carnal pleasure without any implants of his own. He and the other elitists of the world number about 1000 altogether and he calls his brethren for help. They decide the easiest thing to do would be to detonate a neutron bomb so that they will clearly have the upper hand with their fossil fuel burning tanks against these nearly naked citizens who have very muscular bodies from creating electricity most of the day for most of their lives. What weaponry they have is all electronics based and susceptible to the neutron bomb. As the rebellion seems to be crushed, suddenly the elites realize that there are a trillion new protestors to deal with as the neutron bomb has awaken the masses! Their electricity production ceases and their own opulent lifestyle has not left them with much fossil fuel to combat the masses. Who will win?
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I think IED's (improvised explosive devices) will still be with us in the distant future. Simple homemade explosives can vary considerably, but the materials are often cheap and fairly accessible.
All you really need is a vessel, shrapnel, and a compound that will rapidly produce gasses when mixed or ignited.
Molotov cocktails are easier, but they're not nearly as effective or as scary as pipe bombs.
[Answer]
nitrate based explosives.
The only reason rioters use molotov cocktails today is partly because its trivially easy to make a firebomb (gas + rag + bottle, so simple) but also that making explosives is significantly more frowned upon by the authorities. In the dystopian future, I feel such niceties would be ignored.
As such, making home-made explosive devices, perhaps with shrapnel, would be more of a weapon of choice. Fuses can be interesting, but either radio detonators, or more simply a small bomb with a fuse attached to a long bit of string (that pulls the pin when the bomb has travelled to the extent of the string, raining nails down on the security forces from above their heads) would do.
Simple nitrate explosives are pretty easy to make even if they don't pack as much bang as professionally made ones, and nitrates are widely available (assuming they still eat vegetables in the far future).
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Joining the ranks of the EMP crowd I'd go with [Explosively pumped Flux compression bombs.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator) These work by generating and compressing a magnetic field using a power supply, a coil and some explosives. See the the wikipedia entry for a full description and description of how they work.
The magic trick with most of these emp type weapons is the power supply but given we are talking 200 years into the future it is not unreasonable to assume that power storage (batteries) have got a lot better. Look how far we have come in the last 100 years and extrapolate forward.
An explosively pumped flux generator is actually quite simple to build given a power supply and explosives. However it is single shot, quite small, and usable like a Molotov. The hardest bit to get hold of is probably the explosives to blow the coil.
These would be used in a riot to disable the police vehicles and any electronic equipment on them. Cameras, Radios, movement assist devices. This might even completely immobilise them depending on how their armour works.
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It is far in the future... there is no fossil fuel. Cars/Trucks/Etc still need power/energy, perhaps in the future they invented some sort of plasma fuel cell that gets popped in and out of their car. Because it is the future, these fuel cells are normally 100% safe... but... by carefully removing the insulation and blast proof casings a copper wire can be run from the pos to the neg... eventually the cell explodes spraying the area with super heated plasma.
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An old trick from the Anarchy Cookbook, courtesy of the Jolly Roger...tennis ball bomb. Cut a small hole in a tennis ball, fill very carefully with snapped off wooden match heads, toss and enjoy. I never tried it because I was afraid I might hurt someone/thing unintentionally, and I of course DO NOT recommend trying such in real life, but I think it's plausible. Maybe stick a small piece of coarse sand paper or something inside to ensure there's enough friction for ignition. And a few tacks or small ball bearings would bring a real feel of terror and pain to it, it would certainly hurt even if it weren't lethal.
[Answer]
### Malware for the brain via the eyes
In the world of David Langford's [basilisk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Langford#Basilisks), malware for the brain was found that could come in through the eyes. This is akin to [Snowcrash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash) which many are familiar with but it works on all people (not just the coders).
All you need to do is present the image and depending on its lethality anything from instant death to seizures can be the result.
The idea behind this was that the state of the brain is determistic and if you can cause it to think unthinkable thoughts, it will crash (for varying degrees of crashing - sometimes its a reboot, other times its "bricked" in modern parlance).
This can lead to worlds where just looking at a spraypanted stencil on the side of a building can kill you. Put it on a placard that you are protesting with and the other side falls down (one should avoid using the ones that kill and instead go for the seizure inducing ones). One could also look at targeted forms where a one traces out / etches on the visor of the image that must not be seen with a laser. Blindfolded protestors, arms linked, with tshirts showing dangerous images. Lots of ways to present visual information to someone.
Some existing accessiable stories by Langford:
* [Blit](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm)
* [comp.basilisk FAQ](http://ansible.uk/writing/c-b-faq.html)
* [Different Kinds of Darkness](http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/different-kinds-of-darkness/)
In particular from Different Kinds of Darkness:
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> “Yes. Mistakes do happen.” Her face softened a little. “And I’m getting carried away, because we do actually use that BLIT image as part of a little talk I have with older children when they’re about to leave school. They’re exposed to it for just two seconds, with proper medical supervision. Its nickname is the Trembler, and some countries use big posters of it for riot control—but not Britain or America, naturally. Of course you couldn’t have known that Harry Steen is a borderline epileptic or that the Trembler would give him a fit . . .”
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And a reference from the [Accelerando](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html) universe by Stross:
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> Not everything is sweetness and light in the era of mature nanotechnology. Widespread intelligence amplification doesn't lead to widespread rational behavior. New religions and mystery cults explode across the planet; much of the Net is unusable, flattened by successive semiotic jihads. India and Pakistan have held their long-awaited nuclear war: external intervention by US and EU nanosats prevented most of the IRBMs from getting through, but the subsequent spate of network raids and ***Basilisk attacks cause havoc***. ***Luckily, infowar turns out to be more survivable than nuclear war – especially once it is discovered that a simple anti-aliasing filter stops nine out of ten neural-wetware-crashing Langford fractals from causing anything worse than a mild headache.***
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[Answer]
In my first answer I got carried away with inspiration and did not pay due attention to the OP's scenario. I will try to make up for that here.
The protrioter is reaching for something: cheap, widely available, damaging, and fear inducing.
This could be:
* microwave oven
* quad-copter
* lubricant, paintball, graphite
* communications jamming device
* pipe bomb
* laser
* sling or slingshot
* steel pipe
* yo-yo, bolo whip, bolas, boleadoras
Although fossil fuels will no longer be used there will still be cars--hydrogen fuel cell or all electric plug-ins using lithium batteries or even something futuristic with a higher energy density or maybe something cheaper such as a sodium battery. (Currently sodium batteries are used on trains; they have an operating temperature range of 300 to 350 degrees C). Protrioters, having played warfare video games, will be familiar with various tactics. Wireless remotes for detonating a hydrogen fuel cell or a lithium battery from afar will be available, although not reliable with various communications jammers in use. Another detonation method is optical signaling. The detonator would be triggered when it receives the right signal from a certain spectrum laser. So IED's may be rigged quickly from a couple of cars then the protrioters tactically retreat allowing the 'crowd control' to advance until 'boom'. The protrioter in the scenario could be reaching for the laser device to trigger the IED.
A technologically advanced protrioter might have a 'selfie copter' on hand to use for advanced information gathering or dropping stuff from the sky. The little quad copter can even be mounted with a laser used to blind or annoy the crowd control. The auto-darkening lenses in the face shields would go to black, blinding them temporarily.
Even without petroleum there will be a need for lubricants so there will be synthetic lubes some of which are flammable but maybe the point is to disrupt rather than burn. Making a road slippery can hinder heavily armored walkers more than the lighter weight opponents. A packet of graphite delivered just so could obscure vision. So the protrioter might be reaching for a paintball or a similar ball of graphite or silicon based lubricant.
Simple things like a length of steel pipe as a melee weapon might actually be more common and somebody will need to chip up the sidewalk with one to provide more ammo for the slings unless there is a gravel parking lot nearby. A weight on the end of a rope or chain (yo-yo) is an ancient weapon which is easy to improvise. It depends somewhat on how much planning has been put into this conflict or how spurious it is. If this is a case of peaceful protesters suddenly having to MacGyver a defense then it will be limited to what they have on hand. If it is a case of protrioters that know to expect conflict, but guns and gunpowder are not available, then we can expect more complex devices that take time to machine or 3D print. I think fleets of remote controlled quad copters will be used to rain stones or sharp objects from above. The pilots don't even need to be in the streets, but merely supporting the protest from the safety of their living room or nearby in a smart car. It would even be possible that AI makes these quad copters somewhat autonomous and can be told what to do with simple verbal commands. Fetch rock, deploy at 350 feet at such and such coordinates. Repeat.
Protrioters, trained from video games, will use tactics like taking up a sniper position in an upper floor of a nearby building. They can use the building's power to power a rail gun. They could, with enough planning, make a rail gun from a bunch of microwave oven transformers. (In the real future, governments will read this and start planning buildings to supply high voltage directly so that the use of transformers in appliances is phased out. There goes the ability to easily build rail guns!)
Still, microwave ovens can be used to rain down microwave energy heating the streets and melting the slip resistant soles of the boots into slippery flat soles. Anything metal will get hot quickly. And of course the water inside the eyeballs of anyone in the way may expand causing blindness. For me, the concept of the use of microwaves as a weapon is the most fear inducing because you cannot see where it's coming from... you can't see it shooting down on the street in front of you... you just walk into it. Probably your first indication will be the guy in front of you convulsing from his brain baking and by that time you're half baked yourself.
Popular media shows gerbils explode in the microwave and this notion can be tapped to inspire fear but in reality aside popcorn and beans, not much actually explodes in a microwave. It's more like being exposed to any other kind of radiation... you get burned; you sizzle.
As for something on hand that a person throws, this is more likely to be a set of bolas. These can be improvised from wire and lug nuts. A bola can be used to tangle the feet of a crowd control mech, possible causing it to trip and fall face down. This is not as damaging or fear inducing as a pipe bomb, but I think they are more likely to be in the arsenal of peace loving protesters.
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[Question]
[
I have been world-building a setting where a species of advanced aliens invades Earth, only to be forced off after the humans resort to guerilla tactics. In this setting, biological life is abundant in the universe, so Earth is not unique in that regard. The aliens are advanced, but not to the point where they have outgrown the need for raw materials. In the story I have now, the reason that the aliens have not wiped out Earth yet is because using nuclear/chemical/biological weapons of mass destruction might make the earth uninhabitable for a future harvesting operation. I have not determined what resource would best fit this role. However, I have discerned that it has the following properties:
* It is inorganic
* It actually exists in real life
* It is in reasonable abundance on earth, but is rare throughout the
universe has a whole
* The material cannot be reasonably synthesized under all known laws of
physics
* It is valuable enough for an advanced civilization to fight a war
over it, but not so valuable that the civilization cannot survive without it.
Which material, if any, would best fit the above criteria?
[Answer]
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> It is in reasonable abundance on Earth, but is rare throughout the universe has a whole
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Let's start with a note on scale. "The universe as a whole" is bigger than we can even see, for various reasons. The bit we *can* see has something like 2 *trillion* galaxies in it. Each galaxy has hundreds of millions of stars in it. The notion that *none* of those stars have this unobtanium except for Earth is so phenomenally implausible that it just sounds like magical interference.
Let's quietly ignore the "universe" bit for now, though. Thing is, stuff produced in stars and supernovae gets spread around and mixed up quite effectively over time. The material the Solar System is made of isn't that special as there are plenty of nearby stars and star systems formed from the same source. Within the Solar System, the stuff that the Earth is made of isn't that exotic either... anything you can find here, you'll find some of in the rest of the inner Solar System (though maybe not so much in the outer Solar System). This means you could mine the Moon, or Mars, or maybe the asteroids or Mercury and find at least *some* of the same stuff, unless it was deliberately and magically placed only on Earth and nowhere else.
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> The material cannot be reasonably synthesized under all known laws of physics
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Thing is, stuff that can't be synthesized under the laws of physics can't reasonably exist in the first place. Where could it have come from, if not from a physical process?
There are potentially some exotic things that could form in the early moments of the universe and be impractical to synthesize since then (such as [cosmic strings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_string)) but they're not really "materials" and they're not really the sorts of things you might find "on" a planet.
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> the aliens have not wiped out Earth yet is because using nuclear/chemical/biological weapons of mass destruction might make the Earth uninhabitable for a future harvesting operation
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It would take remarkably little to render the Earth uninhabitable for humans, but relatively safe for anyone with a little patience or indeed sufficiently high-tech protective equipment or dare I say it robots.
[A few hundred tonnes of the right material wrapped around a few nuclear warheads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb) would make a doomsday device that would handily kill most life on the surface of Earth, and leave the survivors without an industrial base to support them. An interstellar civilization could do this pretty easily, and have the wherewithal to detect hidden settlements using a range of techniques to hunt down stragglers.
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> It is valuable enough for an advance civilization to fight a war over it, but not so valuable that the civilization cannot survive without it.
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(Warning: TV Tropes links incoming)
I think it pretty much has to be some kind of [artifact](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AncientArtifact), i.e. a *constructed object* rather than some simple material resource. Presumably it was built by the inevitable [precursors](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Precursors), which is why it is of interest to civilizations which are substantially more powerful than our own but not actually powerful enough to replicate the artifact themselves.
Clearly whatever it is must be very tough (because it has survived probably quite a large span of Earth's history, which have involved a lot of big asteroid impacts and volcanic episodes) and potentially hazardous (because *something* has stopped the aliens cobalt-bombing the Earth into planet-cockroach).
All that remains is for you to think of a type of [macguffin](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin) that fits neatly into your setting—an ancient AI; a better superluminal drive; the means for inter-universal travel; the answer to life, the universe and everything—and you're away.
Perhaps also consider that the biggest threat to the aliens trying to obtain the artifact will be *other* aliens. They might also be the biggest threat to the humans, too.
[Answer]
**Soil.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jNfo3.jpg)
It is nonorganic. It is super abundant here on Earth because Earth has been working on it for a few billion years. A global catastrophe could deplete the Earth of its good soil. You could replicate soil with chemistry and a lab, but not in the abundance you would need to really grow a lot of stuff.
Earth is an amazing place to grow autotrophic biological life.
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> /a future harvesting operation/
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That is what these aliens intend to do!
**They are farmers.**
[Answer]
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> Look at the stunning color variations, the beautiful discontinuity of the impurities, all the gorgeous minute imperfections! *This*, my dear gentlebeings, is a pristine certified-natural carbon crystal, retrieved with blood, eyes and tears from an uncivilized pre-synthesis (of course!) waterworld by the great M'gr!hgk^6 themselves!
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> None of this synthed nonsense you see all over, no no, this is the real deal! Comes complete with a provenance guarantee, a Millennium-class vacuum showcase, *and* a detailed 6D recording of its recovery!
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> Minimum bid set to six thousand credits! Do we have a first bid? Ah, six thousand one hundred credits from the seven-tentacled gentlebeing in the middle pond. Do we have six thousand two hundred? Right, ...
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Your aliens are not scavengers or miners, they are high-class *collectors*. The more *pristine* and *untouched* the item, and the more story-worthy its provenance, the more valuable it is.
So, no nuclear weapons ("*Do you have* any *idea what neutrons can* do *to an item?*"), no planetary-scale strikes, and that collection flotilla had better not have a single synther anywhere, lest doubts be cast on the provenance of the items.
And, sure, you can just mine an asteroid somewhere, but that's just *boring*. It's not as if the 'roid would go anywhere. Nothing like saving a precious item, *just before* the barbarians on its homeworld destroy it.
[Answer]
### No FTL? No invasion. No physical trade.
The economics of sending even a trading ship would mean no mission would be sent. Time frames are on the order of tens of thousands of years(or more) and ships would cost trillions of dollars make this an economic non starter. The people who launch the ships would never see the benefits. There descendants might.
Additionally how could they possibly know that a 'natural' rare resource exists? The rational thing would be to assume a mostly uniform universe.
### What resource could aliens want? Earth Culture.
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> Which material, if any, would best fit the above criteria?
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Earth culture. Unique to earth. Not critical for survival of aliens, it exists. It is non organic. Earthlings fight wars over earth culture.
Is this worth Aliens sending non FTL ships to acquire? Not when they can ask/trade for large sections of it via photon based communications. Less risk, drastically higher return on investment, more ethical(from human perspective at least).
### FTL changes everything.
IF FTL exists this changes everything. Then the music, art other intellectual property would be lucrative. Plants that were not toxic might be useful trade goods to provide new food items.
[Answer]
**Space with breathable atmosphere and gravity**
What they need is lots of land with a Oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. Sure you can make an enclosed space with a pressurized atmosphere, but imagine trying to that for something the size of a large city or bigger.
Everything you could ever want to do, is easier when you don't need a spacesuit, you have effectively infinite space, and gravity is provided for free. Its also quite helpful that a hole in a building or a fire is not a death sentence. You also wouldn't need to worry about things like recycling, just dump your waste in a big hole like those pesky humans are doing already.
So what they want is just the land, whether that's just for land for food, housing, or manufacturing they just need more room to expand.
[Answer]
(Partial) frame challenge:
## It's not that the item is SO valuable, but that those sent to retrieve it are expendable
A human society with excess resources and sufficiently advanced technology could, in theory, send out self-replicating probes; "von Neumann probes." But if your aliens have a different attitude about the value of individuals, well, organic beings are just self-replicating machines, right? Setting aside the difficulty of keeping organic beings alive (apparently, your aliens have solved this with long-term hybernation), and the energy required (Kardashev 2.3?), why NOT send (expendable) aliens to various destinations, even just to check and see if there is anything worth mining?
Why do the aliens show up with a small force, on a galactic timescale? It wasn't a big deal to begin with! That is, from the point of view of the civilization which sent the would-be conqueror/miners. The arriving aliens may be totally committed to fulfilling their mission, but that doesn't mean it was a significant (relative) sacrifice on the part of the larger civilization to send them. Maybe they're clones, adventurers, or less-desirables (low-caste, criminals, genetically defectives...), and mining a distant solar system is the best they could expect.
[Answer]
**Anything can be synthesized, but how easy...**
Agree with Harthag's question comment, in principle.. in terms of elements, this question is a no-go when dealing with a really really high tech alien. They'll know it all. But in that case, why would they come harvest things on an inhabited planet ?
**Rare Earths that are not really rare on Earth**
On Earth, the most abundant rare-earth element is Cerium, which is actually the 25th most abundant element in Earth's crust, having 68 parts per million
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element>
**Suppose we *invented* it, they didn't**
Creating certain materials could be costly, and sometimes not obvious for aliens. When you'd have e.g. aliens that can't handle *heat* easily, humans could be handier with baking certain ceramics. Maybe the aliens never developed Uranium-based fission, they missed Plutonium. There may be *human forged* materials the aliens did not discover yet, because they e.g. don't have abundant Carbon or Nitrates on their planet. They discover the material when they discover Earth..
* Graphene
* Plutonium
* Glass
* Ceramics
* Gunpowder
[Answer]
How about reversing it?
What if earth doesn't offer something rare, but offers the near absence of something that is widespread and toxic elsewhere in the universe?
Let's say that all the earthlike planets are overrun with Beryllium, which is fairly rare on earth. Let's say beryllium is toxic to the aliens, and most of their crops have to be discarded because of beryllium contamination. But earth is largely free from beryllium, and this makes it a rare paradise for the aliens.
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The topology of this part of the universe was peculiar immediately after the big bang, and our solar system got more than its fair share of [monopoles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole).
Some of them ended up on Earth.
The aliens have magical technology that can detect them, but not manufacture them. These monopoles are extremely valuable, they can be used to manufacture several different kinds of exotic matter... and you don't even have to dig down into the core of a neutron star to get them. You just have to scrape Ohio down to the upper mantle. Or maybe northern France.
I believe that this fulfills most of your wishlist, except possibly whether they're "real". They're theoretical, we don't have any of the things yet, and are unlikely to get any soon.
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Reverse the decision, and consider that where the aliens come from they have a deficiency of a certain element. Though take into account that it would be far easier to mine it from a closer solar system than ours or even ignore us on earth and mine all they would need from Mars or the asteroid belt.
You may perhaps want to reconsider the non-organic exclusion. Since the universe we see is pretty much distributed well from the element producing supernova factories. this dust cloud has more or less the same ratios of that dust cloud. All solar systems are born from dust clouds.
A bad 90's movie with one of the better reasons for coming to earth was ["I come in peace"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Come_in_Peace). The alien was a drug runner, harvesting endorphins. Point being, you don't want to kill off the drug producing inhabitants, and it's far more plausible that organic chemistry has produced something unique on earth. also drugs are bad, ie: not necessary though valuable.
PS: Even a low Kardashev scale II civilization is still incredibly more advanced than we are. We would still have no hope of defending ourselves against them.
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Common sense, freely and honestly imparted.
It turns out that not only does Earth have life (which is common) and multiple sentient species (which are not particularly uncommon) and a technological culture (which is extremely rare), but it's the only planet in the Universe which doesn't actively hate the invaders so despite their initial faux pas there is still a chance that some working relationship can be established.
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A material that doesn't check most of your requirements but could still fit your use case is clean, liquid water:
Water in itself is in abundance in the universe, however not all forms of water are useful for living life.
This material can be synthesized and we can extract clean water from ice which is abundant. However, for a civilization, extracting or synthesizing water for the entire population and on such a massive scale must be incredibly expensive. We're talking about potentially terraforming entire planets for the investment to be worth it. On the other hand, finding a planet that already has large volumes of liquid water is much much more valuable and cheaper to use.
Technically your civilization cannot survive without water. However as mentioned earlier it is in abundance in the universe. What is valuable is the scale and access of liquid water that your civilization has. So a ship crashing in a planet with large ice caps may extract enough water to survive. However your civilization will need huge investments to install a settlement there.
So civilizations will go to war to create their own settlements on planets with liquid water first before getting the ones with ice caps which are more expensive to use.
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A huge fraction of the universe is composed of just hydrogen and helium. Something like 98%
Of the remaining elements, they are produced in supernova or for a few the lighter ones, as the end stage of a star running out of fuel.
See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements>
Of the elements it looks like Ta is the least common.
You can go a step further in rarity by going for particular isotopes.
But remember that any element can, with enough energy be made. Doing this efficiently is left to the engineers.
With made materials you have some additional options. Right now probably the most expensive material per pound are semi-conductors. The cute epoxy box is much larger than the actual chip.
You can go for exotic properties too. High temperature super conductors. (We don't know how to make them yet.) Materials with very large electric charges baked in (electrets) Magnetic monopoles (Do they exist?) Perfect crystals.
George Gamow working with an an early theory of nuclear stability found a theoretical nucleus with a mass of several thousand, shaped as a donut. I don't think the theory is current considered credible. But consider if you had a ring shaped nucleus. Now make a chain of these with the rings linked. You have a material that is stronger by the ration of the strong nuclear force to chemical bonds.
Once you can make nuclear thread, you can either weave it to make nuclear cloth, or link to make nuclear plate.
It would have interesting properties.
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## Humans
Just like humans collect birds, fish, snakes, and other animals, and are willing to pay large amounts of money for rare specimen, aliens collect species from other planets. The further away it comes from, the more space bucks they're willing to pay! A space ship full of humans will earn the crew a lot of money.
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## Humans have attained incredible levels of technology without unlocking the secret to FTL travel. By a similar coincidence, these aliens attained incredible levels of technology without unlocking the secret to integrated circuits and powerful computers.
In the first stages of the invasion the aliens hit major cities with orbital bombardment, not knowing that computers even existed. As a result, the fabs and most of the humans who know how to create them are dead - Gigahertz class computer chips became a finite resource overnight. However, in the ensuing conflict it became very clear to the aliens how useful computers are in war.
After they won, they incorporated human chips into their weapons, and are now scouring earth for computers, game systems, and phones to repurpose into the new intelligent weapons that they are exporting to the front lines of other conflicts they are fighting in the galaxy. Of course, given another 70 years, they could probably duplicate the tech to make chips by torturing captured scientists and reading our books. However, they don't need chips in 70 years: they need them now to win the war with the Zorblaxians
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**Would it be possible for a stable society to be built around the concept of theft as a positive action, and thievery as a virtue, while still having theft be technically illegal, but having the possession of stolen property be perfectly legal?**
Say we have a society in which theft is widely accepted as a "good thing". Displaying items one has stolen is a sign of prestige, being good at stealing things, whether by confidence tricks, pick-pocketing, or burglary, is a positive trait on a level or above being physically attractive or athletic/good at sports in our modern society.
However, in a seeming contradiction, this society has laws against theft, even very strict laws by modern standards, with months or years of jail time for even small thefts. Again, possession of stolen property is perfectly legal, and thus if one is able to make a clean escape and the police are unable to prove that one has committed the theft using information other than the possession of the item or items in question, one is able to retain the property and there are no legal penalties.
Is such a society functional and stable, or will it fall apart due to internal pressures and strife?
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A similar system was used in the spartan [agoge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge)
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This was part of the highly regarded educational system in Sparta
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As you see, the spartan society was built around agoge, which had, among its foundation, also theft, though it was punished, thus illegal, according to its own laws.
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In some North American Indian cultures, there was a concept known as [Counting Coup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup) which honored the bravery of warriors as demonstrated by certain acts:
* Touching an enemy and getting away unscathed
* Touching an enemy's weapon
* Touching an enemy during a battle and that enemy dying
* Stealing something of value from an enemy, especially a weapon
This last part of the culture fits in perfectly with your model insofar as in the Indian culture, the act of Counting Coup was as much a part of a culture of war; one didn't steal from one's own tribe for instance but this was not considered to be theft if it was done from an enemy, especially during a battle.
Ultimately, even in our society today, there are actions that come across as more daring than others, even if they are both covered under the same criminal definition. Someone who steals the lolly out of the mouth of a toddler for instance is subjected to a higher degree of disdain and ridicule as someone who steals a car that has a sophisticated alarm system. Technically both are stealing, but one requires skill and daring; the other doesn't.
Your culture would also have to be able to make that differentiation. Remember that theft is in the criminal code in the first place for a reason; you don't want your untrained and undisciplined members going vigilante to protect their property; you want an impartial and disciplined force of keepers of the peace doing it so the populace is out there contributing to the economy rather than bunkered down with a siege mentality.
That aside though, if you limited the acceptance of this to actions perpetrated against opposing and competitive cabals and limited the disruption to set items of value and/or times, then it is certainly workable.
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## Theft Isn't Illegal, But...
So I am going to offer a slight counter to the question, and pose that theft itself is not illegal in this society, However, they do have very stringent laws on things that happen *during* a theft. In other words, getting caught stealing carries a penalty because of actions taken during the stealing, but not the theft itself.
## Trespassing
A man's house is his castle. To enter into it uninvited is an affront to his pride and hard work and cannot be tolerated. This is even more egregious if the destruction of that property was involved as well. Climbing through an open window in the middle of the night is bad enough, but breaking that window first is even worse. There is no good reason to do either and anyone caught doing so should be punished to the full extent of the law.
## Assault
To use violence against your fellow citizens is to go against everything that society stands for. Even just the threat of violence is itself a type of violence. Therefore there is no such thing as "robbery" since all acts are inherently violent and should then be considered assault. The fact that the victim's property was lost during the assault should also be weighed when judging the crime, but is a secondary concern to the violence of the act.
## Libel
Of all of the valuables a man may possess, his reputation may be one of the most important. This is why mere possession of an item is not itself enough to accuse a man of thievery. An object may pass through many hands over time, and most if not all of them could have come by it through fair and legal means. A man may buy a vase from merchant in a fair and legal transaction. That merchant may have bought the vase in a similar manner, and that seller acquire it by legal means from another as well. Even if the vase were to have been stolen at some point in it's history does not mean that these future transactions were wrong. Without direct evidence of the original theft, accusing another of it merely based on their current ownership of the item involved is merely an assault on their honor and public image.
## Everybody Loves A Party
In your society, cunning would be the most valuable trait someone could have. Being able to trick someone would be seen as a positive trait and a failure on the part of whoever you tricked. This would probably lead to a society where everyone was slightly paranoid and generally distrustful, but I doubt that alone would cause it to collapse.
As for glorifying theft, the above legal points mean that breaking into someone's home or forcibly taking something from them is a no go. However, once you have been invited into someone's home there is nothing stopping you from swiping their goods, as long as you aren't caught doing so. In that case, throwing a party would be a way of both showing off your skills in protecting stuff, and your confidence in being able to do so.
The really gaudy examples of this would be with your rich/noble citizens. Those types would make it a point to display their most valuable possessions, as a way of showing off not only how wealthy they are but also how able they are to keep that wealth. Remember, not being stolen from also requires cunning. At that point every time an aristocrat throws a party it is actually a giant game of "who can steal the most valuable object". Things like silverware and small decorations would be traded around so much and so often that you could tell which parties someone attended based on who had those items last. At the same time, being able to steal a truly valuable item at a party would raise your standing in your fellow nobles' eyes. Stealing from a rival and then just leaving that item around without proper protections would be a grave insult, implying that you think so lowly of their prized possessions.
In all honesty, I don't think your society would immediately collapse just because stealing isn't frowned upon. Just make sure that there is a bit of gamesmanship attached to it. Stealing a knickknack from a friend at a party is just good fun. Robbing a poor merchant on the road is still unethical and bad and anyone who does so should be punished.
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A society built around theft would necessarily be one that does not respect any concept of private property rights. This would probably rule out any kind of sedentary existence for ordinary members, as settling down in one place is an open invitation to have your things stolen. People would not own much, to reduce the impact of theft, and would likely restrict themselves to what they can carry. So a nomadic society looks like your only logical option.
Farming would be impossible, so food supplies would be restricted to hunting-gathering. For obvious reasons, there would be no such things as markets or stores. Trade itself would be very limited, essentially only to people you trust. Foreign peoples (assuming they were more normal) would not be willing to have any kind of trade with this culture. It's just not profitable enough to be worth it. Furthermore, any members of this society wandering in a foreign land would probably be very unwelcome.
There could not be any kind of functional government, as al governments rely upon tax collection. But who ensures that the tax collectors won't simply pocket the cash? Within government, corruption would be, by design, a way of life. Every person in a position of power could easily steal from public funds and there would be no one with the power to oversee or catch them. There would be almost no possibility of having public works of any sort, as this would invite public cannibalization. Even roads can have their material stolen and resold. The very concept of having someone charged with stewardship of common resources would be alien.
Moreover, the worship of theft and taking advantage of others by deceit would foster a hypercompetitive and distrustful culture, where everyone would probably go about armed and ready to bring down any stranger who looked suspicious. The most important life skills would be ones where you take things from people; these are not skills that foster economic growth in any way. Earning trust with new people you meet would take a long, long time.
In short, what I'm describing is not a society. It's a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Mad Max is a good example of what it would look like.
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You're describing most of the Third World, theft is encouraged as it's a means of survival for some and the only way to advance for others. And happens from top to bottom so the example is set by leaders and elders. While at the same time laws drafted by consultants to satisfy donor countries requirements for funding condemn theft and outline severe penalties.
There is little accountability and after being robbed your neighbours will quite openly walk around in your clothing. Calling the police without a video of the crime taking place will result in the cops eating the whole contents of your fridge and asking you for a smoke.
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It is not only possible, but some of us also used to live in one.
Welcome to the late Soviet Union and its satellites.
As the State has a monopoly over any economic activity and the ideology equalizes the reward for good and bad performers, the only possible way of achieving considerable wealth is theft in some form.
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I would concentrate on making thievery a form of meritocracy or an institutionalised ritual.
e.g. Make it the Second Amendment in their constitution for historical reasons and nobody will be able to restrict it, for fear of being dubbed unpatriotic. /s
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The main issue here is that the background/context needs to justify the social values or status quo in order to make it a stable system. Humans will accept a lot of seemingly nonsensical customs if it has enough social inertia, contextual practicality or both.
I particularly like *Terry Pratchett's [Diskworld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld)* for it's portrayal of the Thieves' and Assassins' guilds as legalised institutions. Especially where the guilds have extensive by-laws and extensively self-regulate. e.g. The Thieves' Guild sells loss prevention insurance, sets limits on the amount of theft permissible and actively polices unauthorised/non-member theft.
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It would fall apart if applied to every aspect of society, but it would be entirely possible to setup a so-called exclusive club where this type of behavior is encouraged and promoted (Like the thieves world sort of shown in the Ocean movies, where you can issue theft challenges or the target is to steal a certain item).
This doesn't apply to all society as it will create turmoil due to several issues
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**Highly Valuable Items, Unique Items**
If I had a highly valuable, Unique, One-of-a-kind item, you could steal it but never prove ownership of such an item as its unique. For example, Stealing the crown of the Monarch or the Mona Lisa. Due to the uniqueness of such an item, a thief would never be able to prove ownership unless there was a huge oversight in the investigation. The only way this would be solved, is if the owner was willing to let the item be stolen, but if its something highly important (Like a Royal Seal) it might have much larger implications than a fun game.
You can also twist this aspect. Can I steal the crown prince when they are a baby? Is that fair game? There are bound to be some items and rules around this, so all theft cannot be encouraged.
**Injuries, Compensation**
The second part is injuries and compensation. If I killed your 5 guards to steal your treasure, do I need to compensate you for it? What if I seriously maimed you in the process. Theft isn't always clean and its entirely possible for someone to be injured or killed during the act of stealing. You don't want your baron losing a leg, because a guard decided to cut it off for him. Likewise, you don't want the King to steal something from you by murdering everyone in the household.
There needs to be an established set of rules to ensure that victims are compensated for their loses and any damages received during the robbery attempt. Mr. King is going to be angry when his fine silk cloak is slashed to bits because a poor farmer decided to steal his coin purse with a badly targeted slash of the blade. Likewise, Mr. Farmer is going to be devastated if someone steals their goods and accidentally kills their entire family to ensure a clean getaway.
**Foul Play**
The playing board isn't equal in terms of theft, because the rich and wealthy can afford to lose things. Mr King doesn't mind if he loses a valuable painting for a few gold coins. But Mr Farmer who is going to barely survive winter is going to be devastated when all his grains are stolen, and then he needs to legally battle a much wealthier opponent to prove the items were stolen, all while starving to death.
**Result**
The end result is that you will have a wealthy society capable of playing this theft game. They will likely challenge rivals to steal their valuable possessions, setting up rules and restrictions to ensure no one is injured but there is still a challenge in breaking through the security systems.
The Poor and/or middle class are excluded from this because they can't afford the risk and do not have the means to provoke and defend against the wealthy. If they become targeted, they will likely leave for another place, which will slowly create a void of low skilled jobs that need to be filled.
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**It is totally possible because legalized theft exists in nearly every society**
For nearly everything that is typically considered a crime, there is some legalized version of it that society engages in for the purpose of keeping society stable and functioning, or for some other benefit. "Murder" is the illegal version of killing people; legal versions of killing people are called "self-defense", "war", and "capital punishment." They have different moral overtones than murder, but they are all still killing people.
Theft is the illegal version of taking other people's property. There are multiple versions of legalized theft that have been in widespread practice and are still in many societies today.
**Taxation**
If a private citizen approached you and asked you to give up a percentage of your income, or part of the value of your land, with the alternative being spending time in a dungeon, this would be called theft, and we would lament the threat of kidnapping. When the government does it, it's called taxation, and few people complain about jailing someone who skips out on paying their taxes (assuming you have a tax system which is progressive and people agree on the moral necessity of doing so.)
**Eminent Domain**
If I take your land away to do whatever I want with it and pay you whatever I think it's worth, but don't give you the option to say no, that would be called theft. When the government does it to build a highway or a military base, it's called eminent domain.
**Wealth Redistribution**
When Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor, he is a thief but is considered a noble one, especially because the rich people he stole from were jerks, and the poor people were really poor and could use help.
Sometimes governments decide to play the role of Robin Hood, by seizing property or money specifically to give it to other people. The relatively benign versions of this would be welfare programs common in First World countries. The less benign versions of this existed during the establishment of communist countries, in which private property (except necessities) were taken from everyone and given to other people because private property was considered immoral.
**The secret ingredient is a compelling moral justification**
I don't mean for this to read like an anti-government rant. Government comes up in all of my examples about taking property because it's the one institution that is typically allowed to do things that private persons are not allowed to do because it can morally justify those actions in the name of creating order and preventing anarchy. Private people or groups can use their own moral justifications (and they do with things like killing in self-defense), but it's harder to do that with theft, especially in advanced countries that value property rights. But, that's where your own society can have different values, or different priorities on those values.
The trick I see that you could use is that your imaginary society could have rules against the actual act of stealing, but find it morally virtuous to give those stolen things to someone else. That way, if you recieved stolen property (or "recieved it") there could be a moral argument that you should be allowed to keep the stolen thing because you deserve it more than the person it was stolen from.
**You can have "stability" with all of this justified theft, but at the expense of being poorer than you otherwise would be**
I think it's pretty clear you can have stability and permit people to keep ill-gotten gains... but that's going to reduce the incentives for people to have things worth stealing lying around. They may invest in things to prevent thefts, or go to effort to steal their things back (what would be wrong with that in your scenario?). But, that takes time, effort, and resources, things which most people throughout history have had very little of.
So, if you're not a rich person, the rational thing to do is avoid all of that trouble by not having anything to steal in first place. This is a large part of why there's poverty in the parts of the world where property rights aren't respected; it's a lot less effort to stay poor than to be rich or even moderately well off. You should keep that In mind when designing your master thievery society; it's probably not going to have anything resembling a middle class, because common people need to be able to keep their valuable things in order to have a middle class.
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Bit of a frame challenge. If taking something is legal and socially-approved, in what sense is it “theft?” It sounds more like applying our mores to a form of collective ownership that doesn’t recognize private property.
Like everyone’s said, you have to limit it. The Bible, for example, orders property-owners to leave the corners of the field and grains that fall to the ground, and let the poor people walk onto their land and glean it. The limit might be that people are only allowed to take what they absolutely need. The limit might be that someone perceived as a parasite or free-loader is ostracized—as in, cast out—but if you took a lot of seeds, planted them, and grew a bumper crop that you then shared, that would be admirable. It might be that only some things are considered inherently portable, or actually the property of a god that it would be sacrilege for any human to claim as their own, or immoral to deny to others. It might be that you can claim what you yourself made with your own hands, but not the bounty of Nature. The rule might be that you can take whatever you’re strong enough to get away with, and people look up to you for it, if you can survive the retaliation.
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# Self-Defense?
You didn't say whether citizens are allowed to use extensive forms of protection for their property. If your society has stand-your-ground type laws, then it would make sense for rich people to simply staff up on mercenaries and shoot anyone who glances sideways at your shinies. If citizens are not allowed to use extreme violence, then it makes theft seem almost easy, at which point where does the prestige come from?
# Sustainability
As others have mentioned, if *all* items are subject to theft and render prestige in proportion to their market value, then people would be willing to steal trifling goods like toasters and TVs. If everyone is busy stealing from each other, then it's hard to see how anyone could afford to build products of value, knowing that competitors would rather steal your designs, your test, and the very products off your production lines than do that work themselves.
However, if your society limits the "stealing is good" virtue to *luxury items*, then you end up with an Ocean's 11 situation where *someone* is mad about the theft, but not *most people*, and, in fact, the thieves themselves can easily be heroes. This *is* sustainable, because luxury items, by definition, do not support existence or commerce (except for the luxury sales sector, of course). If thieves limited themselves to stealing Bugattis, Bvlgari watches, and big yachts, then the rest of society may very well naturally praise and congratulate the thieves with no remorse or pity for the victims.
Even in rich societies, people will commit crimes of poverty, because they feel they have to, or because they don't have anything to lose. Nobody thinks this is "noble" or "impressive", even if they might be understanding of the motivation. So making the thievery open-ended is likely too problematic. Limiting it to tokens of intrinsic prestige value, but limited practical value will likely produce the desired effects naturally, and is obviously a kind of sport for rich people, which is nonetheless accessible for those of modest means but very sticky fingers.
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At first, this doesn't sound very feasible. After all, that would mean a society focused not on producing/adding value to itself but on redistributing existing goods. Without production, said society wouldn't really prosper after all.
Then, I thought about the distinction between stealing and getting caught stealing, as well as the fact murder would still be viewed in a negative light. I'm assuming murder during theft is highly looked down on and receives especially harsh sentences regardless of whether the theft was successful or not.
That would mean a thief in such a setting would go out of their way to avoid causing permanent harm, or risk being unable to expose or even sell their loot. Sure, you stole the unique Necklace of the Rainbow Diamond without getting caught, but the count and his family, the original owners, were found dead so you're arrested for murder instead of theft! Not feeling so happy with yourself now, are you?
The harsh penalties and focus on skill means lower profile theft wouldn't be as rampant as I first envisioned. Why risk a heavy sentence for a basic chair? Some lower level industries would be quite safe overall. It would mean food stalls and markets would still exist, though they would be more secure against wandering fingers...
That means there are and will be people who will work and actually produce the food and commodities required for a society to exist, even if to a lesser extent than a normal society.
Security would be very high though. If displaying stolen goods brings prestige, it would be the same for non-stolen ones. After all, you're publicly showing something really valuable which no thief has been able to steal from you (yet). It could be the sign of banks or other security companies: they would display rare and valuable items to prove they are very secure.
In the end though, there would still be lots of people working more or less honestly, simply because they're not good enough to be thieves (by the standards of that society)
and you gotta make a living somehow. You could imagine them dreaming of becoming a famous thief then discovering as they grow up they just don't have what it takes.
In the end, said society could work, though it would be poorer than a normal one.
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Here in Austria speeding with a car is illegal but you still hear people boasting about it. Sometimes they even boast about getting a fine or having their driver’s license confiscated.
So I think the society you describe would be totally feasible.
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I'm not sure it answers your question exactly but it seems to solve the problem while avoiding most drawback :
Your society, for historical and/or religious reasons, praise the ability to take what you need for yourself above all else. They used to live in small tribes that stole from each other but now that they are a great and unified nation, they couldn't really continue on this path.
So they decided to give a unique token to each citizen (and each newborn after that). This token is what you have the right to steal (if you don't get caught) and nothing else from another citizen. Having a lot of them is really prestigious (and opens a lot of doors), having none makes you a scrub. This way the society can work like any other, while still praising stealing.
Of course, if the other person is not even a citizen, you can steal whatever you want from him, it's allowed. You could even decide that anyone stealing a token instantly becomes a citizen.
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So language drifts enormously over time. With the English of today, little drifts happen fairly quickly in slang, but over long periods of time languages drift and change and move, even changing important parts of grammar and pronunciation over hundreds of years; there’s a reason there’s an Old English and the one we have now, and Spanish and French rather than Latin.
So what would prevent this from happening *completely* in a culture? What would make ancient texts still easily readable by people hundreds of years in the future, and make groups of people isolated from each other after developing their language able to understand each other when reunited generations later?
Thanks!
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In France, there is an authority known as Académie Française, or in English, "French Academy". It is made of forty members, known as *les immortels*, or "the immortals". The Académie was founded in the 1600s to define the French language, and to eliminate the "impurities" of the language.
Today, they don't have any legal power (though they traditionally have the President of France as a patron), yet they are sufficiently respected that when they announced that the formal word for email was "courriel" (a portmanteau of the phrase "corrier electronique" or "electronic mail"), formal writing changed to reflect the decision.
However, casual speech does not always reflect the standardised French as defined by the Académie, and that speech can drift.
Let's imagine a language that is standardised, but is not used casually. There is actually such a language already in existence: Latin. Latin is a "dead language", in that there are no native Latin speakers, and no one actually knows how the Romans spoke it. It is, however, spoken by linguists who study Latin, students who learn Latin in school, and by scientists, since many scientific names are given in Latin.
If we discount the coining of new proper nouns and borrowing old ones from other languages as linguistic drift (I mean, when I say "My friend Xerses", you know I mean "Xerses" as a name, even if you've never heard the word before), then Latin rarely changes.
And I say "rarely", because it does change. When people make new inventions, some get new nouns and verbs associated with them. For example, a "car" in Latin would be a "currus automobilis" or "autocinetum", according to Wikipedia (Latin).
The only way to prevent the creation of new words by this route is if humanity ceased to innovate. Perhaps innovating is no longer enjoyable or economically viable. Perhaps there's nothing left to innovate. Either way, no new concepts means that humans will no longer seek to put new concepts into a language.
Combined with a practical reason to know a language but not use it casually (perhaps, as @Charlie Hersberger suggests, it is used to interface with (poorly programmed – they forgot `/internationali(s|z)ation/`... sorry, regex joke) computers, or perhaps the language is used to cast magic), then Latin may actually become a language that has no linguistic drift.
Of course, if everyone gets an implant at the age of 5 that stimulates the brain in the right way to make them rapidly learn the "correct" way of speaking Latin, and gives a negative stimulus if they speak it incorrectly, that too would be sufficient.
And if a language is defined for its use in a specific role (for example, Aviation English), then it's possible that it is already static.
Many thanks to AlexP for a factual correction on the Latin translation for "car".
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**Your language is enforced as a standard that is linked to something that doesn't change**
*In a sci-fi setting, computers*
computers can make language not shift. Use slang, incorrect pronunciation, or new terms and the computers just won't recognize it and tell you to repeat the phrase properly. If your characters are robots then their language doesn't change because their communication standard is at the tight bound of what is possible with their hardware, so there is no reason to change. Also, upgrading might mean death, so all the robots of that generation will stay locked into that language.
*In a magical setting, magic*
You enforce the language with magic. "On fleek" sounds a lot like the self combustion spell, so any new words or pronunciations not in the language will lead to you either discovering a new spell to show off to everyone, or being the last person to discover a spell. People used to think that tritones would lead to devil summoning, maybe the same is true but with language. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone>
*In a normal setting, The government, or the last pop culture trend for all time*
Dictators or advanced social programs can enforce language. In 1984 new speak is used to ensure people only say what you want them to say, and deviation is heavily discouraged. By making not using the language, or even not using the language correctly a crime, people will be forced to follow your standard. On the other hand, a completely conformist movement could also force this. If 99% of people decide to follow the same language rules, and carefully adhere to them to make it so they are all the same, then these changes are unlikely to happen, and nearly impossible to make stick.
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**Religion based on a common sacred text and standard interpretations.**
All sermons, prayers and rituals including musical celebrations would be conducted in the same fixed vocabulary derived from the sacred texts of old, the common speach of the people would reflect this in their everyday lives.
As to interpretations, the various seperate communities would need to have a convocation of priests meet and affirm their faith and re-enforce the interpretations of old, and argue out how those apply to any new events of moment. Acolytes would be apprenticed to and further educated by experienced priests instilling the widom of ages from the ancient texts.
The adaptations that people would inevitably come-up with over time to overcome seasonal changes in their lives would be all covered by the cannon of pre-existing religious texts.
Isolated communities would inevitably adapt to their particular environments, innovations happen: a brighter coloured die for fabric, a better knott for a fishing line, a new way of making rooves waterproof using baked clay coated in tree resin - and the people who make them. These adaptations would demand new words.
**New words.**
These would be made-up according to the rules of [linguistic agglutination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language):
>
> Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings,
> but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) remain, in
> every aspect, unchanged after their unions. This results in generally
> more easily deducible word meanings if compared to fusional languages
>
>
>
The upshot of this is that the new words would all be based on the familiar vocabulary from the sacred texts in such a way as to be recognisable. The Germanic languages already somewhat function in this way, it's how words like *Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister* - "District-chimney-sweeper-master" (chimney sweep) came about.
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I want to elaborate on how you can achieve that goal by normal means based on two real world examples of languages, which go into that direction:
[Farsi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language) and [Icelandic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language).
Icelandic is interesting, because the language does exactly what you demand: Modern Icelanders are able to read and understand 800 year old sagas without problem. This has been achieved by rigorously applied [linguistic purism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_purism_in_Icelandic): They actively purged their language of foreign loan words and kept it close to the language used in their old literature. New words are instead created by compounding old words.
The second example, Farsi, is similar in this regard, because of the profound influence that Ferdowsi's [Shahnameh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahnameh#Influence_on_Persian_language), Iran's national epic, had on the language. Basically the Shahnameh established a gold standard of what the persian language ought to be, that nobody is willing to change.
What you can derive from those examples are is the following:
Your language requires an anchor: An era of literature or a piece of (maybe religious) literature, that is so profoundly important to that culture, that it is powerful enough to anchor the language for centuries. The associated culture in turn must have the means to enforce this language standard, most likely by the means of education. Obviously a high literacy rate would be extremly helpful for that purpose.
The associated culture also has to be culturally "tight" enough to not drift apart. A counterexample would be Arabic: Whereas the arabic language used in the Koran is certainly a gold standard, in reality most arabic speaking countries have developed their own versions of arabic, that aren't even mutually intelligable anymore, just because the arabic speaking world is way too big and culturally diverse.
Generally dialects etc are NOT a hinderance in a culture that has some form of formalized education: I myself have learned standard german in school whereas I usually speak in my regional dialect or, since I was raised in a small village, even [Low German](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German), which is quite different from the standard language.
So as a short summary I would suggest:
**A culturally tight and geographically limited nation state, in possession of a piece of literature, either their national epic or their holy book, that defines their whole cultural identity and is the immutable basis of the language that is taught in school, as well as a population/government that possesses the willingness to preserve the language as it is out of cultural pride or religious importance.**
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## Immortality
The main source of language shifts is the noisy process of teaching and learning language. Kids learn a language and adapt it slightly, and then teach it to their children including their modifications. Elders grumple about the grandkids using the language differently, but they get replaced with by kids eventually.
However, a culture with extremely long - or effectively infinite - lifespans could have these respected, important elders maintain their "style of speech" forever and ensure that every new generation adapts to them. Imagine the Academie Francaise 'immortels' literally staying there forever and ensuring that every kid is taught the language as they learned it thousands of years ago, and that every official document or petition or printed book is using the language in the way that they prefer.
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# It's Impossible... Kinda...
Maybe you need to declare it to be so, not worry about how or why, and continue writing the story you actually want to write — because depending on how *absolutely* you want to prohibit change, there is no believable way to make this happen (all due respect to the Académie Française, [even they haven't kept French pure to the extent suggested by this question](https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/evolution-of-french/)).
Over the course of hundreds or more years...
* Existing words will experience changes in connotation, leading to changes in definition.
* Dialect is impossible to control.
* Borrowed words from other languages are inevitable — especially where science is concerned.
* Without amazing, fundamentally unbelievable effort (see [my answer to this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/170774/40609)) no language can be preserved for a lengthy period of time. Obviously, the higher the tech level when you start the easier it is to preserve, but that just means you need more time to corrupt it. It will eventually be corrupted.
* Finally, it's impossible to preserve a language in a society where new things come about—where change is possible. [This article](https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/g4214/words-that-didnt-exist-40-years-ago/) has fun pointing out words and phrases (new meanings to old words) that didn't exist in English 40 years ago. Words like Dramedy, Voicemail, Ecotourism, Infomercial, Wannabe, FAQ, Meh, Bling, and Millenial. If your society isn't 100% static, the language *must* change with it.
I was tempted to upvote Peteris' answer: Immortality. But I'm not convinced even that could *completely* preserve a language.
In summary, this is an issue that falls into the concept that I call a *technology dichotomy.* It's like asking how to have flying cars without having ever first invented the wheel or how bumping a single toggle switch can suddenly turn on something as complex as a time machine, leading to the silly inventor mistakenly finding him/herself in the 12th century (you'd be surprised how much SciFi has used this trope). An entirely static living language is a dichotomy—because life changes.
***Having said that...***
Your question sounds really absolute, but I'm wondering how absolute you really intend it to be? It's not just hard, it's sometimes downright impossible to read English from the 1500s (much less earlier). There comes a period in any culture that stands the test of time when something like the Académie Française happens; when language becomes standardized to minimize the effects of regionalization and to minimize the burden on an increasingly complex bureaucracy. It's happened to English, French, Japanese... pretty much every language where there's a significant population.
An example of a language where this hasn't (completely) happened is [Saami](https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/saami-languages-present-and-future). The Saami language was originally a dozen or more dialects so disparate that people living in different valleys had trouble speaking together. It's slowly becoming standardized — primarily as parents realize their children are growing up in a *really big world* where opportunity demands they be understood (dang! Another reason languages change!). So even then, a language that might be spoken by only 80,000 or so people is slowly changing anyway due to outside pressure and, frankly, a desire of the Saami people to not lose their culture entirely (once a language is no longer spoken, the reality of the culture dies very, very quickly).
***So, having said that...***
The older a language is, and the more complex or technologically advanced a culture is, the more likely the *basis* of the language will be stable enough that no matter what changes do occur, today's people can read what was written hundreds of years ago.
After all, no native English-speaker today would have trouble reading the U.S. Constitution — and it's 230+ years old.
On the other hand, stuff written by fundamentally illiterate people in the 1930s is fundamentally unintelligible today. So the "officialness" of the source is a big factor. (And to be honest, I've spoken to illiterate people today who are almost impossible to understand. I've spoken with educated people having inner-city accents that I can't understand. I've listened to modern Scots and, bless them, I love them!, but they're just speaking in *Tongues.*)
***Summary***
So, if you're looking for absolutely no change in meaning, available vocabulary, dialect, etc., the answer is, "it's impossible."
If you're looking for substantially no practical change over only hundreds of years, the answer is, "kinda, if your culture is complex enough."
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**Edit**
I'd like to mention Orewell's *1984* and, not just its Ministry of Truth (the source of [Newspeak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak)), but the fundamental dystopic bureaucracy of Oceania. The Ministry of Love was said to be so invasive in people's lives that it knew each individual's worst fear, which would be used against them in Room 101 to break down their resistance to the State. If you use a totalitarian government to this extent (where the language isn't living but *constructed* and enforcement occurs via the "thought police" on an individual level), maybe... maybe you can create a living but static language. But even the character of Syme... disappeared... and changes in the language lived on in history and rebellion. Maybe even this wouldn't be enough—but it was a fun read.
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# Formal/informal bilingualism
Similar to the answers that mention Latin, you could have a society which is raised to speak two languages: a formally-controlled unchanging/littlechanging variant and an uncontrolled vulgar common tongue. The natural propensity to innovate and evolve language could be contained to the common language while everyone is still taught the controlled language. They would likely end up as two different languages over time, but would think that if the standard of bilingualism was high, they wouldn’t be *too* different.
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## Enforced stability
Recorded samples, or a being in power that has lived across that span of time, and continues to speak the language the same way.
Exposure would have to be pervasive, or you'd end up with something like High English and Low English. One formally, and one for Regular Folk.
An AI or divine entity could probably converse individually with the entire population at the same time, or at least everyone at one of the conveniently located terminals/altars.
Recorded lessons (of whatever format) could be part of a years-long schooling provided to everyone. I suspect that language might drift a bit, but always stay relatively close to the original.
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## Born with it
Language is imprinted on your people at (or near) birth. It could be a genetic memory thing, or brain tapes while they grow in the cloning vats, or whatever. Could be something like Ghost Brigade, or some "knowledge crystal" or whatever.
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The only way is to get everyone to quit using it. [Language is change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_change), and the mere act of a person interpreting it in a different context (even if they are an older version of the same human) is going to color how they understand and use it.
And you wouldn't want it any other way. New things and concepts are being discovered all the time, and without coming up with new words or terms for them, we simply wouldn't be able to communicate (or even reason) about them.
When a language quits changing, we do have a term for that: **[An extinct language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinct_language)**.
Now if you want to try to retard change, [this question over on the linguistics](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/4033/do-languages-change-at-different-rates) site goes into that exact topic. My reading of the top answer there is that we really don't know what governs the rate of linguistic change, but it *may* be down to having a small isolated population (that isn't isolated from each other so the dialects drift apart, of course)
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Instead of locking innovation in your culture(s), take a look at Arabic. At school, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is taught, but is not used in real life. People speaking different Arabic dialects mostly can't understand each other, but they can do so through MSA:
* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Standard_Arabic>
* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic#Classical,_Modern_Standard_and_spoken_Arabic>
Since MSA is very similar to Classical Arabic, it allows people to read texts from the 9th century AD without much problems (according to the Wikipedia).
After that, I guess you'd need a way to "justify" teaching a version of the language that no one in the community uses. It could be faith-based (eg "to read the true words") or commerce-based ("it's the language all merchants from othe re regions use and it allows us to thrive"), for example.
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I would like to emphasize an aspect of @AuronTLG's excellent answer: the **basic tool** needed in practice to forward the continuation of a language is **public schools**, with grammar courses, dictionaries; and generally a methodology of how the language should be spoken, written and -- most importantly -- **taught to students**.
The reason why written/spoken classical Latin survived so well throughout the Middle Ages and the modern era (at least until the French government pronounced it "dead" at the end of the 19th century), is the quality of the education system that supported it. Latin was considered an obligatory part of any educated person's education, with a big difference from today, since educated people were supposed to be *fluent* enough in that language to write scientific or philosophical texts, or at least to read them without difficulty.
Conversely, Latin was replaced in common usage by its *vulgar* versions, i.e. the Romance languages (Italian, French, etc.) because ordinary people, who often did not have access to basic education, developed their own dialects and oral traditions. This created, around the 13th century, the litterary debate between classic Latin and vulgar languages.
By contrast, classical Greek survived extreemely well during the Middle Ages, thanks to the quality of [public schools throughout the Eastern Roman Empire](https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/issue/education-in-byzantium/) (mainly Greece and Anatolia). The solidity and continuity of that public education system (at least until the fall of that empire) explains why Greek survived as language practiced by whole populations. Obviously, not everyone went to school, so dialects and local variants were left to evolve. Indeed, the evolution of the modern version of Greek, called **[demotic](https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=demotic)**[popular] is explainable in good part by the collapse of the education system of the Roman Empire under Ottoman rule. Nevertheless, the continuity is there, so much so, that a tolerably educated Greek should today be able to read the *koine* (standard) Greek used in the New Testament, which is nearly 2000 years old; and with some more effort, could read fragments of archaic Greek in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, which are several centuries older. This truly extraordinary achievement boils down to the **continuity of the public school system\***.
We see the same phenomenon at play today with English: the garden-variety of English that is spoken in businesses today throughout the world is a [lingua franca](https://www.britannica.com/topic/lingua-franca) (also called link/trade language). Nevertheless, the English classes for natives, the pretty good[ESL](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/esl) courses for non-natives, plus an enormous quantity of sound archives since the early 19th century (particularly movies) make sure that what we call *modern British English* or *modern American English* will remain fairly stable in the future.
And that is the main issue, if one wants to keep a language stable: to keep references (in addition to grammars and dictionary, as well as reference texts, we now we have audiovisual references), to keep the broad **public education system** working (not limited only to elites), so that the *vulgar* (i.e. general, popular), language does not not diverge too much from the classical one.
In fact, the experience of **modern Hebrew** (which is basically a two thousand years old written language reissued as a popular, spoken language), shows that it is perfectly possible to put back a language "on track", if one wishes, by leveraging public schools. Once again this achievement can be ascribed the continuity of a high-quality **public schooling system** among Jewish communities throughout the ages.
Two takeways:
1. Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic all have in common that they were native languages for some, and **link languages** for many.
2. The point is that the divergence between a classic and vulgar/demotic versions of a language can not only be slowed, but it can be **reversed**!
>
> So you may want, in your story, to include periodic **restoration** episodes, where the [Academy of the Bran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accademia_della_Crusca) (or whatever organization you put in charge of the language) brings back the vulgar language to track, by formalizing and decluttering it, and admitting new vocabulary and possibly new grammatical forms, **all while maintaining *[backward compatibility](https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/backward-compatible-backward-compatibility)***.
>
>
> **The public school system is always, always the transmission belt.**
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My hypothesis: You need a static culture where not much changes generation over generation. The times when human languages have been stable are the times when the populations are isolated and not much has happened, so there’s little need to introduce new words for new concepts and no pressure to improve previous communication mechanisms.
I do not have citations to support the above statement. It is a perception of mine based mostly on what I know of English language development. Fleshing it out into a proper answer would require significant research time.
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There are a some existing languages that drifted much less than others and they all have something in common: They were not used in the everyday life but rather were reserved for official use. Typically, in a country where each region has its own vernacular and where it's their mother language and the language they use most of the time. You will have an additional language that's used by the authorities for everything of national importance (for example laws) or when communicating through different regions in order to understand each other.
This language will therefore be learned more rigidly, mostly stay written and won't be used commonly, so variations of it won't be transmitted.
Languages like Italian or Mandarin are examples of this in some measure.
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I'm going to suggest something a bit different to the other answers, though it may not be appropriate for your particular world.
It's based on the idea that for homo sapiens our intelligence evolved before our technology. Your world doesn't need to follow the same pattern.
Your technology can develop with your intelligence.
In this case your language is genetically hard coded.
Our intelligence hasn't evolved significantly in the last 50000 years. We know this because particular branches of humanity have until only recently been spit up for that long with basically no contact and it's obvious we all have the same capacity for intelligence despite the split.
But 50000 year ago we only had basic tools and didn't even have agriculture.
Therefore we know our intelligence preceded our technology.
Some theorize this is because language **is** intelligence.
You don't need to take this whole idea onboard, but simply follow the part where the tool evolved with the intelligence.
In this case, your species specific language is a function of genetics.
They don't learn language like us, they are born with it.
New words are added due to new genetic combinations, starting in close family units, and spreads only if it gives a significant advantage to survival and propagation.
Development is going to take a lot longer for this species, but language will also be much more stable.
] |
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[
Magic is extremely common, it is essentially part of the dna of each race. Each race has magical power that allows them to better dominate their native environment. One race can shapeshift, other can create and control fire/heat, etc...
One of these races evolved with a sea-faring lifestyle. They are spread arround the world and vary greatly in culture and traditions due to this geographic distribution, but they are regarded as the best sailors wherever they are found. Naturally their innate magic plays a role in their naval dominance,but what role?
I've been thinking about this for quite a while, but I still have not found a satisfatory solution: What kind of magic would aid sailing the most? I came up with a few candidates, but I am probably forgetting some obviously better options. I am not interested in creating overly powered individuals, but racial advantages, so if magic is too powerful, it might need many individuals to power it.
**Precognition**: being able to predict the near future, or at least what it is likely to happen if everything stays the same (and they hardly do). Precognition is particularly useful to predict the weather, as there is few things that would stop or cause a storm to happen out of nowhere, giving them a nice strategic edge.
**Weatherkynesis**: a more straight foward way of influencing the travel. Due to my own rule, it would take many of them to make grand feats, e.g. it would take a fleet to create or dismiss a sea storm. Not my favorite as it do not benefit individual sailors and its overpower (if you try to outnaval them, they can just send a storm to destroy the enemy fleet).
**Hydrokynesis**: the most intuitive of the bunch. They might not be better them others at predicting the weather or avoiding pirates and sea-monsters, but once they get caught in these situations they are able to handle themselves better than most, being able to break the most dangerous waves, extract drinkable water from the sea and outrun other ships of similar size.
[Answer]
First and foremost: sailing within sight of the shore is generally not a huge challenge. The real problems arise when you sail far away from shore.
# Anything that aids with navigation
One of the biggest problems that faced the sailing world was that they didn't have GPS. The closest things were the stars and the sun, but the stars are only useful if you know the constellations (and when the weather is clear, and at night) -- so sailors from the northern hemisphere became lost if they sailed south, and vice-versa -- and the sun is only helpful if you have a good clock, which is an obstacle in determining your East-West position (aka longitude). This last is actually a huge problem that [loomed over all seafaring nations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude) for a long time, and it's had major impacts on history.
There's a brief non-fiction book by Dava Sobel called [*Longitude*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_(book)), which lays all this out in detail. Most of this section of my answer is taken from (my memory of) that. The subtitle is "The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time", and every word in that is 100% accurate. The problem was to accurately measure longitude by building a seaworthy clock.
You can't figure your longitude from the sun's position if you don't know the correct time. The problem is that clocks of the day were pretty bad; they lost many seconds or even minutes each day. So, you couldn't just synchronize watches on shore, because they'd be inaccurate before long and thus foul your navigation. Why?
Clocks of the day were either spring-wound or pendulum-driven. Pendulums do not fare well on ships that roll with the waves. Springs don't hold up well under the humid, salty air at sea. These were insurmountable engineering problems. The best minds of the Western world dedicated themselves to this task for *centuries*, with little progress to show for it. Kings set gargantuan [bounties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards) for anyone who could demonstrate a working solution.
IIRC, the guy who eventually solved this was a self-taught inventor who constructed a mechanical clock that was both tightly-sealed against the environment, and used a couple of redundant systems to counteract each others' predictable drift. I think it was a little bigger than a microwave oven, made of wood and metal, but was sturdy enough to go to sea. His solution was exactly what everyone needed, but the Crown stiffed him. Read the book, it's great.
Umberto Eco wrote a wonderful novel called [*The Island of the Day Before*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_the_Day_Before), which talks about some real crazy things Europeans did to try to solve the longitude problem. One theory that stuck out was the belief that there was some kind of sympathetic link between a weapon and the wounds it inflicts. So the thinking went: if you cut yourself with a knife, and then later the knife is heated, your wound will hurt, no matter how far you are from the knife. So, one experiment in the book is that a sailing ship would take aboard a dog that had been cut with a knife. Over the course of the voyage, they would deliberately prevent the wound from closing and healing (which is monstrous). Meanwhile, back on the shore, they would heat the knife every day at precisely noon, the idea being that the sailors would know from the dog's yelping that it was noon, which then allowed them to figure out their longitude from the sun's position1.
So, as far as magic: anything that can be used to reliably tell the time, even just once per day, would have been an absolute godsend. The caster would likely be the most highly paid person on the ship, even moreso than the captain or navigator, and all they'd need to do is report the exact time.
Or you could short-circuit the complicated navigational reckoning and just have the caster know the ship's true position. It would have been revolutionary. The political history of Europe would be different, because fortunes were lost due to navigational mishaps.
# Anything that allows them to grow fresh fruit
Scurvy killed about half of all sailors during the Age of Sail. If you went to sea, you probably died from scurvy. Here's a pretty good summary of how bad it was:
>
> Scurvy killed more than two million sailors between the time of Columbus's transatlantic voyage and the rise of steam engines in the mid-19th century. The problem was so common that shipowners and governments assumed a 50% death rate from scurvy for their sailors on any major voyage
>
>
> -- Science History's [Age of Scurvy](https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/the-age-of-scurvy)
>
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>
No kidding.
Scurvy is what happens when your body runs out of Vitamin C. Many parts of the human body need C, and when you don't get it, each fails at a different rate and in a different way. The results are bad. It's painful, and the brain also stops working right, so you also go kind of crazy. There is some speculation that famous sea monsters like the kraken, mermaids, and the like are actually based on sincere accounts from sailors who were suffering from scurvy. IIRC, it takes 3-4 weeks for the first symptoms of scurvy to appear. Here's a list of selected symptoms from Wikipedia:
* weakness
* feeling tired and sore arms and legs
* gum disease
* bleeding from the skin
* poor wound healing
* personality changes
(That last item is a clever euphemism for being so delirious every waking moment as to be "bat-shit crazy.")
Left untreated, scurvy is always fatal.
The cure for scurvy has been discovered *and then lost again* at least 7 times in history. The final time it was discovered, it was the result of the first major experiment carried out under what modern society would consider "science": with a hypothesis, an experimental design, control and experimental groups, etc. And even then they almost bungled it -- and Science with it -- because after they confirmed that Vitamin C (from lime juice, IIRC) is how you keep scurvy away, the process they used to mass-produce C supplies for the Royal Navy used copper tubing, which denatured the C, rendering it worthless. This caused them to briefly reject not only their conclusion but the new-fangled "scientific" methodology they'd used to reach it.
It is no exaggeration to say that scurvy didn't just kill more sailors than all other dangers combined, it almost killed *the enterprise of modern science itself.*
So, magically: anything that helps you grow fresh fruit at sea. That could be the classic rain-maker, or it could be the ability to simply grow a healthy plant from a seed without water & nutrients. Or I guess if you could just summon fruit. (If you can *teleport* supplies, that undermines a lot of the purpose of sailing -- not all, but a lot: just teleport the goods you're shipping, or the travelers or colonists or whatever.)
# Weather control
Last, but still pretty good, would be the ability to control the weather.
Most importantly here would be the ability to control the wind. Sailing ships can literally only go where the wind blows. So, it's not accurate to think of the Atlantic Ocean as a giant open space where people can sail anywhere they want. More accurately, it was a vast desert with only a couple of specific routes that could be traveled, those routes being the [trade winds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds).
The trade winds are in specific places, and they blow in specific directions. And the wind isn't exactly guaranteed, either. Ships were lost with all hands because they got stuck in the [doldrums](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doldrums_(disambiguation)) and ran out of supplies before they could reach a port. Also, by traveling along known routes, you're an easy mark for pirates.
A ship that could make its own wind could sail in any direction and by any route it chose. That would be a terrific advantage in trade, war, and exploration. You could sail in a straight line at top speed the entire way.
You *almost* might not need good navigation if you could guarantee the wind will blow a specific direction for the entire voyage (which would literally be a major miracle even if it happened only one time in history). A ship that could do this reliably would be so fantastically fortunate it's almost hard to imagine the impacts.
Of course, control over other aspects of the weather would be enormously valuable as well. For one, summoning rain would help combat scurvy, because you could keep plants alive. Not even grow new ones, just keep the ones alive that you brought with you from shore.
Also, bad weather at sea was a big danger. Storms absolutely sank ships, even without making them crash into things. Masts can snap, vessels can capsize, and a ship can only carry so many spares (and carpenters). Bad weather also makes navigation hard, and once the storm is past, you have to reacquire your position (which is its own challenge). Being able to prevent storms won't help you get to your destination or even know where you are, but it does reduce the risk of a successful voyage turning into a catastrophe in just a few hours.
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To the very best of my knowledge, these were the three greatest problems in the Age of Sail: not knowing where you are, not being able to go where and when you want, and probably dying painfully because all your organs (especially including your brain) independently shut down before you can get there.
There are probably countless ways to tackle each of those problems. Any magic that engages with even one of them will be an incalculable boon; anything that fails to mitigate at least one of them will fail to fundamentally alter a vessel's chances of success.
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1 Minor clarification: the sailors would know that it was noon *back home* at that instant. From that, and the sun's apparent position, they could work out how far East they'd traveled.
[Answer]
**Wind-power solves almost all their problems**
Hands-down the single most useful magical trait for a pre-steamship oceanic society is the ability to produce/manipulate winds. It needn't be as powerful as "summon/dissipate hurricanes" either. The "simple" ability to maintain a strong wind from astern and divert a headwind would make them damn near unconquerable and incomparable sailors.
It makes you militarily superior. Being independent of the wind in battle is hugely advantageous. If you can maintain best speed no matter where you are on the compass, your enemy will be slaughtered and it won't even be close. Or you'll be able to near-effortlessly flee overwhelming force. You can also attempt tactics your opponent's couldn't even dream of. For example, Age of Sail fleet combat relied on lines of ships sailing one after another. This was for Command and Control purposes, but also because it was a known fact that a fleet sailing in different directions would A: become widely scattered and have trouble coming to the aid of the whole fleet (Squadron A might be able to help squadron B "downwind" of them, but Squadron B couldn't help squadron A because it would take too long to sail into the wind.) and B: having an element of your fleet detached in such a manner ensured SOMEBODY was sailing without the weather gauge regardless of what happens. If your fleet doesn't care about the wind it can suddenly do all sorts of strategic and tactical things the your opponents can't.
An secondary bonus is that it makes you MUCH less likely to develop scurvy or other afflictions. Why? Because you ALWAYS know how long it'll take to get from point A to point B. Most ships where scurvy developed in the Age of Sail packed something to combat it (fresh fruits & veggies) but ran out before they got where they were going. Why? Bad winds. Or no winds at all. Your ships, with their constant "perfect point of sail" winds, no longer have that problem. Just being able to say "we can with 99% certainty leave port X and arrive at port Y in 10 days" makes your crews largely immune to vitamin deficiencies.
Finally it makes you the #1 Best Choice for cargo transport. City needs 100 tons of grain a day? Give THAT charter to the people that will never get becalmed for 2 weeks. Need a packet ship to deliver the God-Emperor's orders to a far-flung colony? Give it to the people that will always make it in 2 weeks both directions.
Like I said, it doesn't even need to be storm-making/breaking levels. A hurricane or typhoon can be seen and usually outrun. Or if not, the minor wind-breaking can at least lesson the fury of the winds hitting the ship directly, or allow you to "run before the storm" knowing the second you're out of it you can get back without worrying you were blown into a region with unfavorable prevailing winds.
[Answer]
## Hydrokinesis is more powerful than you think
Hydrokinesis effectively allows your ships to no longer need sails because they now have the equivalent of water jets.
This is huge because it means the ship never suffers from being 'becalmed' or stuck in place because there is no wind.
The ships are also much more maneuverable than any sailing ship. Yes, a sailing ship can, with good math, skilled sailors, and proper sail shape and design sail against the wind. Your ships don't need any of that to sail against the wind... or against any currents... or any direction they please just by aiming your hydrokinesis wielders in a different direction.
Your ships basically don't have to worry about pirates or weather at all. On the open ocean, you can see threats like major storms or enemy ships from far off and then... just go around them long before they become a threat.
In fact, your civilization is much more likely to BE the pirates. They can operate very fast, very versatile crafts that are harder for other ships to spot and much much harder for other ships to avoid. Without the need for sails and masts, there is more room for personnel and cannons. There is also a very big incentive to destroy the masts of enemy ships so that they become dead in the water... yet still completely usable by your hydrokinetic civilization.
Sea monsters are a different problem. Churning up the sea to move your ship might attract beasts from the depths that a traditional sailing ship would not have attracted.
The most important side-effects of hydrokinesis probably include that your ship builders will think about building ships differently. The speed of a ship is no longer related to the number of masts and the size of the sails a ship can hold, but instead how many hydrokinesis wielders fit aboard. You no longer need any strong fabrics for actually constructing the sails. This means the ship building industry isn't reliant on the textile industry at all in this society.
In freshwater, your hydrokinesis society would not care too much about the flow of rivers. Any waterway is a high-speed low-cost transport highway. Small crafts with a lone hydrokinesis wielder are effectively jet-skis.
The only drawback is that once you start using hydrokinesis to create water jet powered crafts... your civilization is no longer actually 'sailing'.
[Answer]
As a plot device already used in the [Odyssey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey), controlling the winds is a great aid for navigation
>
> After the escape, Aeolus gave Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home.
>
>
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Having always favorable winds is a great aid, both in trade and war, even without the need of throwing a storm at your enemies/competitor.
Of course, if needed, you can scale up the effort and play seriously, but the effort has to be proportional to the gain, as in everything.
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This answer is somewhat of an addition to the other answers posted rather than a completely independent one.
I think you're asking two different questions here.
The first is the title question, what magic aids sailing the most and that's the one people have mostly answered and answered very effectively. But in the body of your question you say that this race is regarded as the best sailors around the world and their magic must play a role in that, but what role?
The reason these questions are different is that the magic which is best for sailing won't necessarily make your race known for being the best sailors.
For example:
A couple of answers have been the ability to grow fresh fruit and by implication fresh veg and potentially any plants on the ships. While on ships this means no scurvy on land this means your race just has an inexhaustible and completely reliable supply of food and drinking water, just juice the fruit, meaning their not the best sailors they're just the best. Their forts can't be taken by siege only by assault, their armies don't need to disband for the harvest as they don't have a harvest time and depending on how quickly the plants are grown their armies may not even need supply lines. Their style of warfare would probably just be to send raiding parties in to burn everyone else's crops and then when the inevitable famine happens just supply food in exchange for capitulation. Areas like deserts and mountains which are typically really inhospitable because its so hard to get food there suddenly become very desirable as that lack of food isn't an issue for them but is for their enemies.
Controlling the wind is useful on ships as it means your not beholden to the trade winds and you can't be becalmed. But on land it means you have an inexhaustible supply of power. For most of history if you needed large amounts of reliable constant power you either needed huge teams of people/animals working in shifts or a waterwheel both of which have drawbacks. People and animals can be anywhere but need a large infrastructure to feed and house them while waterwheels need a river strong enough to power it. Windmills where known about and used but wind power is notoriously unreliable and like waterwheels they can't be just placed anywhere they need constant wind to be useful. If you can control the wind though then that's everywhere. As an example of what they could do with it look up Sinhalese monsoon furnaces, people on Sri Lanka where using monsoon winds to make high quality steel in large amounts as early as 700ad and maybe as early as 300bc, so if your race can control the wind that's year long production of good steel centuries before anyone else. You could also use it to power sail driven chariots for communication or trade or even war, historically horses were only really used by the rich because they're very expensive to breed and maintain, sails are not. Or airships and hot air balloons, not hard to build and could be really useful for reconnaissance but the fickle nature of the wind makes them unreliable.
Controlling the sea with hydrokinesis is a bit a different and might be viable as it's not a huge help on land. River trade would be greatly enhanced but you couldn't supercharge waterwheels really as rivers only have so much water in them. The main problem with it is that if we're in a navel battle and I can literally control the sea in any meaningful way then I've won the battle. Which in turn means that this race won't be regarded as the best sailors, they'll be the only sailors. Everyone else will have to hire this race's ships or hire members of this race to crew their ships because if they don't their ships will at best be so out competed they'll be uneconomical or at worst they'll just get sunk.
Precognition which you mention yourself is also useful at sea but also super useful on land, military campaigns come to mind in particular. If you know what the enemy are planning maybe even before they know themselves, you will almost certainly dominate the battlefield. Similarly buffing the sailors while good at sea would also be really good in an army or just for your workers.
So I would suggest that the best magic would be something like the ability to tell the time once a day as mentioned in Tom's answer. Really useful specifically at sea for navigation but not for much else. However it wouldn't explain why they evolved a sea faring culture to start with.
The ability to breath underwater however would. As well as the advantages mentioned in Clair's answer it would also provide an incentive/justification for this race to live near the sea. Which in turn would mean they would evolve a sea faring culture and so have the most experience with ships and the sea and that could be why they are regarded as the best sailors. Also when they do have an accident which sinks their ship they're much less likely to die meaning they can learn from it further improving their skills. They're not so overpowered that they're the only people to sail the sea they're just the best.
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Most of what I thought of has already been said. It's all been good stuff. But there is always a few more idea when we come together.
Number one is what you mean by sailing. Just thinking about it summons romantic images of sailing across the cloudless seas. But, I even I like to forget some of less pleasant parts of a sailing ship.
Example... **BANG!** Your mast collapses. Its not the wind or weather, its just old, and old things break. Not to mention you went calling the port carpenter's father... well these things happen. It's not like that cheapskate would have done a good job anyways.
Now you have your seafaring species on board. Let's see what she can do, if they have genders anyways.
## Growing Trees and Manipulating Plants
I once read a story of elves singing to trees to grow them in certain shapes. In both building the ships and sailing them the magic power over would. Plus the dangers of the sea be they rock and cliffs or enemy ships and sea monsters. (I don't know the story or what they'll be facing).
**Lumber**
Naturally some of these you might be able to do at sea, but they are still useful.
* Building
* Repairing
* Adjusting the Draft
* Increase Cargo Space
* Increase Speed in Water
**Dangers of the Sea**
Rocks and cliffs or enemy ships and sea monsters. (I don't know the story or what they'll be facing).
* Strengthening the Wood for Impacts
* Manipulating the Wood to Maneuver
**Plants Aboard Ship**
Plants and Plant material can be very useful:
* Sailcloth: A wide variety of materials that from natural fibers, such as flax, hemp or cotton in forms of sail canvas.
* Birch and Pine Tar: In fantasy, used as a water repellent coating for boats, ships, and roofs.
**Food and Drink**
Always having fresh fruit by growing it from the ship itself
* Growing fresh fruit prevents scurvy, don't do scurvy.
* Fruit juice works as well, just add rum and you got grog.
**Tools**
I won't go through an exhaustive list but there is plenty that is made from plants not metal, and some metal ones' have wooden equivalents. And I haven't even mentioned rope and twine. You'll find rope everywhere on a sailing ship.
## Under the Sea
Now I am focusing on being underwater not controlling it for this section.
**The Crew's Worst Nightmare**
* Careening, the practice of grounding a sailing vessel at high tide, in order to expose one side of its hull for maintenance and repairs below the water line when the tide goes out. Maintenance might include repairing damage caused by dry rot or cannon shot, tarring the exterior to reduce leakage, or removing barnacles, to increase the ship's speed.
* You can just do it underwater in a cove. That way you don't have to beach the ship or pay for dry dock, which is perfect for pirates and explorers.
**The Crew's Greatest Joy**
* A sunken Treasure Ship or a submerged Sea Beast; Both worth a fortune.
* Both expeditions risky, but the crew would likely mutiny than miss the chance.
## An Example
I'm including the example for two reasons:
* Most of the advice seems to be about humans with magic not different races. I may sound contradictory, but, as bad as scurvy is, fish people just won't get it. And you should figure out how they work in nature and in relation to you're characters and plot
* I worked to get into the mindset type of writing advice you wanted. After an hour or so I realized I wrote a bit more than advice, but I'll leave it here because I think you'll find it helpful.
The Zussi are a group of frogmen clans. All is know is they came from a mangrove near the tropics and have the magical power to connect strongly with the mangrove trees and others although not as strongly. They can manipulate the trees and the extent depends on the tree and Zussi. In their barges you can hear a deep croaking chant. It is quite unnerving.
They keep there homes well-hidden in mangroves along the coasts. Unlike human ships their ships are living barges with long, stout branches that row as they chant. Most are merchants. They trade fish and fruit for an assortment of large bugs and small mammals. No accounting for taste, but it seems everyone likes chicken. Their staple in port is chicken or hare and crickets.
In battle? Not much is known. They mostly fight other clans of different color skins. Their boarding parties submerges before they board. They stay friendly for the most part, but their pirates are terrifying. I heard, if don't surrender, they rip out chunks of your hull underwater. Then they 'salvage'. But they're primitive and smart enough to know it. Just keep in mind, they can through a wooden javelin through a metal cuirass.
[Answer]
**Hydrokinesis**
1. *Nearly frictionless hull*. Holding a smooth film of water next to the hull will significantly reduce the drag produced by the hull material and any barnacles or similar that would disrupt the smooth flow of water around the hull.
2. *Always sailing 'downhill/downstream'*. Raising the water slightly at the stern of the ship will 'push' the ship forward with a steady acceleration, allowing high speeds to be reached. Moving the bulge to the fore of the ship (possibly combined with causing the film to shift to a 'braking' shape) would slow the ship.
3. *Turn on a dime*. By moving the water around the ship, the ship itself can be turned very quickly. Adding appropriate bulges would be needed if this was done while moving at high speeds.
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## Hypersurf
We live in a world of three dimensions, and sailors work in a world of two. But *these* sailors know that there is more to the sea than meets the eye - endless vistas of trackless wave where the ordinary mariner may briefly go astray, and in which the unluckiest may vanish never to be found. With their understanding of the higher-order connections of the sea, your special sailors can maneuver out of sight, gradually fading from the privateer's view in previously unnoticed mists, then arrive at their destination in a quarter of the expected time. Others who follow them are likely lost, or may arrive years later with preposterous tales of monsters and mythical islands where men have eyes in their chests and lack heads.
[Answer]
**Frame Challenge: Magic that Helps Sailing is Less Important than Other Factors**
Regardless of how good a race's magic is at sailing, they aren't going to sail if they are in a landlocked country. Britain had some of the best navy in the past, because they are from a small island nation.
Furthermore, shipbuilding and technological advancement is the the best way to ensure naval dominance. People in 18th century ships are not going stand a chance against a race with 20th century ships. There is a reason global travel has greatly increased in the last century. All the problems that can be solved with magic can also be solved with science.
Some minor racial characteristics can be significantly more beneficial to sailing than magic. For example, the ability to drink salt water.
Finally, being good at sailing is less important than having a purpose in sailing. Unless there is a reason for them to sail, it doesn't matter how good they are at it. A race that has some reason to be in deep waters a lot of their lives are going to be the best sailors.
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It depends on the things you allow. But looking from a physics standpoint and assuming mana has a loose connection to the amount of force you can generate, I would say that buffing the men on the ship would be the most efficient use of mana and spells.
A breeze across a flat plain contains immense amounts of energy, getting that energy out is the problem. Similarly conjuring up favorable winds would take immense amounts of forces and would likely distort the local weather systems, increasing the chance exceptional weather hits the ship and the mages need to recast their spells. But most of the energy wont even hit the sail, that's a lot of wastws energy!
Buffing your men and using oars to push the boat where you want to go would sound a lot less intensive in comparison. It would allow your oars to have much larger surface area without hindering the rowers in their speed. You can aim the ship more easily where you want, you need less men to change the direction of the sails you would likely still use and potentially you can keep your men healthy and protect them from disease and malnutritions like Scurvy. It also helps ashore where you can load/unload ships faster, keep up their energy on long voyages and fight when necessary.
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They should be thinking with portals. One of the best magical powers is **Teleportation**.
Together a crew can perform a magical ritual on the deck of their ship that opens up a magical portal that the ship can sail right into, and re-appear somewhere else, leagues away.
Of course if they just teleported from port A to port B, no one would consider them good sailors, and there's not much point in actually using ships, but you could get around that by saying that the ritual takes a while to perform, or requires a lot of open space, or requires salt water and a whale carcass as key components.
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I will attempt answering the question posited in the title by writing it up as a spell:
# Sailfish
**Target:** Part of hull in contact with water.
**Casting time:** 1 hour (ancestral ritual).
**Spell lasts for:** 2 hours per level for a maximum of one day and night (24 hours).
**Benefit:** Hull ignores inertia from water; travel speed thus equals wind speed.
**Cost:** 1 pound of pure gold dust, a merman’s fin, 1 pint of high-grade codliver oil, life-force.
This secret spell, passed down to first-born children for ages, has allowed the master sailing race to plow through the waters at speeds that seem impossible. Drawn from their inner magical abilities, they are able to channel forth the strength from their soul, inherited from their forebears from many generations ago. These ancient progenitors of their race were shore-dwelling people, able to swim to the deepest depths with ease, and in time developed magical abilities that allowed them to stay underwater longer than should be ‘humanly’ possible. Much time has passed since then, but the magical strength is still within them. Should a competing race somehow steal the secret of the spell from someone, they will be able to cast the spell, but at a terrible cost: Whilst the sea-faring race whom the spell originates with are able to regain the lost life-force over a full day and night of rest with the fresh ocean breeze revitalising them, this is not possible for other races, who do not have the connection to the sea-faring race’s ancestors for whom the spell is meant. Thus few from without have attempted it, and the few who have succeeded have horribly experienced that the price is far to dear to pay lest in the gravest of need.
# Note
The sailfish can achieve [speeds of nearly 70 mph](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/fastest-fish.html).
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Wind control has been mentioned by others, but as a variant, how about controlling water currents? If you could routinely do that, you could construct a boat that doesn't have a sail at all but an underwater surface that makes maximum use of the flow of the water around it, independently from the wind.
While wind magic affects you and your enemies alike, changing the water currents affects your specialized ships much more than the ones having to sail by the wind. You could more or less speed-boat around your enemy's ships.
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Another idea:
Wayfinding:
The elves of Tolkiens middle-earth were able to sail to valinor across a straight line, where any human who tried to do the same would sail the great circle of middle earth and never be able to reach valinor. A wayfinder could find the straight path between two locations and not have to sail across the great circle.
[Answer]
Definite *wind control*.
1. Incoming storm? Either blow it away or sail around it.
2. Poor navigation sent you to the wrong place? Sail around the coast until you find it.
3. **SPEED**. You'll get where you're going a *lot* faster.
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[Question]
[
The saying goes "*in dose venenum*", meaning that it's the dose to make the poison.
This comes from the consideration that any substance, after a certain dose, becomes lethal. However, past the minimum lethal dose, the substance will stay lethal.
I am toying with the idea of a two thresholds poison: this substance is lethal only above a dose X and below a dose Y, with Y>X>0. In all other dosages it is not lethal. In symbols, 0 < X < lethal dose < Y
Is there any biological, chemical or physical mechanism which can explain the above behavior? Or should I just explain with handwavium?
[Answer]
As noted, I feel like [my answer to a previous question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/113302/32016) will also apply here.
What you're looking for is an **emetic**: a substance that induces vomiting. Your X threshold remains the point at which a dose becomes lethal, but the Y threshold becomes the point at which the emetic properties kick in and you throw all the poison back up before it can enter your bloodstream, thus saving your life.
While there's no real-world substance that's fatally poisonous *below* the dose at which it induces vomiting, you can simply invent your own, and just tweak the X and Y thresholds until they're just right for your story.
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One possibility would be a mixture of a poison that binds to a cell receptor and a lower concentration of a non-poison that binds more strongly to the same receptor (i.e. an antagonist with higher affinity).
With a small dose, the non-poison only binds to a fraction of the receptors; the poison binds to the remaining ones and the target dies.
With a large dose, the non-poison binds to all the receptors and blocks the poison, so the poison has no effect.
This is more or less how heroin and the antidote naloxone work; the naloxone binds strongly to the same receptors as heroin, but has no effect itself, so it reverses the action of heroin. (At least that's what I've read; I have no personal experience.)
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I can imagine a solution, but it's gross.
The poison can have two effects. One mild effect if that it will cause very mild nausea. This effect kick in quite fast, in the first minutes. The second effect is the lethal effect (paralysis of the lungs, for example, or any other), but the substance provocking this second effect is hard to digest, and it doesn't enter the blood flow before a few hours.
Below the first threshold, the body can fight the first effect and experience something between no effect at all to near death depending on the dose, the victim health, etc. Above the first threshold, the victim feels nauseous but not enough to actually give its breakfast back to earth, and die a few hours later. Above the second threshold, the victim handwave their stomach content and can expect only trace amount of poison to enter their system.
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The poison doesn't actually kill you, it just makes you thrash around uncontrollably, jump off cliffs, swim out into shark-infested waters, start fights with large predators, and take assorted other actions that shorten your lifespan.
At a high enough dose, though, you pass out, sleep it off, and wake up with nothing worse than a hangover.
[Answer]
Nanites! The poison was designed by a xenophobic warlord long ago, to kill off strangers and newcomers to the defended lands. All original citizens of these lands were inoculated with large populations of the nanites long ago. When they have children, those children have large colonies of the nanites within them even from the moment of their birth. All of the fruits, vegetables and livestock in the defended lands also contain living nanites.
When a newcomer to the lands eats something (or when exported nanite-infested crops are eaten by people not from the lands), the newly ingested nanites realize that they are alone in this consumer. which is the trigger for their primary function. That function is to kill the consumer who is obviously not a native of the defended lands.
With this kind of setup, eating one defended lands apple would be fatal to an outsider, but pulverizing a dozen apples into sauce and drinking it all down at once might provide them with a large enough initial nanite population size that they can be mistaken for being a defended lands native.
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Actually alcohol tainted with methanol has exactly this effect. Ethanol is more preferred on the metabolic pathway than methanol. As long as you're sufficiently drunk, your body will be occupied with ethanol and will not try to metabolise methanol, which means methanol will exit body through urine.
However if you only drink smaller amount of tainted alcohol, the methanol in it will be metabolised into formic acid which is fatal even in small concentrations.
Sadly, this is not just a theory. [In 2012, tainted alcohol has entered Czech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Czech_Republic_methanol_poisonings) market and to this day, has claimed 51 lives. People who drunk it with no moderation at all ended up better than those who drunk with moderation.
[Answer]
pH.
It itself is highly acidic. In small doses, it's poisonous payload is activated (say the pH has to be slightly above the normal pH of some part of the digestive tract). In larger doses, it inactivates itself and passively moves through the system. Play with the numbers to get the values where you want them and in accordance with a normal digestive system. I'm sure a buffering compound could be worked in which acts as the trigger (or possibly even to prevent the poison from activating).
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**Addictive Alkaloids:**
Your population is all hopelessly addicted to powerful stimulants. If they don't get enough, they are listless and apathetic. A tiny dose is enjoyable. A moderate amount of poison is lethal because it alters brain chemistry but doesn't stimulate enough to have the full drug effect - their bodies will shut down and die. If they get lots, the poison shifts their metabolism and they feel invincible, smart, and happy. The drug effects outlast the presence of the poison, so they don't die as the poison leaves their body/breaks down.
A similar approach could work for Opiates. None makes you miserable and withdrawn. A tiny amount blocks pain. A moderate amount stops you from breathing. A LOT causes you to go into a hibernation-like state where your body doesn't suffer metabolic harm (my favorite quote from an ER doc was "The hypothermia saved his life"). Same breakdown, so you don't die as you come down/come out of hibernation.
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This substance is a meat dish made from a [poisonous animal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poisonous_animals).
In the wild, this animal exudes some poison over its skin in order to protect itself from predators, in addition to using it on its prey. As with most venomous species, the antidote is also obtained from the same animal; they need not to intoxicate themselves with its poisoned prey, so they naturally a generate an antitoxin as well, which is present inside their body.
This is a very appreciated dish by the noble families of this country, with its own protocol on how to eat it (just as most of their plates). As it happens, the guests will be eating a poisonous, outer piece, then an inner one afterwards which neutralizes it, and so on. This mixture is what provides its particular taste, so highly valued (actually the consequence that you start getting poisoned then immediately an antivenom, then some more poison and so on). The wine that is traditionally served with this dish also happens to cancel some of the poison activity.
It is also possible that some of the noblemen which use eat this animal on special feasts, have developed some immunity to this poison.
However, if someone from the group of the newly-arrived ambassador which was being honored with this *summum* of their culinary art didn't eat the whole piece served, or was picky about the parts they took… they could have ingested a lethal dose of the poison, but not enough antivenom to counter it.
That could cause quite a diplomatic issue.
Note that the aristocracy doesn't generally know the details about this, or that this dish involves taking a poison. From time to time, someone gets a bit ill after a banquet, but given the amounts of food served, that's not surprising.
Also keep in mind that this animal needs to be cooked right. If you overcook it, you would cancelling the outer venom, and it would lose its special flavor!
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I have 2 solutions both at my knowledge do not exist IRL:
* A solution may be that at high concentration the substance reacts with something in the blood like albumin or with itself, aggregating and becoming inoperant.
* The second solution when it reaches a high enough concentration it triggers a chemical reaction from the body either immunologic or purely chemical leading to the inactivation of the substance.
[Answer]
Your "poison" is electric charge delivered through clever use of pill coating materials.
The lethality of electric shock [reaches a peak between 100-200mA](https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/physics/p616/safety/fatal_current.html), with shocks of lower current being less able to affect the heart, and shocks of higher current tending to clamp the heart completely, which it is often able to recover from.
Such a poison would require very sophisticated (definitely futuristic) and expensive manufacturing; it could involve putting an extremely high charge on conductive nanoparticles, then coating those particles in a layer of specialized material that is highly insulating and soluble at a slow and predictable rate. Once ingested, the particles would naturally disperse fairly evenly throughout the body (they would repel each other.)
With enough precise control of the coating thickness, the particles could all lose their insulation within a fraction of a second of each other. If the victim is grounded at that moment, they will receive a dose of current proportional to the number of particles ingested as all of the charge flees to the grounding point(s). (If not, they'll receive it when they're next grounded.) Depending on the number of particles ingested, you could have a dose < X causing unpleasant muscle spasms, a dose > Y causing burns and reversible cardiac arrest, or a dose between X and Y causing irreversible cardiac arrest and certain death.
Some interesting properties of this approach:
* If the victim receives dose X/2 at 9pm, and dose X/2 and 10pm, the doses will not add up to a lethal dose, even if the release period is longer than an hour. Two separate releases will occur.
* The basic version of the poison would be trivially detectable, but you could imagine more sophisticated and expensive versions which include masking of the charge with the opposite signed charge with a different coating.
* If the victim is grounded through another person at the time of release, that person will receive an approximately equal dose. In this way, the "poison" can affect someone who was never dosed, but who is touching a dosed person.
The factor that requires mild hand-waving is the feasibility of near-simultaneous release of the soluble insulators. If you prefer, you could explain this with nanomachines, which would increase the technology level.
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[Question]
[
This question is inspired by Green's [Volcanoes in Orbit!](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/96943/627) The premise is that there is a 50-mile-high shield volcano (again, let's ignore the height implausibility) with a slope of about 2-3 degrees, at its base. In my case, this is a rare [pyroclastic shield volcano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroclastic_shield). I calculated that if the mean slope is maybe 4 degrees, then the volcano should have a diameter of roughly 900 km. That is a *lot* of usable land - the size of a decent-sized country!
I figured that people might as well as use this land for something - mainly the extreme lower slopes (i.e. up to 5,000 - 10,000 feet). You might see small towns and farming communities. The problem, of course, is that if the volcano erupts, it will likely release pyroclastic flows that will surge down the mountain, destroying or burying most things in their path.
Now, people would have 2-3 hours' notice of an eruption, given the typical speed of these flows, and so they could prepare. They'd need to either evacuate or shelter in place, preferably protecting their town (or both) in some way. My current idea calls for domes about 1 km in diameter, 500 meters tall, that come up from the ground to encircle each small town (and yes, these would be *very* small settlements - more like villages than towns.
Just to be clear, I have the above setup well-planned out. I'm not asking about any of that.
There is going to be a chance that someone may be outside when the flow hits, either doing maintenance on the dome or trying to escape in vain. There's also the possibility of trying to survive if a dome collapses. I'd like to design them a survival suit that will save them from the extreme heat and forces. The person may end up buried in ash, but they can survive for a short amount of time, and maybe (just maybe) be rescued.
What would be the best material to make this suit out of, using current technology? It would need to be resistant to temperatures of hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit, as well as possibly protecting the wearer from impacts from ejecta. Obviously, it does need to be wearable, flexible, and hopefully not too bulky (although bulkiness is okay, if need me). If there's no possible material, then that's also fine.
---
By the way, [**fire suits are not very effective**](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/a/4484/1399) in many cases; I had considered them but have since rejected the idea.
[Answer]
# No
You don't make a suit to survive a pyroclastic cloud. Much like a hurricane the problem isn't that the wind is blowing; the problem is **what** the wind is blowing.
Sure you could make a 4 ton mech suit; won't stop it from getting trashed by a 6 ton flaming rock.
A pyroclastic cloud is much like an avalanche, only that it can contain temperatures hot enough to melt steel and gases capable of killing you in seconds.
Your only option is find very strong cover, tuck your head between your legs, and pray.
---
**For your education on pyroclastic flows:**
Here is a link to Wikipedia on the eruption of [Mount St. Helens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens)
* You are talking about an explosion equal to the strength of several nuclear explosions
* Temperatures hot enough to melt steel
* Rock debris the size of boulders traveling at speeds greater than 200 mph
* Toxic gases that can liquefy lungs in as little as a few breaths
There is no engineerable solution that a human could wear to survive these conditions outside the realms of futuristic science fiction (which if allowed I prefer personal energy shields).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/B79mY.jpg)
Survivors of pyroclastic clouds usually survive from sheer luck and that they found a strong structure to hide behind/in, like a mine shaft .
---
**Upon Realization of other facts**
The target radius of this pyroclastic cloud is 800km at least (as the stated distance subject settlements experiencing a pyroclastic flow could be found in). Not to be confused with rock slides or lahars.
The effective radius of the Mount St. Helens pyroclastic cloud was only 31km which **means this cloud needs more than 16X the energy of Mount St. Helens** to reach the described area of effect. Also the heat blast from that eruption killed trees far beyond the knock down zone used in the calculation above.
Not even thermonuclear warheads have this kind of yield (individually).
[Answer]
# Make a balloon suit instead of a fire suit
Protecting a person from the dangers specified will require all the available payload space they have, ie, knights in shining armor don't carry anything else except for their armor and weapon. A suit that can withstand the temperatures, heat and pressures involved in a fast moving pyroclastic flow will be difficult or impossible to build unless the suit carries a robust power source, possibly in the megawatt range. Assuming this suit isn't really an exoskeleton that can carry itself plus the occupant, some trade-offs will need to be made in the level of protection provided.
Keeping someone cool when in such close proximity to super heated air will require active cooling (which is heavy to carry) along with some extremely good thermal insulation (also heavy). Combine this with impact armor to fend off the very heavy rocks that will be wrapped up in the flow; all told this is going to be very heavy and highly restrict the workers movement. For someone out hiking on the plains around the volcano carrying that much equipment will be unacceptable; especially if eruptions are fairly uncommon. For a worker, operating at heights who also may need to be moving heavy things as a part of repairs, being weighed down with a powersupply, rigid armor and HVAC unit strapped to their back will be the utmost in inconvenience. This sounds very much like an armored version of the [Manned Maneuvering Unit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Maneuvering_Unit) (MMU). The MMU weighed over 300lbs fully loaded, I don't see how adding impact armor to that will make it any lighter.
So, let's not try to solve unsolvable problems. The best approach will be to get that person up and out of the pyroclastic flow's path as quickly as possible. The OP states that there should be many minutes or hours of warning from when a flow commences.
**Requirements**
* Must be man portable, the lighter the better. The smaller the entire package the better.
* Must permit the user to move and work while wearing the suit.
* If not worn, the suit must be very easy to put on quickly.
* Must be easy to disassemble and test.
* Must aide in discovery and rescue efforts
* Must prevent the wearer from going too high; avoid hypoxia conditions.
Any escape method involving an engine will fail because it's too heavy. Non-rigid wings like a paraglider won't work because you can't be assured that you'll have a nice slope to run down for take-off. Hang-gliders suffer from the same problem as paragliders in addition to bulkiness.
The "suit" is actually just a lightweight harness or seat attached to a very large mylar ballon. In addition, there's a bottle of highly compressed helium to inflate the ballon. (I'm handwaving that a bottle strong enough to hold sufficient compressed helium isn't also very heavy. Perhaps it will at least be compact.) The suit should also have a gas scrubber in it since you may very likely drift into the volcano's fumes.
The point of this suit is not to survive direct contact with a pyroclastic flow but to avoid the flow altogether. Surviving contact **and** maintaining something that is man portable with current or near-future tech this is impossible. Full stop.
# Intent and Limitations
The design of this suit assumes that there is ample warning of the arrival of the flow for the balloon suit to be setup and put aloft. Without warning, this suit won't save you. Since you're already aloft and the shock wave of the initial explosion is many tens of kilometers away, if you can get significantly above the flow, you should be okay. Highly turbulent air around the flow might suck you down but then you just got unlucky. Sorry. This suit is also not designed for escape from locations close to the initial explosion as those can send smoke, ash and rock many tens of thousands of feet in the air, well above a humans ability to breath.
## Balloon Suit Procedures
1. Identify that the flow is coming and escape is impossible any other way.
2. Unpack harness and seat. Put this on.
3. Ensure the Mylar ballon attachment points are corrected linked to your harness. You don't want to get 100 feet up then realize that only one link is done.
4. Inflate the balloon. The balloon should have sufficient capacity to lift a 250lb man.
5. Ensure that the balloon has inflated then drift up into the sky. You made it!
6. The balloon should automagically manage height for you to prevent hypoxia.
# Weakness
* The balloon may have a tear in it or get a tear in it. This is a fatal failure. Helium balloons don't produce lift with a big hole in them.
* You may drift into the volcano itself. In this case, you still die but at least you died with a good view.
* Safeties to keep you below 10,000 feet fail and you die of hypoxia/exposure. Again, at least you got a good view.
* Land in the water and drown. Today just isn't your lucky day. At least you didn't burn to death.
# Recovery Efforts
Mylar film and most anything made out of aluminum will be highly reflective to radar. After an eruption, the local air traffic controllers can look for slowly drifting dots on their radar to identify people who have escaped the eruption and may need rescuing.
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No, nothing you could carry will allow *you* to survive a pyroclastic flow, and nothing that cannot survive a large bomb explosion will survive one either.
THis is what the forces involved can do, this was a steel reinforced concrete column, that has had several *inches* of its surface scoured away by a single event, the forces involved also ripped the top off bending the steel rebar in the direction of the flow. And that is before you get to the heat and toxic gasses.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hylGe.jpg)
If you try to resist the flow you die, period. Getting pushed along with the flow is slightly more survivable, in the sense that getting hit by a freight train then dumped in a fireball is more survivable than getting thrown in an industrial meat grinder.
Worse as as shield volcano the rare pyroclastic flow will be mostly explosive flows, which do things like this. That was a tree. You are basically asking for a portable ground zero nuclear blast shelter.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uZMgr.jpg)
You do not describe pyroclastic flows, you do not have hours of warning you have seconds. You may be thinking of ash falls or possibly gas surge, those are potentially survivable and ash falls give some warning.
You describe a impossibly large volcano but that does not change the physics. That only leaves you with two options either the volcano is shallow enough to that the flows never come anywhere near the villages, dissipating its energy long before then, or it is steep enough to keep up the energy needed to keep the flow moving in which case the villages have a few seconds of warning becasue the flow is moving near the speed of sound.
Remember a pyroclastic flow is moving many tons of material with friction being the dominate force, the further it need to to travel the more energy and thus velocity it needs\*. [This](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002JB002024/full) is the simplest accurate (enough) model of a pyroclastic flow distance, speed, slope relationship, modeling it as a pseudo-fluid. [This](http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/467/2129/1348) one is more accurate but the math is much more difficult. As you can see the friction generated is immense, the only way to overcome this is with very high energy, which means either a very steep slope or a very short distance. \*To be fair there are slow moving flows but they don't occur on shield volcanoes and need some rather unusual conditions.
Since they are mass/friction driven and to keep it running for 1000km plus (radius at listed angle) requires a tremendous amount of force, to the point it is less a pyroclastic flow and more a shock wave for the majority of its travel distance. It is also impossible to achieve for a low slope volcano, so if you want a pyroclastic flow to reach your villagers they need to either live really close to the top (in which case distance is not a factor), or your volcano needs to be a lot steeper in which case the speed is so high the distance is a minor factor. Slarty is right as described the flow is not reaching the people at all or it is doing so in seconds.
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Pyroclastic flows might not be able to reach the lower levels of such a volcano. In part because at such extreme altitude there would be very little air present which would hinder the formation of pyroclastic flows. Also the distance of travel from the top is rather extreme for such a flow.
But assuming neither of these factors were sufficient to prevent the arrival of such a flow there should be plenty of warning and the best solution would be to get into a sealable underground shelter which might be built in pyroclastic flow danger areas. Several metres of rock should provide enough insulation from the flow. Supplies of oxygen and a carbon dioxide scrubber could be installed to extend the time they would be useable for.
Unfortunately there is no special suit that can protect against the extreme forces of a pyroclastic flow.
If anyone had to venture far off track in pyroclastic flow country where there were no shelters I don't think any form of suit would save them, but there are two other possibilities:
**Carry a portable shelter**
This would be very bulky and inconvenient and would need to be contained in a vehicle but it should be possible to provide a degree of protection. Here’s my suggestion:
On receiving the warning the vehicle could be positioned so as to face away from the flow. Large steel shutters could be carried to deflect the worst of the flow over or around the vehicle. These could be erected quickly and anchored into the ground by drilling holes and using some suitable expanding bolt. Inside the vehicle would be a large steel drum with various layers of insulating material inside it perhaps half a metre thick, the team would enter this shelter by a sealable hatch and oxygen/carbon dioxide scrubber would be carried as previously described.
**Carry an escape rocket**
Plan B the truck carries an escape rocket. A small capsule capable of carrying 2-4 people. Think 4 ejector seats with the back of each forming a square covered by a light conical shell. Underneath a large rocket either solid or better still storable [hypergolic propellants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergolic_propellant)
When the team are inside they trigger the launch. The rocket guidance system automatically communicates with a central system that broadcasts the size and direction of the flow. The rocket guidance system then launches the rocket on a trajectory that moves the team out of harm’s way. Thwy can then eject and parachute to the ground many many miles away.
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Going in the direction opposite to @Green, you could carry a suit that is designed for burial under the flow. The suit/kit would have the following items:
* A set of explosive charges and a shovel to get you deep enough under ground to avoid getting roasted. Some hand waving might be required for something like this to dig a narrow hole straight down instead of making a cone.
* A radio transmitter/satellite phone or whatever is plausible to transmit the coordinates of your burial site to home-base *before* the eruption reaches you/them.
* An inflatable plug either made out of incredibly good insulation, or having a heat shield at the top. This will plug up the hole once you are inside, and keep the flow from actually reaching you. Aerogel with something like space shuttle tiles on top of it might work.
* A compressed air supply, enough to last for the duration of an average eruption. Something along the lines of a souped-up SCUBA or a firefighter's tank should do.
* Some device to produce mechanical vibrations for an extended period of time. This would be activated once the eruption was over to help pin-point your location for rescue parties. Especially useful if a boulder covers your hole. An EM signal like a radio would probably be better, but it might not penetrate the tons of rock surrounding you. In either case, you are relying on the rescuers having received your exact location from before the eruption.
* A poison capsule or something similar in case you get buried for too long and it does not look like you are going to make it.
If it works, the chances of immediate death are reduced greatly since you are not likely to drift off or be battered by the flow. There will still be a danger of the plug collapsing, as well as being buried too long, but over all it would significantly increase the chances of survival.
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**Your shield volcano is unlikely to make a pyroclastic flow.**
<http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/shieldvolc_page.html>
bold emphasis mine
>
> Shield volcanoes are broad, low-profile features with basal diameters
> that vary from a few kilometers to over 100 kilometers (e.g., the
> Mauna Loa volcano, Hawaii). Their heights are typically about 1/20th
> of their widths. The lower slopes are often gentle (2-3 degrees), but
> the middle slopes become steeper (~10 degrees) and then flatten at the
> summit. This gives shield volcanoes a flank morphology that is convex
> in an upward direction. **Their overall broad shapes result from the
> extrusion of very fluid (low viscosity) basalt lava that spreads
> outward from the summit area**, in contrast to the vertical accumulation
> of airfall tephra around scoria-cone vents, and the build-up of
> viscous lava and tephra around stratovolcanoes. Cross-sections through
> shield volcanoes reveal numerous thin flow units of pahoehoe basalt,
> typically < 1 m thick. **Pyroclastic deposits are minor (< 1%)** and of
> limited dispersal, generally from flank eruptions associated with
> parasitic scoria cones, or from rare, localized hydrovolcanic
> eruptions.
>
>
>
Shield volcanoes produce liquid basaltic flows. These are destructive too but move along overland in an orderly manner. I have amused myself considering how flows of this sort might be diverted using giant barriers, large explosives, seawater jets to harden the lateral aspect, or the like.
There is no diverting a pyroclastic flow because it is moving through the air and the ground both and it is moving fast.
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Well, from your description, you want the people who are not in the villages or out in the open to be protected. You just need to place strategic shelters and give everyone who needs to go outside a device that can ping the nearest shelter and show a direction to it (or the device could just come pre-installed with the locations). Of course, since you're talking about suits or dome like structures that can shield from extreme heats, I'm assuming this is a high-tech era.
Since people will have a few hours advance notice of the danger, you don't even need that many shelters around. It would be easy to even walk to the nearest shelter (in an hour or so). A maximum of two hours of walking between shelters would ensure that you can get to the nearest one in one hour or less.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5ZkxU.png)
The shelters will not be as strong as the village enclosures of course, but the same goes for a suit. Though, these could even be holes in the ground, not really needing actual dome like structures as in the case of villages or expensive materials as in the case of a suit.
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In 1902 [Mount Pelée](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pel%C3%A9e) erupted and shot a pyroclastic flow over the city of St Pierre de la Martinique. There were many explicit warnings: tremors, ashes raining, small eruptions, blasts of sulfur, etc... however the city had not been evacuated, because an election was taking place.
The local politicians who had decided not to evacuate all died, along with about 30-40.000 people.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/K2amS.jpg)
([source](http://ancarpost.org/picture.php?/3834))
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/L05Wy.jpg)
([source](http://www.bellemartinique.com/la-martinique/zoom-sur-la-martinique/leruption-de-la-montagne-pelee/))
There were three survivors, and the one who is of interest here is [this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludger_Sylbaris). He was in jail, most specifically inside this solitary confinement cell:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RJIwW.jpg)
>
> His cell was without windows, ventilated only through a narrow grating in the door facing away from the volcano. His prison was the most sheltered building in the city, and it was this fact that saved his life. The cell in which he survived still stands today.
>
>
>
So, this looks like a suitable shelter. Very thick walls, curved top, and high thermal mass. The door was not facing the flow so it held, however the super heated air still leaked inside the building and he suffered severe burns.
Another [survivor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Comp%C3%A8re-L%C3%A9andre) had trouble remembering, but:
>
> The most scientifically viable theory is that Leon jumped into the ocean when the flow hit, and while the now boiling water severely burned him, he otherwise escaped unharmed;[citation needed] other accounts suggest that he survived by "napping in [his] wood cellar"
>
>
>
**Conclusion**
From this data, the shelter needs to be able to resist:
* burning air and toxic gases
Requires either an airtight shelter, or an airtight suit with a can of compressed air. Filters don't work when there is too much ash.
* high temperature (but not for very long)
Needs insulation or simply thermal mass. If Sylbaris' cell had been airtight, he wouldn't have been burned. The thermal mass would have protected him. The wooden door held, the problem was it wasn't airtight.
* high pressure shock wave, hurricane force wind, large rocks rolling very fast
Unless you got a personal flummoxon shield generator, nothing wearable will work. These will also destroy your "1km wide dome" since force is pressure times area, by the way. To survive a hit, a dome needs to be small, for example concrete dome houses.
Anyway, you need to bury some of these at regular intervals:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rcaZw.jpg)
They're pretty cheap, also they have two exits! They are also very strong when protected by a few feet of dirt on top. Nice thing is that you already have them if your country has storm drains or a sewage system. Installing them is part of making roads, so you also have them for free.
The difficult part is the airtight seal. It would be expensive and require maintenance, so this will be the wearable part.
It could be a variant of the hamster ball proposed in another answer. This wraps around the user. It needs to withstand very high temperatures though. The layer of air between the two concentric "hamster balls" would provide a modicum of insulation, but not much. However the pyroclastic flow doesn't last very long, so the heat capacity of the body could be enough. It would probably be very uncomfortable.
A better solution: a bag which would inflate with quickly expanding foam. Handwave the material to be heat-resistant and quick to harden (not PUR foam, please, maybe instant-aerogel!). So you crawl into a pipe or a sewer, and inflate this bag, it will expand until forming a nice seal inside the pipe. Same at the other end of the pipe if it is open. Now, the heat capacity of the pipe and the surrounding dirt is on your side, so you will stay cool.
Then you wait it out with your air canister (or rebreather) and cut through the foam with a knife, saw, pocket laser or folding shovel when you want to get out. It can also self-decompose after a few hours if you can handwave the technology.
It is also transparent to radio waves, which comes in handy when you want to make a call.
[Answer]
## Inflatable hamster balls.
Have each person carry a backpack-sized survival kit that contains a ton of heat-resistant material and pressurized gas. When triggered, the hamster ball would surround the person in heat-resistant fabric and a thick, cushiony layer of air.
When they actually get hit with the pyroclastic flow, they'll be thrown out of the way and to safety- although they may end up bouncing all the way down the mountain if they don't have a way to deflate it internally. The mental image I have is something like a [zorb](https://www.zorb.com/page/homepage):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/agfQi.jpg)
Additionally, it's imaginable that the pressurized gas contains an oxygen component, allowing the survivor to breathe safely even if they do end up buried in ash. That'd increase your flammability, but I personally would be willing to take that risk- a 20% oxygen atmosphere isn't likely to spontaneously ignite and will give you a long breathing time.
---
EDIT: Some numbers, after requested by the comments. Diameter of hamster ball 2m, thickness of [heat shielding](https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Hot-Sale-Heat-Resistant-1mm-Clear_60683438920.html?s=p) = 1mm, density of shielding = 1.4g/cm$^3$, weight of air = 1.2kg/m$^3$. That gives us an absolute minimum of 5kg. The rest of the math depends on the compression technology available, but modern tech would probably be able to get it down to about the size of a scuba bottle, which adds another ~10kg. Not bad for a survival suit.
The perk of this method is that it isn't trying to survive being buried underneath a pyroclastic flow- it's going to be hit by the first object in the flow and either be thrown or carried away from the most dangerous parts. Imagine trying to hit a ping-pong ball with water from a hose.
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It's not possible. Lets suppose you have a magical air supply and a magical perfect insulator and you're behind something sufficient to protect you from the direct physical impact. (The latter is actually feasible--blast yourself a crater--it won't stop something dropping on you but it will channel most of it past.)
For a typical adult male I find a survival time of about half an hour before your own body heat kills you. Women have an even shorter survival time because they're smaller. (And note that I'm using just the basal metabolism. In practice you're going to have been exerting yourself, the time is even shorter.)
Now, for how to survive: You're a long way from the source of the eruption, the pyroclastic flow isn't going to be all that thick. You're going to need a survival vehicle that you take along if you're going too far from the shelters. Hop in, when the flow gets close you push the button and some solid rocket boosters kick you up a few miles. (You'll need an oxygen mask.) Once the boosters drop off you're left with a paramotor, deploy the chute at the top of your trajectory and fly away--the deadly flow is below you and you're going to be able to stay up a long time.
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It sounds like you want a situation where the disaster of a volcano is imminent, and so manageable as to be routine and not a disaster. Bad news, it's not a disaster.
Agreeing wholeheartedly with [Will](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/97381/what-wearable-material-do-i-need-to-survive-a-pyroclastic-flow/97405#97405), **pyroclastic flows blow things up.** Here you should read 'things' to include, especially, **shield volcanoes.**
Since water is the usual ingredient in causing a pyroclastic flow on a shield volcano, you're doubly safe because the atmosphere is really boring 50 miles up - it doesn't rain on Earth even 5 miles up.
If you did, somehow, manage to have some sort of highly porous rock that connected an ocean to a lava flow, and manage to keep not only that flow going uphill, but not going so much as to destroy your preposterously high volcano, you have another problem. You've minimized the size of the pyroclastic event which means that the volcano erupting 450 km away is [barely worth talking about](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull) - the fiery, noxious gasses will be dispersed, cooled, and somewhat neutralized by simply existing in the atmosphere in view of the sun.
If, instead, you're worried about lava (which is far more likely, given that it's a shield volcano), tons of people live [really close to active volcanoes](https://www.google.com/maps/place/K%C4%ABlauea/@19.5817571,-155.4399575,9.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x7953da0aba317e0d:0x205a2df987301b9b!8m2!3d19.4068929!4d-155.2833786), but your volcano is huge. If lava managed to flow for the hundreds of kilometers from the caldera to the edge where humans lived (wildly unlikely), the odds of a human seeing the flow are minuscule unless the humans literally ring the entire volcano, including the riverbeds where the lava is likely to flow.
In other words, your volcano is too big to make the disaster routine and imminent.
[Answer]
## How do you survive this?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CQbdz.jpg)
This is a pyroclastic flow. It's superheated gases (1000°C) pushing debris that can be the size of houses down the mountain. Since the gases are heavier than air, they tend to offer a cushion between the ground and the material which can help propel the tephra at speeds up to 400 mph. This is a superheated avalanche.
If we were talking lava flow, I think you could create something that can survive. But a pyroclastic flow as so much inertia and kinetic energy, I just don't see how you can build a suit to survive the impact, even with one of those mech warrior style suits.
**Did you mean lava flow?**
If we were talking about lava, I think you could create a suit that survives.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZBvaY.jpg)
There are materials such as carbon-x that can survive the heat. There are materials such as ceramat which can help insulate your body from the heat outside the suit. In addition, plates can be manufactured from ceramics that will offer further heat protection, or use as an insulator for your heels.
Lava flows generally form a crust on the surface as it flows away from the caldera. This acts as an insulator which helps the flow remain liquid and travel greater distances. You can walk on lava like this with street shoes. Well, until it suddenly isn't firm.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wv7CB.jpg)
If you have to escape on a more liquid lava, the thing that would make the survival more likely would be a modified version of snow shoes to distribute your weight. If you could walk on top of the crust, you could escape. The problems become evident if you ever spend time staring at a lava flow. Sometimes that crust gives away from it's own weight and collapses into the liquid below. Maybe that adds drama to your story, but it also adds drama to your survival.
The gases and air around a lava flow are super hot. You'd need a Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) because the air will be so hot it will instantly scar your lungs. The particulates from the silica will do the same thing. The other issue with lava in liquid form is that it tends to stick to things, then harden. Think of how mud works when walking through deep mud. It's hard to walk, mud sticks to your shoes, your clothes, but unlike mud, lava hardens into stone which makes mobility even harder.
Good luck with living on your volcano. It sounds intriging.
[Answer]
[The evidence of pyroclastic surges in the Vesuvius area AD 79](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2886100/ "Here is some research that might help")
[The Boat Sheds, a short video on the BBC](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p016v5y0 "snippet from BBC program")
In the video snippet at about 10 seconds in you can see the depth of the ash deposited by the flows, the sheds where the original ground level the cliffs behind them were formed by the flows.
The heat (min 250c) and speed (100mph ave) of the flow will be the first two things to survive, anything not significantly unmovable could be destroyed by a flow. The impact damage can vary so smaller protection areas might easily survive a full on hit, it would depend on the exact nature of that flow, some are more super heated ash some contain small rocks and other debris much like a hurricane picks up as mentioned earlier. The heat can reach temperatures so great as to boil your brain in an instant and melt steel in seconds. Then you have to deal with the weight of the ash deposited by the flow on top of your protection a blanket that has buried you under tens of meters of hot ash and rock.
I would say that the best survival option for living in an area where this is common enough to be a worried would to go under ground.
Have the small towns be mostly a few meters below the surface, with the above ground buildings being made of easy to replace materials such as wood. The under ground parts of the shelter towns connected by tunnels to each other and supplies stores that could allow people to survive for several weeks without having to go topside.
Emergency exits may have to be built many miles away from the towns in case the flows are large enough to permanently block the normal exits from the underground town shelters.
[Answer]
I believe the material you are looking for is [aerogel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel). It has an extremely low heat conductivity. However passive insulation won't be enough. Breathing near the flows will torch the lungs of anyone unlucky enough to be caught off guard. A breathing apparatus will be necessary in addition to protective gear.
Take a look at [fire proximity suits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_proximity_suit) to get an idea of the equipment necessary to survive high temperature.
] |
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In various fantasy settings, female combatants are quite common. There is a history of [women in the military](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_combat) in real life but such women were generally rare and often hid their identity. Warfare was generally seen as the domain of men in many different cultures.
In an alternate world, a new culture arises in the Middle East. This culture is very big on gender equality. Men and women equally share every job and position in society. This includes the military. This culture often gets into land and naval battles with its more patriarchal neighbors. Said neighbors only have men serving in the military.
My fictional culture has actually no sexism but they are still composed of humans. Women are still generally smaller and weaker than men. For that and other reasons, my egalitarian nation(s) could potentially be at a disadvantage in warfare. As technology progresses however, warfare is less and less dependent on the physical capabilities of the average foot soldier. For this reason and others, there are far more women serving in the military in modern times than there were in the past (but it is still far from 50% even in 2023).
With all else being equal (population, weapons, competence, etc.) At what technological level will the mixed-gender military not be at a disadvantage compared to the single-gender military? Could having a large number of ancient female warriors actually be a viable decision? Or is that only strategically wise in a post-industrial or even post-modern military setting?
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There are a few technological thresholds that need to be achieved in order to enable a society to use women in its military without putting itself at a major disadvantage compared to societies that keep their women "at home". For the purposes of definitions here, I am considering "men" and "women" to be defined by sex rather than gender and I am only considering these two values.
**Threshold 1 - consistently survivable childbirth:** Through most of human history, giving birth to children has been an essential but extremely hazardous task that only women can do. Dying in childbirth was common. Babies dying in their first year of life was also very common, with deaths after this but before adulthood also being relatively frequent. The practical upshot of this was that a society needed as many of its women as possible to produce as many babies as possible in order to maintain its numbers and hopefully grow the population a little. Males were relatively expendable - a society did not need that many of them and they did not really need to do that much in order to ensure that the women can do the hard work of producing the next generation. So a society could afford to send its men off to fight and die in the army, but if it did the same with it's fighting age = reproductive age women then it will shrink and be overwhelmed.
Obviously, this changed when medical advances such as understanding the causes of infection came along. With sterile surgical instruments, vaccinations and other improvements in medical practices the rate of women dying in childbirth decreased enormously while the survival rate of the babies that were born shot up. For a western European society or another with equivalent medical technology, by some point in the nineteenth century some of women could be allowed to fight without the society dooming itself to gradual extinction. Of course, by this time there were centuries of cultural inertia against such a practice.
**Threshold 2 - less melee, better firearms:** While firearms have been around for several hundred years, their accuracy, rate of fire and other operational limitations (eg producing enormous amounts of smoke) meant that volleys of musket/rifle/cannon fire was merely a prelude to the real business of getting up close and personal to settle matters with melee weapons. Further, the early firearms kicked like a mule, requiring considerable strength and body mass to control at all. The combination of these two factors would put the large majority of women at a disadvantage in the armies of the period. Nor would they be welcomed in the artillery - prior to mechanisation, cannon needed to be manhandled into firing positions, large projectiles lifted and considerable force used in reloading processes. (This issue continues today, though weapons and ammunition are deliberately designed to be more ergonomic.)
The practical upshot is that women of above-average physical fitness would only really be competitive with average men by the time reliable, accurate repeating firearms were available. Which is consistent with what was observed historically - obviously there are no reliable numbers, but I understand that a significant number of women concealed their sex and served in the trenches of WWI, quite apart from those serving openly in auxilliary services.
**Threshold 3 - mechanised warfare:** Once the majority of equipment is powered, physical strength is relatively trivial - eyesight and dexterity are more important for crewing an aircraft or armoured vehicle. However, note that *everything* needs to be powered or strength still matters. It took considerable physical strength to fly some of the large aircraft in even WWII - some women were employed to "ferry" such aircraft around and recounted how it took two of them working together to physically move the controls. It is also necessary to note that the vast majority of personnel involved in aircraft and armoured operations are actually working on the tanks and planes or re-arming them, which can require considerable strength. Well-designed maintenance and re-arming equipment in a late 20th Century environment should allow these tasks to be conducted by any able-bodied person, though. Similar considerations apply to logistics and resupply units.
One hold-out where raw physical strength matters is in the infantry, especially light infantry. Patrolling for extended periods with 30+ kg of equipment simply cannot be done by a person who is too lightly built, and less women have the requisite build. Of course, in a modern army with a typical teeth-to-tail ratio, the infantry are a relatively small percentage.
**Summary and psychological issues:** The combination of medical and technological advances make the late 19th/early 20th Century the threshold point at which a society can start risking its women in combat without risking extinction. The number of military positions that women can perform without being detrimental to combat performance will increase in line with mechanisation.
However, it should be noted that men are far more violent and risk-taking than women, as reflected in prison and accidental death statistics. If military service is voluntary and perceived as risky (eg nation is currently involved in a war or expected to be soon) then it can be expected that the majority of enlistees will be the violent, risk-taking (aka stupid) ones.
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The answers so far have only considered the "front line" aspect of an army, but there are vast swathes of military service that never require you to raise a weapon in anger and also leave you at far lower risk of being on the wrong end of one.
Command, logistics, quartermaster, intelligence, recruitment, training, catering, maintenance, medical, communications, as examples that exist throughout the ages. Most of these things requiring far more in the way of soft skills than the simple strength that's being focused on and all of them essential to the functioning of a large military. In earlier militaries you'll get grooms and animal handlers, squires to help the knights. Pick your era and you'll probably find young boys performing these roles, because they don't have the strength to fight themselves.
A fully formed army can find a role for anyone, regardless of strength, ability or even disability.
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## Virtually any technological era: So long as the societal norms of the culture permit it.
For your example the Scythians may serve as a template as it is believed based on archeological finds and literature of the time that women could elect to become warriors if they so chose. But leaving that aside and for the purpose of fiction there are a number of ways women in a gender equal society to be integrated into the societies military.
One reason could be Religion: The society in question has a mythos that includes legends of a class of female warriors who acted as protectors of the Gods and their sanctuaries. Tradition has then led to units of female warriors being included in every army as guards of the holy relics every army takes into battle.
Another is martial tradition. Like the Samurai class where women could be trained in the use of weapons and were expected to defend the home in their husbands absence - expand on that principal and create a society where *all* women of appropriate age are expected to train with weapons and be formed into units that defend their lands while the army is away campaigning. Perhaps on a regular basis because historically their country faces regular invasions and the 'manpower' is needed.
All the above said though as you noted on average the typical female soldier would be less physically strong than the typical male soldier. So what they might lack in strength they have to make up for in skill, superior weapons or tactics or whatever other factor they can find that might give them some advantage. That is if they can find them.
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# As soon as you have a professional soldiers
By professional soldiers I mean members of society with the primary job of being a soldier and fighting. As an example the Roman Empire with a population of 60 Million had about 300.000 troops in the standing army. Much more was simply not economically viable for a civilization. The lions share of the population was concerned with food production (think about 80%+ being farmers)
Since arguing for a mixed-gender army being viable is mostly arguing against possible shortcomings, let me address the cited (believed) shortcomings.
### ? Females are needed for population growth ?
The population size of most ancient civilizations was mainly limited by the amount of available food. You can see this by their relative fast population growth back to the old size after disasters or plagues (which usually hit men and women alike). While regularly loosing a big percentage of females would impact a society very negatively, the standing army only comprises a small fraction of the total population and losses are even smaller than that. This will not be an issue.
### ? Females are physically weaker ?
Females have on average less muscle mass and are smaller than males. This means they will performe worse in feats which heavily rely on strength. So females will for example as archers on average not be able to draw the same weight consistently as males. On the other hand current studies suggest females may on average actually outperform males on stamina and endurance. Females may also outperform males in several social skills, which can translate into better morale and unit cohesion.
So if we talk about pure fighting ability, we should on average probably talk about soldiers fighting in a group or formation, usually with spears and light to medium armor. They will have walked long distances with a lot of baggage and be brave and level-headed enough to perform on slippery or stony ground. I think in this case the male advantage in strength and body size can be offset by stamina, skill and teamwork on the female team.
With a typical Roman soldier stamina/endurance was one of the most important physical requirements and battles were often decided by morale and discipline instead of stronger spear trusts.
Overall there is no clear evidence if a unit of female legionaries in a typical Roman army would have performed worse than a male unit in war. - Also because the biological differences are marginally small compared to the difference in individuals and training.
### ? Females lack the aggressives and hormones for fighting
Biology and statistics suggest females are less prone to violence, rage or criminal behavior. While this may be a disadvantage when trying to get female soldiers into the right mindset to kill, it is a huge advantage in all other situations. Female units will be less prone to rape and kill for sport after the battle. The evidence also suggests that you will need less disciplinary actions because there is less infighting and less uncontrolled rage in your units. While a raging barbarian might be a good weapon for some battles, an organized disciplined unit, which follows commands is desirable for almost any battle.
### ? Females cannot cope with the stress/trauma ?
While overall females seem to be more effected by traumatic events (e.g. post COVID trauma studies) this seems a cultural induces effect and is different for females in e.g. military professions. In fact data (e.g. released by the US department of veteran affairs) suggests that PTSD, alcohol abuse, anxiety and major depressions are less prevalent in female soldiers.
This suggests that female soldiers could better deal with the traumatic events of war and also show better recovery rates. An army can hugely benefit if their veterans can longer maintain their active duties and continue to be respected parts of society. Also this hints at units of female soldiers could possibly better endure long campaigns with high psychological pressure without breaking down or resorting to drugs, violence or sexual abuse.
## Conclusion
Overall the factors would suggest that in a setting like the Roman army a mixed-gender military could actually perform better than an all male army. Important factors are the share of the population participating/dying in battle (if this is a significant number, your society may not recover from losing a big number of females in child-bearing age), the kind of battles (long campaigns with formations and discipline favor females while fist-brawls with the neighboring village favor males)
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If everyone is going to be a general purpose soldier, then pretty late into the firearms era. As you said, there will be exceptions, but the further back you go pure physical strength plays a larger role, so males will have an advantage. However, if you have a military with more *specialized* units, then the equations change.
Say you have a light cavalry unit. Their purpose is scouting, early warning pickets, maybe light skirmishing, perhaps rear-area security patrol. They are not intended to get into stand-up fights, and ideally only engage if they have no other option. If your military is fielding such units, then there's no particular reason they can't be women. Bows with a draw of 30 lbs, for instance, are easily handled without requiring a huge amount of upper body strength, and while they won't have range or great penetration, especially against armour, they can still ruin your day even if they're only meant to harass. Their swords are meant to be deployed from horseback, as a last resort, but they'd still have an advantage over lightly-armoured infantry if they were running them down in a pursuit, the traditional role of light mounted units in major battles.
Women in such mounted units might have advantages over men: on average lighter, so all things being equal their horses should have more endurance and makes logistics a bit easier. It should also give their horses more speed, allowing them to disengage against a superior force. So really, for such units, there's no particular reason women couldn't be equally represented, if not over-represented. So that gets you pretty far back in history, technologically speaking.
You could go back a bit further, pre-riding. In the traditional chariot setup, you had a driver and one or two people who did the actual fighting. Even if you want to keep the menfolk as the bowman and throwers and wielders of pointy things, there's no reason the driver can't be a woman.
You could see the same thing with defensive troops. If you have troops whose primary purpose is to defend fortresses and the like, and you've got the technology to build things like the various forms of pre-cannon artillery, there's no reason you can't have women operating them, especially if you can design those systems to minimize the amount of physical strength any individual operator requires. Women might not be on the ramparts waiting to repel troops trying to get over them in hand-to-hand combat, but there's no reason why teams of them can't be operating artillery, crossbows, and the like behind.
Like the light cavalry, women can also fill the security role. The assassin isn't going to have a much easier time getting to the general if the people surrounding the general are women with long sharp pointy things than they are with men in that same situation.
And, obviously, there's no reason whatsoever women can't be the engineers planning construction or destruction, the scouts and mapmakers, and all the other things that aren't standing shoving the person in front of you and trying to stab one another.
So again, specialization of duties can overcome average physiological advantages or disadvantages.
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# [As technology progresses, fighting prowess is more dependent on the strength of the user.](https://www.bu.edu/articles/2017/how-soldiers-carry-weight/)
Soldiers are carrying increasingly more weight as technology gives you a massive advantage in fights.
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> Helmet, uniform, boots, armor, weapon, ammo, food, canteens, compass, first aid kit—everything a soldier wears and carries (their “load”) can add up to more than 68 pounds. In a combat mission, that weight can skyrocket to as much as 120 pounds. Carrying a heavy load while walking, marching, running, or even fighting is essential for every soldier, regardless of sex.
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This is worse for women.
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> All that weight is associated with high rates of stress fractures and other musculoskeletal injuries to soldiers’ hips, legs, feet, and ankles. For female soldiers, the risk of stress fractures to their lower extremities is 2 to 10 times greater than for their male counterparts. Loverro wants to know why.
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# Power armour fixes this disparity.
Once artificial power armor becomes a reality soldiers aren't dependent on their weak human bodies to lift heavy weights, but the purity of steel and motors and batteries. The most important thing is the soldier's competence, not the power of their bodies.
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**Low Infant Mortality**
Mixed military is better. Mixed military is bigger. Biggest army is best army ooga booga.
Half the population is women. An army of one thousand army men is worse than an army or one thousand army men and one thousand army women.
The downside $-$ those army women cannot make babies if they are busy on the front lines. This is bad for the country as a whole. We might win the war but thirty years later our economy collapses because 80% of the population is wrinkly and senile.
The threshold is that the women at home can reliably create the next generation without mother or child dying in childbirth or childhood.
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**Extra:** Size of the army also matters. For example the American army makes up much less than 1% of the population. And much less than that is on duty at any one time. Even if that was all women and they were all wiped out, it would not change the size of the next generation. So the infant mortality is only relevant if the country is fighting a large war for survival. Compare that 1% to the number of young men who died in trenches in WW1.
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## No era
Even considering an era where male physical superiority is neutralised:
Women are more biologically precious.
In any extended conflict, the society that has lots of female casualties takes more damage than the one where men die.
In addition, they lack testosterone and the male brain which is adapted for aggression (just *being* aggressive is an advantage in war) and combat, and will retain a small edge. You can't just ignore firmware as hardware changes.
More contestable: men have greater variability in most traits, physical and mental, than women. Militaries that draw from the upper end of the various mental and physical bell curves will recruit more men.
By the time women are truly equal in war with men on the population level, soldiers will be robotic and armies irrelevant.
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**Depends on recruiting strategy.**
Consider that there are essentially only a few cases:
1. **Zero sum, ranked**: limited number of recruits, hired based on ability.
Allowing both genders to serve is a net win, as you get the upper outliers of both genders. Even if men average more suitable for the role, the best women will either not be hired because they don't make the grade, or they will push some more-mediocre men out of the role.
This gives a **stronger** military.
2. **Zero sum, random**: limited number of recruits, hired *randomly*.
This might be worthy of discussion if people can find any historical case where it occurred.
This gives a **weaker** military.
3. **Unrestricted**: all recruits taken. Either anyone *can* serve, or everyone *must* serve.
Opening to both genders then allows a nation to field a military force of about double the size.
This gives a **stronger** military.
4. **Zero sum, enforced ratio**: Serving has *enforced equal representation* for a limited number of slots.
This MIGHT be the case the OP is talking about: where some more-able men are pushed out by less-able women, and any increase in overall numbers is insufficient to make up the shortfall in ability.
This gives a **weaker** military.
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So long as a nation aims for 1 or 3, it'll likely do better than its
neighbors, with an important caveat.
The strength of the military is only one important element of the strength of a nation. If *everyone* is off fighting a war, the nation is weakened because nobody is working on the logistics/ops side of keeping the nation running: schooling, farming, manufacture and trade.
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**At any technological level.** In the circumstances you describe a mixed-gender army will always be at least as good as a single-gender one. But more so when physical strength is less of a factor
The questions is falling into the trap that discussions like this often fall into - namely that they think the statement "women are weaker than men" means "all women are weaker than all men", when it really means "on average women are weaker than men". But in reality there can be women who are stronger, have better endurance, and are more fit to be soldiers in all other ways than 99.9% of men.
If you were to make a selection of the people best suited to be soldiers without worrying about their gender, you are by definition going to get soldiers that are at least as good as if you choose your soldiers only from half the population. If there is even one woman who would be category of "best soldiers" then you are hurting the army by not selecting her.
It's possible that there are some kinds of cultural effects, but since your culture has "no sexism" then we can assume that won't happen. IN a "no sexism" culture the other possible issue - that there are skills useful to war that only men have been trained in - won't happen.
It's true that the more strength and endurance is key to soldier performance the fewer women are going to be "the best soldiers", but there is no level of technology where it is better to exclude women completely.
For social comment please note that this is always true for all fields of endeavour, although social constructs may make it appear not to be the case.
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**The beliefs of the enemy are an important factor**
The enemy may believe that women should not be attacked by men as warriors. This could be for a number of reasons, e.g. (1) Women are sacred and should not be defiled - compare with sacred cows in India, (2) It is simply not acceptable to fight women because they are "the gentler sex", 3. A macho warrior who stoops to fighting a woman will be ridiculed by his fellows. He would be unworthy of acclaim for his victories.
Whatever the enemy's reasons for not engaging in combat with women, meeting female warriors on the battlefield would seriously impinge on their conduct. If the taboo is strong enough, it might even lead to women being allowed to walk behind enemy lines and cause damage unhindered.
**Answer**
The more technologically advanced the civilisation, the less likely they are to be ruled by superstition and taboo. Therefore, when considering social norms, the more primitive the technology the better.
**EDIT**
It might even be the case that a male sniper would be more likely to deliberately miss a female than a male because of his upbringing.
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# Far Future Technological Level
Even in the modern era many things you do in the military require physical strength. Running around lugging heavy ammo, digging trenches etc etc. All other things being equal, you want this to be done by men since they are physically stronger. However, once you have powered armor, maybe antigravity technology and other things eliminating the need for brute physical strength, there is no longer any disadvantage in having as many women as men in the military.
But: this is only true with all other things being equal. Many armies of ancient and medieval era mostly consisted of levies - literally peasants, often forcibly conscripted by their lords, with no military training, little to no armor, most basic arms and no wish to be there. Those were mostly there to provide the sheer force of numbers.
Now, if you were to substiture some of that levy with female knights, who trained in warfare for most of their life, have good quality armor and well-made arms (and perhaps good horses as well), eager to win glory on the battlefield, then your army would certainly be better off. Now in real life female warrior class simply didn't exist, but perhaps in your completely egalitarian society it might.
But if you want all things other than gender of the combatants to be equal, then my original answer stands.
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Just being genetically advanced enough to remove the annoying long gestation periods and slow growth rates of humans.
The only reason the humans are sexually dimorphic is because of those traits forcing the necessity.
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As for in your scenario, presumably the humans haven't changed yet.
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The easiest way, is just for the culture to be very good at diplomacy to the point of barely **needing** to fight. This is actually a very good strategy, as contrary to perceptions diplomacy can be lethal, as it can very easy to get random humans on your side.
The second easiest way is actually something already implemented in nations, or example Egypt (*it's even in the Middle East, how serendipitous*). Many o the nations just have completely unrelated reasons for the women not being a major part. The military becomes an economic juggernaut.
This has considerable advantages for some regimes, some of which are:
* An easy way to implement a castle-like defence strategy of just holding necessary resources so the country is really annoying to bring down. Nations that cannot starve are **really, really, annoying** to deal with and they can just wait it out as you bleed money on army expenditure. Which is usually enough to keep aggressors away.
* An easy way to manipulate the economy to a goal e.g. self sufficiency, or allying with nation X
* A way to utilise humans that the nation has trouble using and in the process training them up e.g. criminals or orphans. To varying degrees of forced labour or freedom to join.
If the military's economic defences are a core part of its defence strategy, the women being physically weaker is irrelevant, especially for that role. Also it is possible the society only cares about equality in jobs, not what roles they do in that official position.
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As for actually fighting, firearms and drones are the obvious candidates.
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So all in all, just make the society like an egalitarian Egypt, or like any society where diplomacy is important. Like egalitarian Iran.
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**To begin with, an assumption**
We live in a more politically diverse world than we once did. You say "mixed-gender" but follow with a discussion about men and women. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because the pros and cons of the world's current [views about gender](https://www.womenshealthmag.com/relationships/a36395721/gender-identity-list/) are remarkably complex. IMO, too complex to handle in a single question.
So, cheers for working with one, specific condition.
**There are many reasons why women have been a challenge in the military**
In my opinion, nobody in their right mind would dispute the value of women in the military. Likewise, nobody should be arguing over whether or not women should have the right to fight for the people and the nation they love. But that hasn't shortened a very long women-shouldn't-be-in-combat attitude.
It was a surprise to [read an article](https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/06/us-army-getting-womens-body-armor-quickly-unfunded-priority/174611/) about women finally getting flak jackets that fit. Surprise, surprise! Women are shaped differently than men! And when did we finally solve this problem? June, 2021... and that only after an Act of Congress forced it to happen.
But it underscores the problem and frames the nature of your answer.
**It's not just about strength**
It has been long established that, when comparing male and female atheletes at peak performance, men outperform women. From a technological standpoint, that means you need a way to...
* Improve strength
* Improve agility
* Improve speed
SciFi has often used the idea of an exoskeleton. Powered armor has been the favorite, but I've often wondered how you'd fit a human inside powered armor. The powered exoskeletons shown in *Edge of Tomorrow* (2014) are, IMO, more realistic.
There are other physiological differences including, in men, thicker skulls, longer limbs, etc. However, that exoskeleton combined with good head armor solves all that.
As mentioned earlier about flak jackets that fit, there's the simple reality that, generally speaking, women are shaped differently than men. But, technologically, that's fairly simple to overcome, too. The U.S. military could have done it decades ago. They just didn't think it was important due to, frankly, millennia of belief that women shouldn't be in combat.
**But there are some biological problems**
Things get a bit more complex, especially logistically, when a military must start considering the requirements of mensturation and child bearing.
Let's start with child bearing, because I don't believe it not just a technological issue when it comes to keeping women active in the military. Yes, through chemicals it's possible to keep women from childbearing, and it's reasonable that a woman can choose to avoid childbirth indefinitely to devote themselves to a military career. What isn't reasonable is to assume or compel that choice.
And here's where technology isn't sufficient. Should a woman choose to conceive, then the military's only real choice is to relegate the woman more and more to non-combat duties until imminent childbirth and early child rearing demands her full attention for the success and health of both mother and child.
*This is only one opinion about how childbearing and the military might collide. Others may have other insights. I don't profess to know definitively if what I just suggested is the best perspective.*
Menstation is the next issue, but today, [chemistry can overcome that, too](https://obgyn.coloradowomenshealth.com/blog/contraception-for-military-women). Great advancements are being made to allow women to serve fully and to their utmost capacity in the military.
**Conclusion**
It appears that humanity has already solved two of the three problems:
* With chemistry, we can manage menstration and childbearing, leaving the later as a choice, not a problem to be suffered by either soldier or the military.
* And only conscious regard was necessary to overcome the problem of properly clothing and outfitting both male and female soldiers.
From this perspective, 2023 technology is sufficient. The problem is making personal, physical strength, agility, and speed irrelevant.
* The use of a powered exoskeleton to make all soldiers equal.
[Humanity is working on powered exoskeletons for combat](https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/eurosatory/2022/06/16/the-army-could-take-a-run-at-developing-a-robotic-warrior-suit/) and is testing existing solutions for [powered prosthetics](https://jneuroengrehab.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12984-021-00842-2). At the rate of current technological advancement, I'd guess that the first practical combat exoskeletons will exist in the next 20 years.
**So, what's your answer?**
I predict that human technology at 2040-2045 will be sufficient to wholly equalize the sexes during combat. Or, perhaps it's better said that gender will become irrelevant.
**A Disclaimer...**
I've treated combat soldiers as if they all do the same thing in the same way. That simply isn't true. There are specialized combat forces, combat engineers, combat medics.... There are combat specialties that are gender-irrelevant today and have been for a long time. I'm answering in the most general way possible.
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**How many?**
You asked about a "large number." Answers talk about upper body strength, continuation of the society through childbirth, etc. But consider:
* Modern societies draft a large percentage of their young *or not so young* males during times of crisis or war. A few get excused on grounds of physical incapability. If, *on average*, women have a lower strength, what percentage of women is stronger than the weakest percentile of men who do get drafted?
You could have a situation where 80% of males pass the requirement, and 20% of females. That would give you a 4-1 ratio, arguably a "large number" of women in the military.
* A society needs to birth and raise the next generation of warriors. Males can do one part of that, but not the other. Many militant societies [expected](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder,_K%C3%BCche,_Kirche#Third_Reich) women to handle this.
But (opposed to the near-industrial [levee en masse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev%C3%A9e_en_masse) above) medieval and classical societies could not afford to keep a large percentage of the population under arms. Plenty of serfs actually on the fields, not handed a spear, to support each mounted knight. At the highest level of society, it is not just a woman's womb that is needed to raise the next generation, it is the **legitimacy of succession** which matters. It does not help the society if the duchess lives the duke dies, if the *dowager* duchess does not hold the title in her *own* right.
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When the majority of the fighting is conducted by AI, and no humans are involved at a physical level, or are present on the battlefield.
This will render all combat and combatants free from physical and psychological constraints in warfare, and combat will essentially be down to a combination of who has the better technology and tactics.
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Really, there is no capability problem here. Whether or not women are more or less suited on average to any specific task, it is clear that most women are capable of many tasks that a military requires. So with some basic filtering for a minimum fitness level, making use of the women of a society could increase the capabilities of any military.
For anyone enlisting, if they are strong and tough they may put on armor and fight physically or lug a heavy pack and rifle around. If less tough, there may be a spot on an archery line in the back or operating a targeting computer. If even less tough, there is likely a spot repairing equipment or planning or cooking. Anyone put to use somewhere, is freeing up someone else to do something else. It's a resource added.
So in an egalitarian society with systemic protections, a society putting it's women to use in the military where each can best contribute should be a net gain.
The problem in the real (sadly not egalitarian and free of sexism) world is integration. Typical combat-age men are full of testosterone, and a problematic subset of them have only basic or lower proficiency in the skills and self-awareness necessary to remain professional around women... 24/7 for example, for weeks on end, deployed in a trench in Eastern Ukraine. Yes, they can be managed to control themselves, but that takes resources. Time and policy enforcement at a minimum. And it's not something anyone (male or female) wants to make a priority when an enemy battle group is marching toward your city.
In short, it is not the incapability of women that has made them unwelcome historically in militaries. Aside from culture and societal norms, it is the incapability of men to work effectively beside them that makes it problematic. The question is really, under what circumstances and culture can the addition of women produce more benefit by way of their contribution, than the cost of this increased need of training, management and supervision to keep the men in line. Under what circumstances will their capabilities offset the cost of lost effectiveness because a non-combat-focused relationship formed, ended, or was rebuked.
[Answer]
I'm going to give Three, partially contradictory answers. First answer:
**No Era**
And let me explain my reasoning. The first thing that often gets thrown out is physical strength differences - this in story is usually countered with technology not requiring physical strength.
So for a real world comparison, let's pick a competitive activity where Strength or any physical attribute is a factor.
Next up is often Numbers. More Men want to fight than Women, so more Men join to serve in the Military - we could fix this by having a draft or national service type scenario - perfect 50/50 distribution.
So for our real world comparison, let's pick a competitive activity where physical attributes have no bearing and there is at least a 50/50 gender split in participation.
Then we have 'Natural inclination'. Related to the above, More Men are Killers, so perhaps we could have a means to artificially increase the desire to fight in Women so it's equal to that of Men.
Linking back to our real world one, we now need a competitive activity, where physical things don't matter, participation is at least 50/50 and Men don't have a natural advantage...
With all of these things - you might say 'ah ha! We can have a military that is equal'
But there's a reason why I keep mentioning real world comparison. See, there is a Game that has:
* No requirement on Physical prowess
* Significantly larger participation by Women than Men
* Women have a natural advantage over Men
That game, being Scrabble. The player base is majority female, Women have a greater vocabulary (on average) then men.
Yet...
**there has never been a Female World champion Scrabble player**
I know that Scrabble isn't the Military - but I'm using this to highlight that even when all the usual factors about Men out-performing Women are accounted for and nullified, Men still win, decisively.
I believe this is due to Evolutionary Biology - Women are choosy when it comes to mate selection and will only have children with the best, evolutionary speaking - all women get to bear children - so there is no reward for them taking risk. Whereas for Men, our evolutionary history can be summed up by 'Death or Glory' - there is a hard-wired drive in Men to push that little bit farther, to be the best, to become a potential mate to a Woman.
This drive manifests itself in all sorts of ways - but in all competitive endeavors (best highlighted by the Scrabble example and war is a Competitive business) - there is always going to be a Man who is willing to risk a little bit more than a Woman on the chance of Victory...
That said...
**Answer Two - Any form of combat that requires extreme survival on limited Calorie diets**
There are 2 sports where Men and Women are somewhat equal - Extreme long-distance running and Extreme long-distance swimming. Now, sure Men are generally faster - but like any high-performance machine, we use a lot more Fuel. There's only so much fuel you can store in your body and after a while that performance starts to drop. Whereas Women are more fuel-efficient, have bigger fat stores (Sorry Ladies!) and don't burn as much calories as men.
By extreme distance, I'm thinking of Courtney Dauwalter doing 200 mile events.
The same goes for ultra-distance swimming - I believe it's after about 35 Km that Women start to get an advantage over Male swimmers.
Going back to our friend Evolutionary Biology - If stuff has hit the fan so bad that all the men start dying out, Women are still able to survive for a bit longer to raise the next generation.
So any form of combat where the requirement was *before any combat happened* for such distances to be run or swam, Women could have an advantage.
And now for the most controversial answer of all:
**Answer 3 - it's not about Technology, it's about using the one power Women have over men - their sexuality**
History is littered with tales of young men doing absolutely stupid things to impress a lady. Also, Men are somewhat hard-wired to killing a Women who is young and fertile (they are, unfortunately, not above doing *other* things). A Military 'force' that was comprised not of 'soldiers' but of very alluring Femme Fatales who could infiltrate and seduce an army (mainly comprised of 18-25 year olds, full of raging testosterone and no other women insight).
Now, this has a long and sordid history of working - the VietCong employed such ladies to sleep with American GIs, the world of Spying has the 'Honey Trap', hell you could even point to the rise of the E-Girl - Beautiful women who know how to manipulate horny Men into doing what they want.
So an unconventional force of stunning women could devastate a conventional military force - however this would probably only work on mass once or twice before the Military would wise up to it... but even then - as I said - young horny dudes will do all sorts of stupid things.
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[Question]
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What could be reasons to use direct current in the distribution of power?
I know that it is more efficient to distribute current at high voltages to reduce heat loss and that it is easier to step up voltage in AC. Regardless, what would be reasons to not use it (or at least not so wide-spread as it is now)?
Would I only need an alternate history or would I have to change the complete environment?
[Answer]
# Reverse the [War of the Currents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents).
In the late 19th century, Thomas Edison supported the use of direct current, and his company, Edison General Electric, attempted to use it on a large scale. A major competitor, George Westinghouse, supported the use of alternating current, with his competing company. Both tried to corner the market, but doing so would require the large-scale adoption of one of the two types of current. The resulting battle - which was hard-fought, very public, and world-changing - had a number of significant events:
* Edison and other DC supporters played up the possible danger of alternating current. There were accidental deaths around the country from AC wires, and [one DC supporter, Harold Brown, deliberately used alternating current to kill animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_P._Brown). Brown also made sure that alternating current was used to execute [William Kemmler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kemmler) in the electric chair. At the same time, alternating current proponents opposed the use of direct current for essentially the same reasons.
* Several prominent industry mergers consolidated power for the different companies. After Edison left industry, Edison General Electric merged with Thomson-Houston, and the resulting company, General Electric, used the Thomson-Houston AC patents. GE and Westinghouse, the two major players, now both used AC, meaning that most of the United States used alternating current. The exceptions were small, local DC networks in certain cities on the east coast.
* Alternating current was shown to be effective for transmitting current for long distances, especially when transformers were used. On large-scale power grids, which were needed for the rapidly-industrializing United States, this was a boon. Advances in minimizing loss in direct current lines did help DC survive, but it was too little too late.
If you could change the history books such that Edison remained involved with Edison General Electric (or controlled GE after the merger with Thomson-Houston), he could have remained a major player in the market, and would have held the power to continue to advocate for DC. Edison might have won the propaganda war, but if there had been many more accidents, and Westinghouse and other AC companies had lost revenue on a large scale, it's possible that Edison General Electric would have held onto the market, and DC would have been the only real option, financially. The only way to overcome the technical benefits of alternating current is to make it seem dangerous, and unfeasible or unpalatable to adopt.
[Answer]
Actually, DC is superior to AC in almost every way, there's no loss due to induced currents, no frequency synchronization issues, less wiring, etc. And this is totally not counting the fact that all solid state electronics have to be DC. If we had to re-build the electric grid from scratch(or build one on e.g. Mars), it would definitely be DC.
The ONE issue (but it's a doozy) with DC, is that in order to change voltage, you need semiconductors, whereas with AC all you need is a bent metal bar and 2 coils of wire. With no way to step up/down voltage a DC grid is totally impossible until the 50's, by which time the network effects of AC are too big to overcome.
There is one scenario in which it could have happened: in S.M. Stirling's Draka, alt history series, the Draka have a widely distributed compressed air distribution system in their cities before electricity became big (it was a thing IRL too, but was not dominant, since it was almost concurrent with electrical grids). So when electricity becomes big, it's first in the form in the form of small generators being driven from mains compressed air. I should point out that Stirling doesn't extend the concept into a DC grid, but that could be done.
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## Have early adoption of AC fail spectacularly.
If say Tesla cooked himself while wiring Niagara Falls and burned down Buffalo, killed tourists or disrupted the waterfall in the process that would have been the end of it.
## Make small scale power viable from the beginning.
If solar or antenna static worked well enough (they are inherently DC) to power everything the advantages of AC grids would be moot.
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The reason AC won out (besides the politics), it because it was more efficient economical\* to transmit long distances (at the current time). If humanity decided to make power plant production small scale instead of large scale, it might have gone to DC very easily. However, it would have to be something like solar cells or wind farms, because small steam plants are very inefficient^[citation needed].
Besides the politics mentioned in HDE 226868's answer, power was produced in huge steam plants which were best located outside of town, making transmission efficiency a top priority. If transmission efficiency was not a high priority, then it just as well could have gone to DC.
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Fun fact, a lot of our appliances that have a clock use the frequency of the power grid to keep time. This would not be possible on DC. [Here's a cool video from Tom Scott about it.](https://youtu.be/bij-JjzCa7o)
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\*By this I mean that the feasibility, cost, and technology back when we were creating the national grid meant that AC was better than DC to transmit long distances. Today, they are equitable, and some even argue that they could have very quickly solved the problems that DC had if they wanted to.
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DC is efficient at very high voltages (over 500kV ) where the capacitive losses to ground start mattering. It also helps that you don't have to worry about frequency synchronized systems, so failures don't necessarily break the world.
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Assuming the OP is talking about a hypothetical future reason to build out the Grid using DC transmission, then the invention of [aneutronic fusion](https://infogalactic.com/info/Aneutronic_fusion) reactors would be the reason.
Current research on fusion reactors is focused on D-D or D-T fusion since it is theoretically easier to achieve (although "easier" is a relative term), but the issue there is the energy release is mainly in the form of neutron radiation. In most hypothetical designs, the neutron radiation is captured in something like a "lithium blanket" and the heat energy extracted to create steam to run conventional turbines. This is essentially a nuclear powered tea kettle.
Hypothetical aneutronic machines using reactors like p-B or 3He-3He will produce high energy alpha particles as their outputs, and cleverly designed machines will create high energy beams of alpha particles, essentially a giant direct current beam which can be [harvested](https://infogalactic.com/info/Aneutronic_fusion#Energy_capture) for energy by decelerating the beam in a reverse particle beam accelerator. The energy release is inherently DC, and converting it to AC would create a great deal of loss. If the promise of these machines can be realized, they will be small and cheap enough to power individual neighbourhoods, or be shipped to places needing energy in ISO containers (realistically, they would probably need to be shipped in several containers, and there are issues with side reactions which don't fundamentally change the premise of the answer).
So the conversion is relatively simple and modular; EnergX builds these things like toasters and signs up subdivisions, shopping malls, industrial parks and individual factories for their product. Each customer that goes on line is wired for DC power, and disconnected from the old grid. Gradually the grid is dismantled and replaced by millions of small DC grids, optimized for their particular situations. There may be some transition issues, and likely the speed of the conversion will be set by the lifespans of legacy generation systems (utilities will be very upset if they lose their customer base while still having 30 year bonds to pay off, so there will be political opposition as well).
Of course the real key is the development of working aneutronic fusion systems in the first place.
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What type of power (AC or DC) is used is determined by three major factors.
**How easy it is to produce the power.**
Electric power is typically produced from mechanical energy. Usually some arrangement of spinning magnets/electromagnets, and coils. The voltage waveform produced by a spinning magnet/coil is a sine-wave (AC).
To turn it into DC requires a rectifier of some kind. In Edison's time there was not any efficient means of rectifying AC electricity.
**How easy it is to move the power from where it is produced to where it is used.**
Our current model is that electric power is produced in large power plants, and then distributed to the individual buildings that use the power.
Often times power plants are located away from cities so that they can be near a natural power source. One example is the Niagara Falls power plant. Another example would be a geo-thermal power plant. In other cases power plants are located away from cities because they produce pollution (such as fossil fuel burning plants).
If power is produced far away from the point of use then there must be a way to efficiently transmit it. Typically this involves transmitting the power at very high voltage and then stepping down the voltage at the point of use.
For AC power all that is required to step/down the voltage is a transformer. Transformers are fairly simple. They are typically two insulated wires wrapped around an iron core and stored in an oil filled metal can. A transformer that supplies power to an entire house sits comfortably on a utility pole and has a volume of just couple of cubic feet. In todays prices the power company can buy one for a few hundred dollars and it may last several decades. Its hard to beat the price.
To change the voltage level on DC power you need a DC to DC converter. This typically involves some high speed power switches inductors, and capacitors. In Edison's time diodes and solid state switches had not yet been invented. His only choice for a switching element would have been relays or vacuum tubes. Both of those have limited lifespans, especially at high power. Such systems would need constant maintenance and be quite large.
There are a couple of things that would have made DC power feasible in Edison's time.
* The invention of high power solid state diodes and transistors would have made DC-DC converters smaller and more reliable.
* A drastic decrease in the price of copper, gold, or silver would have eliminated the need to use high voltage during power transmission. If the price of metal were much lower he could have buried large rods under the street that were several feet in diameter.
* The invention of a metal alloy with very low resistance. This could be a super conductor, but it doesn't have to be.
* A different business model where power was produced locally at the places it was used. Edison could have sold gas generators to individual homes that produced DC output. Since the power was produced on site efficient distribution of power becomes less important.
**How easy it is to use the power at its destination.**
For an electric power company to be viable you need someone to want to buy the power. The first and most important applications of electric power were light bulbs, and electric motors.
For a an incandescent light bulb its equally easy to use AC or DC power.
The typical DC electric motor requires brush contacts that tend to wear out. DC motors with brush contacts are less reliable than AC motors.
The typical AC reluctance motor is just a set of stationary wire coils and a rotating iron core attached to a shaft. There is no brush contacts so these types of motors can last decades and are very cheap and low maintenance.
A lot of AC electric machinery can also use the AC waveform as a timing source to regulate speed or output power.
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In some situations, using DC currents is more efficient. Practically all electronic circuits use DC, so if you have a lot of electronic together you may wish to convert your mains to DC. Most companies that keep datacenters nowadays do that. Here is an article explaining the technicalities involved - TL;DR, you lose some efficiency when converting from AC to DC, so having it all DC from the start is best in this scenario:
[DC distribution is not just for the giants](http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/design-build/dc-distribution-is-not-just-for-the-giants/95037.fullarticle)
In a world where Datacenters become increasingly more popular and surpass everything else in terms of demand for energy, DC will be more common than AC.
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DC current used in distribution networks may make a comeback in a hypothetical future when perhaps all electricity will be generated by fusion plants and the power plants will be located very closely together so that the failure of any one will only cause local outages. In such a situation the use of AC will not have as many advantages and the use of DC will not cause massive pollution from non existing fossil fuel power plants spaced very closely together..
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If you never need to transmit large amounts of power over long distances, DC might win out. No matter what you make your wires out of, there will always be some amount of resistance. The longer the wire, the more the resistance adds up. You can make the wire fatter, but that gets more expensive. So, to carry more power, you do it at higher voltage rather than higher current so you can keep the wire thickness reasonable. That means you need a way to step voltage up from your generating voltage and down to your consuming voltage at each end of the transmission line. Using alternating current, voltages can be easily and reasonably efficiently stepped up and down with transformers, which don't require advanced technology or exotic materials to construct.
If there was never a need to distribute large amounts of power over hundreds of miles - say just a few miles at most - the economics that favor A/C might not exist.
Beyond the politics of the [war of the currents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents), there is the reality of of technological evolution. The need to distribute large amounts of power over long distances emerged when the only loads were incandescent lamps and motors - at least a couple of decades before the emergence of electronics. Such loads were indifferent to whether the supplied power was A/C or D/C; only voltage mattered. Without the benefit of semiconductor devices which only emerged around 1950, and more importantly, solid-state device capable of switching high current at high voltage (which have really only been around a few decades now), efficient high power D/C to D/C conversion just isn't possible.
If you're going to build out a large-scale power infrastructure without the benefit of modern [thyristors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyristor) and [triacs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIAC), chances are, you'll end up going A/C.
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**RADICALLY EDITED ANSWER AFTER CONSIDERATIONS:**
A DC power plant could work if you had a much smaller population to care for. A plant like that could provide the needs of a small community and be used especially as recharger.
This scenario implies that society here evolved radically toward portability and lower power usage. Optimization of power banks and the awareness regarding their usage would prevent waste.
Of course, a bg city couldn't be born around one single power plant if we wanted to power up all houses. And a network of smaller generators would increase pollution, so there'd be this 'industrial' village built around the plant, a first ring where production of basic goods and technology is concentrated, while the rest of the city, in a second, larger ring, would be powered with solar cells and technology with batteries.
[Answer]
For the sake of completeness, I add this kind of late, bland answer:
Home appliances are mainly DC, industrial ones are more prone to AC. If a way to build, operate and maintain cheap **superconductors** was invented, maybe DC transmission would be more widespread.
There is lots of research about [room-temperature superconductors, and a graphene-based solution](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02773-w) could be near.
[Answer]
## A slight change in materials science to make commutators easier
DC can do everything AC can do, just that DC needs a rotating machine for voltage conversion, where AC can use a no-moving-parts transformer.
In DC, that is irritating and expensive because rotating DC machines need commutators, which is a cylinder of copper bars brushed by carbon brushes. From time to time, the surface needs be smoothed, brushes changed, and mica insulators between commutator bars notched down a bit so they are lower than the copper. (Otherwise abrasive mica will tear up the brushes pretty fast). Carbon brush dust must also be removed from the mica notches to keep it from shorting.
This is all a big pain.
Now imagine a slightly semiconducting teflon coating which could be painted on top of the copper bars. Where it is thick (between bars) its resistance is very high. Where it is thin (over copper bars) its resistance is nil. It's laid in a continuous surface - no mica gaps. This, coupled with a magic brush material, means the DC commutator just doesn't wear. Bearings are well mastered, so the upshot is that a rotating machine has about the same reliability as a transformer.
They even put the bigger ones in sealed cylinders and pull vacuum on them to eliminate windage loss and increase insulation strength.
Voltage conversion can now be easily handled with an M-G set (if you need isolation) or a dynamotor (if you don't).
Now, why put up with the drawbacks of AC (e.g. Having to synchronize grids)? If someone really really wants AC, an M-A set can do that.
## The railroads are heavily involved
Until rectifiers came along, railroads preferred DC power for railway electrification. Series-wound DC motors pull like a mountain goat, and locomotives are big enough to solve the handling issues.
Suppose the railroads electrified very, very early, so the very first electricity in any town showed up in the 1880's as the railroad's trolley wire. All the depots and freight houses would be electrified first, followed very quickly by the rich people. Since 3000 volts DC is an awkward voltage to use for residential lighting, the railroads would provide M-G sets to knock it down to 100/200 split, 100 for light bulbs, 200 for motor loads. (Later bumped to 105 and 110V to increase system capacity).
This would spread like wildfire and the whole country would soon be electrified. 110 volts would be a household word. (Even though later they bumped to 115 and 120).
## Local/regional generation makes sense
Before electricity, every town with a river had a mill pond. Those mill pond operators decide to install generators and backfeed the system, since it's much, much easier to synchronize into a DC grid than AC.
And then, Aermotor comes out with an electric generation kit for their windmills. While they only officially support off-grid local use, they intentionally design it so it's trivial to make it generate into the grid. Sales explode. The year is barely 1900 and home generation is already a thing.
[Answer]
**High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC)**
This is a method of transmission using DC at voltages of 100 kV to 1500 kV.
See Wikipedia (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current>):
>
> A long distance point to point HVDC transmission scheme generally has lower overall investment cost and lower losses than an equivalent AC transmission scheme. HVDC conversion equipment at the terminal stations is costly, but the total DC transmission line costs over long distances are lower than AC line of the same distance. HVDC requires less conductor per unit distance than an AC line, as there is no need to support three phases[clarification needed] and there is no skin effect.
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This doesn't require futuristic technology. It's currently in use in some places, and may become more popular.
There are disadvantages (see that Wikipedia page), but these might be reduced by future technological development.
How strong the case for using it is depends on how the power is generated (the cost is reduced if the power is already DC, which might be the case, as other answers suggest) and the length of the transmission line (with greater benefits for longer lines). Using it for shorter lines might be somewhat more justified if a society was willing to invest a higher capital cost to reduce ongoing costs.
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High Voltage DC (HVDC) for power transmission is already [quite common](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects). If you want more detail, you may be better off [here](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/) asking precisely why we use HVDC.
The main advantage of it, is that it can join asynchronous grids - that is, ones that run at different frequencies and/or voltages. AC grids must be syncronised. If one side of the transmission line has poor quality of supply, then people may be hesitant to connect via an AC interconnector.
Countries around the world use a wide variety of frequency and voltage. No country wants to change over - it would simply involve throwing out too much existing stuff. Think of the costs and benefits that would result from the USA swapping cars and roads so they could drive on the correct side of the road. It'd be similar with grid frequency.
So if you're joining up two different electricity grids, you use HVDC, so neither side has to change grid frequency.
So if you want HVDC for transmission (the big power lines between cities), then simply make states, counties, or cities more independent of each other, and make it so that all of them established their own local grids before connecting them together.
Note that you will still have AC distribution (the small power lines in each city) in this situation.
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If your world built high-quality portable batteries much sooner (think lithium ion) and had people amazed with portable power that might be enough to make DC king.
Also make people horrified by the sight of transmission lines marring the sky/cityscape.
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[Question]
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They are relatively rare in fiction but there are a few interesting examples, in fact I even remember reading about one in real life.
I would like mine to be small and light (say less than 0.9 kg and less than 2 cm in diameter). Death must be assured if the conditions are not met. So, can we build it with current tech?
EXTRA POINTS: it would be great if there was room for extra stuffs, say a microphone, GPS or other things...
Recharge is also an issue, can they last indefinitely if powered by body motion like clocks?
[Answer]
Quite realistic.
Any low level smartphone is more than capable of being used as the control terminal. If you want it rugged and with good battery life, let's say that it weights 300 gr (with all the extras you wanted).
This leaves 600 gr. for explosives and the strappings to the neck... more than enough to kill not only the bearer but a whole bunch of people around.
As for the recharge, there are two options:
* If you want to use it to keep your target in a secured area (so they cannot escape a prison), you can use some of the new wireless recharging technologies that are just becoming available.
* If you want to use it to control remotely someone, just nicely explain to him that if the battery becomes lower than 10% an auditive signal will be noticed, and when the battery gets to 5% the device will explode. This is what in psychology is called "providing an incentive" for someone to do some task.
[Answer]
The case of [Brian Douglas Wells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Douglas_Wells) is exactly what you are looking for.
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> Brian Douglas Wells (November 15, 1956 – August 28, 2003) was an American pizza delivery man who was killed by a remotely controlled bomb fastened to his neck, under coercion from the maker of the bomb. After he was apprehended by the police for robbing a bank, the bomb was detonated. The bizarre affair was subject to much attention in the mass media
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In other words - so realistic that they actually exist.
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# You are talking about det cord
[Det cord](http://www.oricaminingservices.com/hk/en/product/products_and_services/delivery_systems/page_delivery_systems/cordtex_5p_detonating_cord/9) is a cable that goes boom. If you wrapped this around someone's neck....well I don't know what would happen but it would be messy.
You can rig it to go off with a cell phone detonator. This is the basic principle behind IEDs. I can't send you a link, but if you don't mind being on a terrorism watch list you can go investigate on the interwebs.
So yes, you can make an explosive collar with current technology.
[Answer]
**Engineering Considerations**
The other answers do a good job of summarizing that yes, you can absolutely make an explosive collar with current technology. There are some edge case factors that might be relevant to consider.
**Collateral damage:**
If you have someone with the trigger who has some kind of moral issue with excessive collateral damage, wants to ensure that they definitely have the CORRECT target before the device goes boom, etc, then you might want to think about the use of an explosive cellphone on a terrorist leader by the Israeli Mossad in the early 2000s. The cell phone was used because the IDF could then confirm that the correct person was holding the phone. According to people who had knowledge of the operation, the main engineering challenge was NOT to make a fully functional cellphone with enough room in the case to house enough plastic explosive to blow someone's head off, but to keep the blast directed enough and small enough to ensure that there would not be collateral damage to other persons nearby. Israel didn't want to accidentally kill a waiter or something if the target was at a restaurant. An explosive collar would have a similar engineering consideration. It would only need a pretty weak explosion to take off someone's head if your charge were literally wrapped around their neck. In the case of the phone, I believe the back of the phone housing was reinforced with steel and shaped in a way to direct the blast out through the face of the phone. A collar would have a similar consideration, so the outside of the collar might be a steel housing that forces the blast from the charge inward.
**Det Cord**
Det cord was mentioned, but in my opinion, it would be overkill. We used to use that stuff to blow open steel doors... in my non-techie life... You probably would have a risk of collateral damage with normal sized det cord. Probably something about a quarter the diameter would be fine.
**Weather Proofing**
Waterproofing/weatherproofing is not a major problem. The explosives themselves can be waterproof. The major issue is to waterproof the battery container and make sure it doesn't accidentally short under certain environmental conditions. This is somewhat expensive (compared to cheap consumer electronics) but is a challenge that has absolutely been solved elsewhere.
**Recharging**
There are ways to harness the natural electrical current of the human body. If you wanted to get fancy, you could possibly harness this to recharge a very small battery in the collar. This might not withstand rugged use/real life/weather etc however.
**Trigger**
As far as detonation, the obvious choice is a cell-phone type trigger. This is used by lots of terrorists all over the world. It may be a bit risky to go this route though, since there are ways to send out a lot of signals that will preemptively detonate such devices in a given area. A better solution might be a combination of a radio signal and software that verifies the identity of the signal sender via a pre-selected code. That way some stray signal doesn't accidentally blow off your guy's head before it is time.
**Answer: Totally Doable**
All in all, if you invest some money and have some good engineering skills available, you could absolutely make a collar that would last a very long time, survive normal life, and only go boom when you want it to.
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**Absolutely possible**
[1 kg of plastic explosive](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1McazSZ3_xI)
^ That is 1 kg of plastic explosive going off, which i'm sure that even 0.5 kg of that, would be more than enough for a very messy and sudden death.
As far as transmitter/gps/microphone equipment goes, we have smartphones that weight only 100g:
[lightest phone](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=lightest%20phone)
So yap, these are not only possible, you wouldn't even need to be tony stark to build one.
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You can totally create a nuclear device with any size. It only need an element that sustains a nuclear fission chain reaction, for example Uranium 235:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ISvwN.png)
Or plutonium 239:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DQD0c.jpg)
In these examples, you just need a neutron to start the reaction.
You can also calculate the energy produced by getting the difference in mass of the products (in case on the Uranium one is Krypton 91 (which decays to Krypton 89), Barium 142 and 3 neutrons):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vvnil.jpg)
In contrast with conventional explosives, 500g of Uranium is about the same as 1500 ton of coal.
**About the critical mass**
One can argue that these reactions can't occur if the elements are not at the minimum wight/size requirement for sustain a chain reaction, called critical mass. However, a workaround is to wrap the element with a layer of graphite. It's called "Neutron Reflection". Read more [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_reflector)
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The people of Magical Almost-Earth needed the Chosen One to be brought from our world. Now that the day has been saved, Chosen One would have liked to stay, marry some royal sibling and enjoy life in a whimsical world where magic exists and people are grateful to have been saved.
Alas, this was not to be: something in Almost-Earth makes it uninhabitable for Earth humans. Maybe some isotopes are different, or the chirality of some molecules is inverted, or some physical constant is different?
Whatever it is, it slowly causes health problems that *will* result with death unless brought back to Earth. Symptoms should ideally become significant after a few years, but not yet irreversible if Chosen One returns to Earth at that point.
**What could cause slow but inevitable and ultimately lethal health problems to a normal Earth human in this world?**
Magic exists (part of the world's charm), but is out of scope in this question. Simply consider it as another type of technology in this context. Local medical science is in effect as advanced as ours: if we don't know how to prevent it, neither can they. They cannot sort isotopes or similarly high-tech, extremely expensive operations of the kind.
Earth is basically inaccessible, apart from a one-time round-trip for taking Chosen from (and back to) Earth. So they cannot simply, say, grab special food once a week from Earth to solve a particular health problem.
Similarly, local environment and ecosystem are similar enough for a human to survive without problems until those symptoms start. Some fauna and flora can even be shared or closely related. And the cause should not be obvious to an average human with higher education, until symptoms are starting. (It can be obvious to a specialist, with Chosen One simply not being specialist in this particular field.)
It must also be one-way only: Chosen One doesn't cause significant health problems to the inhabitants of Almost-Earth (though draconian quarantine and the local equivalent to vaccines and decontamination were applied to avoid a [plague apocalypse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics#Impact_on_population_numbers)).
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Several Options:
**Ionizing Radiation:** Maybe the magic gives it off. Maybe the rocks do. But it's such a small amount that you don't get ARS (Acute Radiation Syndrome). Over time, however, you start to have problems. Long-term exposure to ionizing radiation, even at doses too low to produce any symptoms of radiation sickness, can induce genetic mutations and cancer. This is the biggest risk facing survivors of the Fukushima disaster—the accident emitted a fraction of the radioactive material released at Chernobyl. But the most recent estimates predict the fallout may still cause more than a thousand deaths from cancer. If you were living in a constant Fukushima you'd be playing cancer roulette every day--and the only way to get out of it would be to seek treatment on earth.
I'm not sure why almost-humans would survive--maybe their cell organization is like a ginkgo or their magicalness protects them in some way (I mean, it is energy), but that is definitely a reason why you'd want to go back to earth.
**Heavy Metal Contamination:** If your world's rocks had a high content of lead, then so would the water. Much like the Flint Water Crisis, that water would be something you did not want to drink. There are species that are unbothered by such things--like your hypothetical almost-humans--but the standard earth human isn't one of them. Sure you could filter your water, drink only bottled stuff, but eventually it would still get to you because it's also in the crops, the dust, the very air... Lead poisoning isn't fun.
**Not The Right Stuff:** All ideas so far have been things added to the environment, what about things that have been taken away. Humans require a lot of compounds to survive, and so do plants. Nitrogen (N)
Potassium (K)
Phosphorus (P)
Calcium (Ca)
Magnesium (Mg)
Sulphur (S)
Iron (Fe)
Manganese (Mn)
Copper (Cu)
Zinc (Zn)
Molybdate (Mo)
Boron (B)
Chlorine (Cl)
are all necessary to life. (in small amounts for some of them) Maybe the plants on this world don't need Potassium to survive. The humans don't either. You do, however, and after a while you're going to have a problem there because the food isn't healthy for you. If Potassium or one of the other listed things was really hard to get, you'd run into a bit of a problem once you'd run through your natural stores.
**Blue Blood:** Along the same lines as the last option. If your almost-humans had hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin in their blood, then they would need a lot less iron and a lot more copper to survive. Basically the numbers for Iron and Copper in your diet would be switched.
Unfortunately for the chosen one, eating too much copper is a Problem, because it's toxic to regular humans in high amounts, so finding food would be a hassle (assumably the livestock are hemocyanin based as well, and the plants have their levels adjusted--this would be a change across the full ecosystem.) They'd also run into the problem of you being ridiculously anemic all the time, which isn't something anyone needs. Copper poison and anemia would definitely necessitate a trip to an earth hospital (and grocery store)
**Disease Biome:** Different planets, different diseases. Presumably all the health services on planet Magic are based off of magic. But maybe it doesn't work on us regular earth muggles, so your Chosen One can't get the proper vaccines, and has no access to any kind of medicine. No antibacterial medicine or vaccines means that poor Chosen One person needs to go home and take a sick day.
Cheers, and there's definitely more, but I think adding X toxin to the air so Y happens has already been covered quite well. Have fun writing.
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## It's not the length of time that matters, it's the date
Snodgroo flowers only bloom once every 13 years. But they're *everywhere*, and the all bloom all at once. For Almost-Earth residents, this means a month of severe hay-fever, and constantly cleaning all the surfaces. It's annoying at best, but not particularly dangerous.
Unfortunately, the pollen causes severe allergic reactions in Earth dwellers. Even the tiniest bit causes fatalities in minutes.
They've tried putting heroes in clean rooms before to wait it out, but the pollen really does get everywhere. Food becomes inedible and water becomes undrinkable for over year. No one is willing to risk the hero of the world when the entire world is instant death for them.
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I like your thought about molecule chirality. Almost-Earth could have **opposite handedness of [essential amino-acids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid#Effects_of_deficiency)**; the deficiency would lead to the hero more-or-less wasting to death.
Similar option **a missing (or incompatible) vitamin**: good candidates would be C, B1 or B3.
Both of these have the narrative benefit of being A. slow-acting and B. unpleasant. However much the hero would like to stay, their loved ones would rather send them home than watch them suffer.
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**Visitors to Almost Earth have insomnia.**
When the visitor lays down to go to sleep he is back up an hour or two later. He cannot go back to sleep: he is up. Sometimes he only sleeps 10 minutes.
This would serve well for a story because it will be immediately obvious something is happening with the protagonist, who is up in the middle of the night. The middle of the night when everyone else is asleep is a good time for narrative too. The protagonist will be able to get by with little sleep for many days while he saves the world, but chronic sleeplessness takes its toll in a well characterized and maddeningly frustrating way.
Medical professionals in the alternate earth will make well meaning recommendations about avoiding caffeine and screen time before bed. Heavy drugs might be able to knock out your protagonist but it will take more and more of them.
You do not need to explain why Alternate Earth is doing this. Sleep is not well understood as it is, and insomnia even less so. Thinking about the end where your protagonist returns to Earth in a bad way and wakes up after 10 refreshing hours - I am craving my own bed!
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You're going to have to induce a minor biological change to almost-humans on almost Earth. Sure, hypothetically, it could just be a disease unique to almost-Earth, except that it offends my senses as a writer to have your Chosen One be able to catch diseases, but not give them.
Now, if memory serves correct, carbon monoxide poisoning is pretty bad in humans. It's also irreversible, because the way it functions is that the carbon monoxide permanently bonds to the hemoglobin in your blood cells. (Irreversible in the sense there's no antidote, meaning that once you get it, you have to wait for your body to generate more blood cells. Inhaling a whiff of the stuff won't kill you.)
Almost-Earth can have a mild background level of carbon monoxide in the air, produce from some natural source (possibly a by-product of a flora-based reaction?). The natural citizens of almost-Earth have some means of countering or avoiding this (not sure how, I'd guess some system in the lungs which draws in carbon monoxide and then excretes it as a waste product). This will lead to slow carbon monoxide poisoning. The balance is tricky, to be sure, because you need the subject to build up poisoning faster than the body can replace cells, but not so fast that it kills your Chosen one in a few months.
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**Allergens**
"Almost-Earth" has something in its air that true Earth doesn't have. Maybe it's some pollen, maybe some chemical, but it is causing allergic effect in true humans, and this effect is compounded over time. There is no known remedy for this allergy, except for completely removing true humans from Almost Earth. If left untreated, allergy eventually kills true humans.
With high tech level, true human may be able to live in a bubble, but this is still risky, and what kind of life is that, after all?
Once true human returns to Earth, allergic effects are gradually dissipating until the health is completely restored.
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> (...) death unless brought back to Earth. Symptoms should ideally become significant after a few years, but not yet irreversible if Chosen One returns to Earth at that point.
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The food and the water there are too salty.
CO will have high blood pressure. That will cause a load of symptoms, ranging from frequent headaches to a sense of suffocation. But mostly he will tire easily, be sexually impotent at a younger age and have trouble concentrating. He will also have liquid retention.
Depending on his personality and will, he may end up leading an unhealthy lifestyle which will cause other problems.
Whether the damage is permanent or not will depend a lot on genetics. At some point CO will have kidney stones. Those may or may not damage his kidneys irreversibly. Just handwave it that he has small, passable stones. That wway the damage is not permanent.
By the way, it is not hard to find people living like that in our own real world. If you know people who never drink water, having Coke, Pepsi or something similar instead... CO will be just like them in Almost-Earth.
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High levels of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) are poisonous to most eukaryotes (but not bacteria). The mass difference between normal hydrogen and deuterium interferes with delicate biochemistry. If the hydrogen/deuterium in Almost-Earth is just over the poisonous level (about 25%), then it will take a while for levels inside the humans to reach poisonous levels. Organisms native to Almost-Earth will be adapted to the high levels of deuterium.
Calculating how long it will take to affect humans is left as an exercise for the interested reader.
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**The Chosen One has political views that are unacceptable to the ruling class.**
The poster's question suggests the world is ruled by some sort of nobility (reference to "marry a princess".) Assuming:
1. The CO is expressing views on things like "Democracy" and "Human Rights" that endanger the position of the currently ruling class.
2. The CO is highly popular with the general population.
This is a situation that is likely to cause severe (probably terminal) health problems. The ruling powers will want the SO gone (one way or another) as quickly as possible.
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Lets take a different approach:
There's a chemical present in the almost-Earth biochemistry that is not present in ours--you're not going to be able to eat without encountering it. It's absorbed to some degree by the digestive tract, but our bodies have no way to dispose of it. It is not directly harmful but gets reshaped by our bodies into a form that will stick to itself and build up plaques of it.
Think of how prion diseases kill. This isn't a prion because it's coming from the food rather than our own bodies but the lethal mechanism is the same. Very slow, our bodies have no defense because they don't see it as harmful. And, unlike prion diseases, the effect does not progress without continued exposure to the agent.
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How about looking into the core difference between the worlds: Magic!
Living beings on the "almost-Earth" have lived and evolved for all their life in a "magic-rich" environment. The Hero on the other hand lived in a place devoid of this "magic" thing and was only introduced to it after he was summoned. So his body is not actually fit to hold and use magic as good as the natives. For a time it is fine and all the damage done by "magic" is nullified by bodie`s natural restorative systems. May be the hero feels a little discomfort or a slight fever but it subsides in several days only to come back later. But at some point the symptoms start to worsen and magic healing seems to only power them up.
This is actually not my idea - it was introduced in "Mushoku Tensei". The protagonist in that story cures that disease by brewing a special tea that would make the body to excrete extra magic naturally like ammonia and other toxic substances.
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I've been working on a mostly-realistic story set, let's say, 500 years in the future. Humans have colonized the solar system and no longer live on Earth. Semi-automatic weapons with frangible rounds will be commonplace for combat onboard a spaceship, but these are severely lacking in penetration against armor; there are slow-firing laser sidearms for that (see my earlier post: [How can I explain a one-shot, slow-to-reload laser sidearm?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/89765/how-can-i-explain-a-one-shot-slow-to-reload-laser-sidearm)).
I have looked into aerosol sprays and proper vision protection, but I would also like to have some limited body armor that lessens the damage of a laser. If a victim can walk away with their life and moderate non-life-threatening injuries, it's perfect.
The closer to current-day technology and the less hand-waving, the better. It doesn't have to look great and doesn't have to cover the whole body, and can be disposable. Please don't suggest mirrors.
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# [Thin films](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_film), mirrored surfaces, and [destructive interference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_(wave_propagation)).
Thin films are exactly what they sound like: thin layers of stuff on different stuff. Since lasers shoot specific wavelengths of light, you need to find a material which is highly reflective in that wavelength, and deposit it on a person's clothes or armor. It may not be highly reflective in the visible spectrum, so it need not look like a shiny suit.
Reflective materials do not absorb the light, and the laser will be rendered mostly harmless to the target behind the film. Even if the mirror does heat up, the majority of the laser's energy can be redirected elsewhere. (For real mirrors, this can be >95% of the energy, making a laser a poor choice of weapon.)
Additionally, controlling the depth of an [additional thin film](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/antiref.html#c1) can allow you to cancel out the waves reflecting off of the surface in a process called [interference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_interference), so you protect yourself and neutralize the threat to others. It should be noted that this cancelling effect depends on the angle the laser hits, but will still reduce the overall intensity of a reflected beam!
**For those who don't remember or know optical physics:** interference does not violate any of the laws of thermodynamics, and is commonly taught in US high school physics courses and at least tangentially studied by anyone who has seen a soap bubble. Interference has been studied in great detail for a very long time: at least since the [mid 19th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optics#Physical_optics) with wave theory and even by [Newton in 1717](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_rings). As you may well guess by now, it is very well established science, and we use interference in many modern applications. If you still have questions, ask any high-school physics teacher, a physics book, or a physicist. Alternatively, you can learn the basics of interference from this informative [youtube video](https://youtu.be/-ob7foUzXaY) or [this](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/phyopt/antiref.html#c1), or [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_(electromagnetic_radiation)) and [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-film_interference) article.
**To summarize:** this would be a anti-reflective layer providing the wave-cancellation effects with a highly reflective layer underneath.
These thin films can be chemically deposited on clothes and armor, and need not even be large plates. This could be sprayed on like any other cloth treatment, or be special layers added to the surface of the fabric.
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Reflective armour will generally not avail you: weapon-grade lasers [generally work in *pulsed mode*,](https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/sidearmenergy.php) where (say) a 1 KJ shot will be divided into 1,000 1 J pulses, 5 µs apart from one another. The first pulse, though low-energy, will be high-powered (because it's very short, on the order of tens of nanoseconds, it causes the skin of the target to erupt in a small explosion which generates a bit of plasma going perpendicular to the surface, that is, in the direction of the laser beam.
The point of pulsing, then, is to wait for that cloud of plasma to disperse so the second pulse isn't absorbed by it, and it instead generates a second explosion on the bottom of the crater created by the first, and so on for all subsequent pulses.
Now, regarding mirrored surfaces, the problem is that they will not be perfectly reflective (say, pretend the efficiency $\eta = 99.5\%$), and that will cause it to absorb part of the pulses' energy and eventually (after $1 \over 100\% - \eta$ pulses) it will have absorbed as much energy as it would have absorbed from the first pulse, had it been completely nonreflective. For $\eta = 99.5\%$, that's $200$ pulses. At that point — actually, probably earlier, since it might need less than the power of a single pulse to do it — it blows up with a small explosion and creates a crater. The cratered suface, however, is no longer reflective (because it needs to be smooth in order to reflect specularly) and thus the other $800$ pulses will hit the target as if the armor weren't reflective.
At these time scales, any currently-known material cannot conduct enough heat away to matter for these calculations, so you're better off trying to get a material which carries the energy away via plasma — probably some sort of carbon composite like fullerenes.
(A big thanks to Winchell Chung and his great [Atomic Rockets](https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket) site, where much of this information comes from)
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Smoke.
As the laser burns the first layer of the armor it makes a lot of dense smoke very quickly, this smoke ruins the optics of the laser making much less of the energy continue to reach the target.
Conductors.
Lasers hurt you by making a small place very hot. If the heat can easily move around the armor the area that gets hot is larger so not as hot.
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In addition to PipperChip's thin films and destructive interference, I'd suggest exploiting the wave nature of light to your advantage, coupled with high-energy-absorption materials.
Light is reflected, refracted, diffracted, or absorbed and re-radiated when it encounters a solid material. Translucent or transparent armor with impurities of differing refractive indexes or even tiny apertures would cause the focus of the laser to spread as it passes through and encounters materials with different refractive indexes.
Behind that, you might have a layer of some material that can absorb large amounts of energy without heating up. Water is known for its high specific heat (~4200 J/kg*C), but hydrogen has a tremendously higher specific heat (~14300 J/kg*C). Pressurized hydrogen sealed within armor plates of refractive/diffractive materials should negate enough energy transfer to mitigate the effects of laser fire. Helium also has higher specific heat than water if you're not keen on walking around with something so volatile protecting you from laser fire.
The downside (or maybe upside) would be that such materials would be pretty susceptible to conventional ammunition.
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How about a retroreflective surface, like car or bike rear reflectors and many street signs.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZtmR9.gif)
A considerable amount of the radiation would return towards the attacker, not accurately but it might be enough to make you stop firing!
This approach is maybe less practical than using an ablative material that creates smoke- carbon-filled poly-ethelene maybe. The surface hit would rapidly heat up, but in evaporating remove the energy, whilst simultaneously providing lots of smoke to diffuse the incoming beam.
Some ablative materials are also "intumescent" which means they foam up when heated. That would mean the armour might bulk up and insulate from the heat well- albeit moving would become harder.
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Lasers are destructive based on the absorption of the laser energy from the target, but very powerful beams (the ones which are used for weapons) would actually that the target material to a plasma. This is actually useful since the plasma is generally opaque to any further inputs of laser energy, so makes a small cloud which absorbs the energy and rapidly expands, dispersing the energy away from the target. Combat uniforms might resemble quilted jackets with pockets of an easily ionized foam to create the plasma when hit.
At high enough energies, the laser will actually "ignite" the air into an ionized plasma, which actually travels back "up" the beam towards the emitter. If the crew of the boarded ship has sufficient time, they might "spike" the air with some easily ionized gas to induce this effect against enemy lasers. This would also make it far easier to counterattack with more conventional kinetic energy weapons like assault rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers and so on. Being struck with a beanbag round or similar in a confined setting might be enough to knock down or disorient the attacker, and being shot in the faceplate of a spacesuit is never a good thing.
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I wonder if you need any armor actually...
I'm gonna go with a portable riot shield, so read on.
Let's suppose the target is a human being, so mostly water. The energy to heat up one gram of victim's meat from 37°C to 100°C is 263 J, then 2.2kJ is required to vaporize 1 gram of water, so a 1kJ shot would at most vaporize 0.4 grams of meat, if delivered fast enough, via high power pulses.
Most likely it would remove less meat, as some of the high-power pulse would heat the meat to much higher temperatures (incl. into plasma) so this energy is not available for vaporization.
So, the target now has a tiny dent in their skin, with a cloud of superheated steam/plasma exploding around it at enormous pressure.
I guess the damage mechanism to a human would have a lot more to do with the resulting pressure and explosion than the burn. The 1kJ energy here is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of TNT. Not a lot, but you can already shoot a pretty deadly bullet with that. It's also the kinetic energy of a brick fast enough to turn a skull into a watermelon. Of course only a small part of this would damage the target, but it would definitely result in a bloody mess!
Now, we could use a more powerful laser to really make their head explode. Say 100 kJ instead. But then you have a problem: if you miss the bad guy and hit, say, the nice window overlooking into space instead, then the resulting explosion will be equivalent to 20 grams of TNT, and everyone dies. In fact, it would be a lot safer to use a shotgun loaded with buckshot, which tends to do a lot more damage to people compared to bulletproof glass. Also it would ricochet on bulletproof glass, whereas the laser will make it explode no matter the angle it hits...
Another fun thing with lasers is that if you hit, say, a nice sci-fi space craft wall made of shiny brushed aluminium with the 100kJ laser, then it will vaporize about 10 grams of it (handwaving 100% efficiency)... so now you have a nice cloud of superheated aluminium vapor...
At this point, it occurs to me (ant to everyone else on board) that aluminium nanoparticles are added into thermobaric bombs because they don't just burn in oxygen, they **BUUUURN**. The 10 grams of Al vapor yield about 300kJ through the [fuel-air explosion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIf-yU3C-OU&t=43s).
So we have 100kJ lazzer blast plus 300kJ secondary explosion, which gives about 100 grams of TNT, so the spaceship goes boom and everyone is dead.
Hmm....
Okay, so if the purpose of the laser is safety, better use a low power one and don't aim at windows.
Now, the armor. Well, if it's made of kevlar (or space kevlar, diamond, [UHMWPE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_polyethylene), etc) then all this stuff is pretty much hydrocarbon-based, so the vapor will be very combustible too... So there will be a secondary boom. Same with metals (worse, in fact). If it's ceramics, well, watch out for the chemical composition, as pretty much everything will burn in oxygen if hot enough (boron, silicon...) and as for the answer above who suggested hydrogen of all things...
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OJiHT.jpg)
Water would be different, though: it would turn into a plasma of H and O atoms which would then recombine into water (ie, burn), but this would not bring extra energy to the blast, since the energy required to break down the molecules was borrowed from the laser, it is released again when the hydrogen burns.
So, here's my suggestion: you need a material which will probably be combustible once vaporized, while being able to soak up lots of water relative to its own weight, so that most of the laser energy creates non-combustible water vapor. This can be one of the [super-absorbent polymers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superabsorbent_polymer) or hydrogels.
If you're in a real hurry, you can cut up a riot shield-sized piece out of a foam mattress, soak it up in the shower, and then use it as a laser-proof shield to charge at the enemy. You'll never forget the looks on their faces! If there's enough water in it, or you duct-tape it to one of these solid stainless steel kitchen pot covers, it will also (probably) stop frangible bullets.
Also, it is a riot shield, not in direct contact with your body, so the laser-caused vapor explosion will kick it back, but it won't shock your internal organs. All you need is earplugs, and as always when using lasers, safety glasses!
If you're in less of a hurry, you should optimize the water content, because this thing is gonna be quite leaky. If you want a readily available source of hydrogel polymers, remember it is a commonly used hydroponic substrate, and raid the hydroponics bay:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BttHz.jpg)
(I mix some of the stuff in powder form with the soil in my flower pots, it increases water retention).
Remember it is also used in baby diapers and, obviously, and perhaps ideally for plot reasons, menstrual pads.
You can also use "personal lubricant" products, or the slimy mucus your space alien buddies produce in copious amounts (no offense, guys).
Or even gelatin from the kitchen.
Basically anything that turns water into a gel and attaches it to a shield, or allows a bit of foam to be soaked and not leak, will work.
I don't suggest plywood as a backing material, it would spall when the laser explodes a bit of water. But any metal would work fine. Plus, as I said, if the water-gel layer is thick enough, it will also stop frangible bullets.
If you can get a large pan of Jell-O from the kitchen, it's a readymade laser-proof shield. Also you can eat it after the battle.
This would be quite heavy though, so you'll need to repurpose any kind of wheeled vehicle like a kitchen cart, or maybe a wheelchair.
If their lasers take 30 seconds to reload, you can probably kill them all with Jell-O and shivs.
Also, obviously, you can counterattack by making the air combustible.
Getting hold of a propane tank on a spaceship should be quite difficult, but you can just lob a kitchen bag of flour or corn starch over the enemy ranks, then hit it with your laser (try to aim carefully!). It will explode and disperse into the air as a very combustible dust cloud.
Flour (or sugar, etc) contains 4x more energy by weight than TNT. However it won't be mixed optimally with air, most of it will end up in the floor, but still...
Now, thanks to youtube, when you want a video of someone doing something very stupid with explosives, the question isn't if you gonna find it, but how many you're gonna have to watch before finding one that looks good!
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRw4ZRqmxOc).
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How about 500 years of tech improvement to solar cells? Absorb the laser, charge super capacitors, and use the energy in your own weapon? This ends up being very similar to the actual book 'Starship Troopers' vs the very loose movie tech.
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As people have mentioned, with a military grade laser, what it hits will burn even if it is reflective. With a pulsed laser, even if the first pulse is reflected, the reflective surface will be marred and the next pulse will have full effect (or near full).
What you want is a black friable surface. It absorbs the heat and explodes outward, taking the heat with it. Aside from making the armor thick enough to take several pulses to the same spot, the material thrown off from the first pulse will absorb or diffract some of the energy from the next pulses.
That armor would probably be built with overlapping plates so that plates can be replaced after a battle without having to replace the whole armor.
This armor doesn't have to be very heavy but it will likely be bulky.
It would also have an odd effect of knocking the wearer back from a hit since a portion of the heat will be converted to kinetic. Most of the heat should be held in the pieces that are being blown off but the same force given to blowing off the material will be felt by the wearer.
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**Prism sand**
You could reach the same effect of a mirror using armor that use manufacture sand; with each grain being a small prism.
When the laser reachs this sand, each prism would refract and disperse the light around the other prisms, reducing his speed and increasing the area of effect enough to avoid any real damage to the person wearing the armor.
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All a "laser" does is heat a target object to extremes. The more powerful the laser the faster it can achieve some destructive result.
**So really your armor can be a bunch of things:**
* mirror based to reflect the light
* heat shielding based, just resist the heat like tiles on the space shuttle
* transference, there are materials capable of routing received light to a collection point or back out to another direction.
* simply thick enough to protect the user long enough to react to evade.
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Reflection is the obvious approach. Indeed, highly polished mirrorlike medieval plate armor would be very effective. (I wouldn't want to be standing next to the target.) A densely packed army of plate armored soldiers would produce a disco ball effect.
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So what about metamaterial cloaking? It uses cartesian mesh and other metamaterials to change the coordinates of a magnetic field bending light around a target, making lasers ineffective in the first place, but im assuming this system would be very expensive and vulnerable to kinetic penetrators, and it cannot exist on all parts of the vessel or person because you couldnt use sensors.
Here is the source:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamaterial_cloaking>
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702109700720>
<https://science.howstuffworks.com> › Science › Physical Science › Optics
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# Option 1: Ice
I'm assuming you can arrange either some kind of power armor or low shipboard gravity? These will make even quite heavy armor easy to manage.
You want high albedo ice on top of your normal armor. A 5 cm layer or more. The high albedo reflects most of the laser energy harmlessly, and what's left has to deal with the high heat capacity of ice and the handy latent energy of fusion. How much latent energy? 334 kJ/kg. But you're reflecting a lot of energy before that starts. Sea ice can have an albedo of up to 0.7, I'm not sure how much higher a designer ice could get, but now you've got armor that's guaranteed to absorb over 1 MJ/kj, and without getting up to dangerous temperatures. Every degree you can chill the ice below freezing adds 7 kJ/kg capacity. And the melt product? Water? Well, if you're in a micro-gee environment... it will form droplet which will automatically mess with their optics and de-focus their lasers.
Best of all, your ship can just make more whenever you want.
# Option 2: Thin, layered, high albedo panels.
For this option, you're counting a lot more on reflection than absorption. We can get pretty high albedo designer materials (I think the top is something like 99.7%, but I can't find a good source at the moment), but that will eventually break down. But you don't actually need it to withstand any more than it takes to degrade the reflectance in any given layer, because once it's no longer highly reflecting then that layer has provided it's contribution - and it can burn out and expose the next, fresh, cool, once again super high albedo layer just 0.5 mm down. This means this armor is always super light, and can be as thick as is practical for mobility reasons. Chest plates and helmets could be quite thick indeed. This option can be trickier than the first, as ice has a very broad spectrum albedo, and your designer material might have to sacrifice some reflectance for spectrum coverage. Since it's light, you can also stock lots of riot shields made of the stuff, and they won't be much hindrance to wield.
May require specialized fabrication, and so your ship may have to settle for carrying extra panels rather than fabricate more en route.
Note that it is considerably harder to protect **a ship** against lasers, because the enemy ship can mount much bigger lasers and has much *much* more power available than enemy boarding troops.
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[Question]
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For the sake of this question, the firebending is set similar to the one of [Avatar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender), except firebender cannot be a lightning bender. The setting is medieval, with villages, castles and such.
There are fire, earth, water, and air bender. Bender can manipulate only existing element, however firebender can always "summon" fire from **his** bodily heat and waterbender can extract water from the moisture.
Firebender can shoot jet of fire from any point from his body and maintain it. He can also fly with the jet. The strength and direction of the fire can be controlled when directly in contact with his body, while remote fire cannot be controlled (unlike other bender), so no reusing shot fireballs.
The protagonist is a firebender. He is about to join the intelligence team of the A kingdom. He is a natural fighter, street-proven as an orphaned child. The firebending ability is discovered just before he join the team, just as he reached 20.
The firebending ability is extremely rare, and so is other kind of bending in this world - usually a country only have 1-2 bender, so if utilized properly this can be a great asset to the intelligence team.
However, firebending techniques are a little bit... flashy, thus although unquestionably effective, not so well suited for assassination missions that requires stealth and anonymity.
**Note :** main concern is the undeveloped world means on pitch black night, if he used his firebending ability, it will notice people as it is easily mistaken for a fire breakout.
**Update:** It is important to hide *the fact the assassination was done by a firebender.* Benders are extremely rare. If the assassination method is only possible by benders, it can be traced back to kingdom who own a firebender (or other bender).
Due to politic (damn you politicians!), the intelligence team still want to keep him as part of the team, but unsure how to train him to utilize his firebending techniques while keeping his effectiveness while maintain the stealthiness when performing missions.
**How can a firebender become an effective, but stealthy, assassin?**
I'm looking for ways, including, but not limited to, techniques (limited to what firebender in Avatar can do) and equipment to achieve this.
**Additional info:**
It is very unusual for benders to work together. Once a bender is discovered, different groups will try to recruit him/her and won't let go. In this case, this firebender is recruited to the intelligence team. *Note that this does not invalidate existing answers, just additional info.*
[Answer]
I think you might look at this problem from the wrong angle.
Being an assassin does not require your characters ability to bend fire nor does being able to bend fire hinder your ability to be an assassin. There are plenty assassins that do their job without bending anything in fact.
I'd rather look at it like this: **What typical assassin problems can get easier if you can control fire?**
1. You can seal wounds with fire to prevent infections.
2. Depending on your climate and job you can defrost stuff and that way create water from snow, cook anywhere if you have water/ice close by.
I'm not sure about this, but maybe neutralize some poisons or bacteria by cooking it. In medieval settings this might be a good way not to die of food poisoning.
3. This also works for disinfecting blades to do some field surgery.
Heat the blade to remove an arrowhead from a leg without introducing tons of bacteria to the wound. Sure it's painful but removing the whole leg later is way worse.
In general, if your intelligence team works in a group your fire bender might be the ideal **camp support.**
4. He can cook/heal/heat and create shelter/illuminate.
5. He could even smith without a forge or burn pottery without an oven.
6. Dry the muddy floor for a good nights rest.
The drying the floor could also be used to prevent footsteps, but that might be a little far fetched.
7. **You can give signals in the night.** Not very stealthy, but a big advantage for coordinated night missions with multiple persons where you need quick signals that can be seen from afar by other members.
8. Another thing that might be very handy is the ability **to read stuff at darkness** without a candle.
Maybe you don't have to kill, but just need to steal information. Breaking into a warehouse to get a manifest might be easy enough, but finding the correct document in pitch black night might not.
9. You can ignite arrows and thus fire at burnable stuff like hay for distraction. E.g. set a barn on fire and break into the next building.
10. One other thing that comes to mind is breaking and entering.
If you want to enter a locked wooden door in pitch black night, wear a black cape. Stand in front of a door and burn the lock out of the door with one hand while holding your cape in front of it.
Maybe get a fire resistant cape too? :)
Unless of course you ability allows such precise control, that you can stop the fire from burning the cape.
11. If you got time on your hands you could also **suffocate people in their sleep** leaving no traces in a medieval world.
Get a small opening to their room and burn stuff in your hands that produces smoke, then let them suffocate and open the window for the smoke to float out.
Maybe carry some perfume to remove the smell too, but in medieval times the streets might not have smelled all to well, opening the window might be enough to cover that.
12. You can also **free yourself from most bindings.** If your enemy thinks you are helplessly lying on the floor just burnt he ropes.
13. Another thing that's kinda cool, you can get rid of evidence.
Let's say you shot down your victim with a bow from a tower. The guards are alarmed and enter. Now you can burn the bow and arrows leaving no evidence.
Might depend on how good your legal system is though...
14. A pretty specific but cool other feature would be **heating enemies armor/weapons.** Maybe not during combat but before.
You know there are some barracks around and you know reinforcement will come from there once the job goes sideways. Heat the sword hilts and once the reinforcements come they burn their hands, rendering them useless.
15. For stealthy kills you could grab the victim from behind. Holding its mouth shut shooting a beam of fire from the palm.
16. Last but not least, you can burn a cool logo on anything wooden to leave behind in case you want to leave a flashy message to the guards finding the corpse.
That's a few things that come to mind when thinking about an assassin with fire bending abilities.
[Answer]
**Unlike an assassin, the firebender needs no weapons**
Your firebender can be disguised as a regular person and will never need to worry about being searched since he has no need to carry weapons. This also means that he can make long journeys and not have to carry lumps of sharpened metal around, making travel a *little bit* faster.
Since he can dress normally and won't need to conceal weapons, your firebender can take on any role and act as a regular person. He can hide in plain sight and observe his target.
**Assassination**
With his only weapon being fire, it may be difficult to kill his targets without attracting attention. One way to avoid this is to use a very small but hot flame produced from the hand to "stab" the target like a knife. This flame will give off a dim blue light (depending on what it being burnt, as pointed out by [@TBear](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/40076/tbear)):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uDsxs.jpg)
In perfect darkness, there may be a small flash of blue visible. This will be very out of place in your setting, and anyone who sees the colour will want to investigate.
Alternatively, maybe this super-hot flame is just your average yellow colour, or even a deep red (which is difficult to see since it isn't "bright"). It depends on how your firebender abilities work in this world.
**Accident**
Fires are not uncommon and in a time when the main source of light was flames, it is easy to pass off a death as an "accident". Your fire bender could sneak into a target's house, kill them, and burn the house so that by the time people get to the body it is seen as a "house fire" and not a murder. Of course, everyone will know that that person has died, but they will have no idea that it was deliberate. If your assassin escapes without being spotted, no one will have a clue and the mission will not be compromised.
Your character could also start forest fires to trap and kill groups that are travelling long distances. It would be an "accident", of course. Maybe their camp fire escaped and set fire to the forest?
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There is no smoke without fire...
With his fire, he could produce a large amount of [Carbon monoxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning).
This will make him a really at sneak kill. With a good control he can channel his fumes under someone door and kill everyone.
If he finds a liquid that is poisonous once vaporized he can add it to the mix, because carbon monoxide don't kill fast enough.
If you want it to be ironic, make him a an assistant of a prelate.. The prelate will easily find witch that can manipulate fire in public...
And [burn them ..](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g).
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If you have read the War of the Worlds, you might remember the deadly weapon of the aliens - invisible infrared ray so hot that it could evaporate parts of targets while setting them on fire.
There are many parts of human body which when damaged, cause fatal condition. One of them, easily reachable just under the skin is the [spinal cord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_cord). Damaging it with a tight jet of fire might have almost instant fatal consequences. Even if it does not, the odds of the target telling anyone what happened are low.
So basically all your assassin needs to do is sneak up on your target and lightly touch their neck. The target will flinch, maybe make a light sound and fall dead.
Bonus points if you decide for one target to survive it and become paraplegic, unable to tell anyone who almost killed him.
[Answer]
There is a good bit of overlap here with Morfium, however to much original content to just make a comment.
**Home Alone** style of defense. Heat up door handles behind you. When someone touches the handle you hear their response and you know your time is up.
**Set distractions** for other teams. Arson is incredibly easy for a fire bender. The amount of sheer damage that can be done in a short time is amazing. Burn a ton of stuff up. Then while the village/city/castle responds to it the rest of your team if off doing something important and you make your get away.
**Destruction**. Did I mention sheer destruction? Assassins have often been used for many types of clandestine operations. Destroy an important bridge. Set a supply camp on fire. Torch a grain warehouse. Burn up a supply ship.
**Fly** to a difficult to reach spot. This could be long distance, or simply to take a more direct route that gets you there quicker than the enemy expected. Use flight briefly to enhance jumps (Matrix style get away).
**Command and Control**. Signal fires where mentioned. However this should be emphasized more. The bender and or commander stays out of the target at a distance. Uses a telescope/eye glass to keep an eye on multiple teams/individuals (targets, guards, onlookers). The bender than uses fire signals to give orders. If the teams are briefed and know right where to look for the signals they can be small and brief to remain hidden. No one else will have the time to see them and recognize them. Once the action goes down if further orders are needed (in emergency situations) then large fire signals can be sent. Command and control from a point of better observation cannot be underestimated.
**Hot air balloon**. Did I mention observation points? The bender could fuel a hot air balloon (though they may or may not be available depending upon your setting). They could use the hot air balloon for observation or for fast (though sometimes unpredictable) travel or to drift over walls. Humans tend not to look up so you can probably drift around at night unseen.
**Chemical reactions**. There are many things that chemical reactions and catalysts can do with the correct application of heat. Get together with your countries alchemists and see what can be wiped up. Better smoke bombs, poison bomb, better explosives, faster acids.
**Survival skills**. Some of these where mentioned. However you could also travel in the most extreme of winters. Melting paths through the snow (or traveling with your water bender) and keep people from freezing to death.
**Bend steel bars**. Not sure on the specifics required of this. But if you heated a metal high enough it becomes weaker and you might be able to bend it with a lever. Enough rapid heating and cooling might just cause the metal to become brittle and easily shattered as well.
**Quick kills** . Sometimes it’s ok to be seen, or you’ve already been discovered. Quick kills might get you out of there anyway.
[Answer]
Damn, you sure aren't afraid of challenges...
But this time you're aiming high, I give you that!
Fire is a very energetic phenomenon, and it's thermic energy. While a transfer of kinetic energy stops when all the energy is gone, having been spent in moving/breaking/reshaping masses, heat will be spent by heating masses nearby, which may burn themselves if their burning point is reached, taping into even more potential energy. Combustion sustains itself.
So, without getting to spiritual/aristotelian stuff, fire brings:
* Light
* Chaos
*Once again, I don't mean chaos as a primal D&D style drive or spiritual force, but as entropy. Ignite something, and order in the vicinity will decrease over time, it will happen rather quickly and the concerned area may also expand at an accelerating speed depending on the setting.*
Given how much we value order - because we want the things we craft and build to keep their shape - we tend to be concerned about unwanted fires, not to mention that it also makes people die.
That's why we are wired to give a lot of mind to the signs fire brings, *light* and *chaos*.
In other words, the more intensely your character will use his ability, the more noticeable and a cause of concern it will be.
In fact, fire is so much opposed to discretion that the only way to use the basic abilities related to fire that would help achieve goals which require stealth that I can see is by **diverting attention**.
Otherwise, my best bet is on your character specializing in surgical use of his ability:
* **Nothing that runs the risk of setting the surrounding to fire**, except to trigger intended panic as a cover/distraction. Forget about throwing punches and kicks as a fire storm.
* **Avoiding emitting bright lights**: either low energy/smoky flames that will appear dark orange/red or high energy flames that will appear bluish. The later kind will be bright, but at least won't trigger the usual reaction to fire since people aren't accustomed to blue flames in that kind of context.
* **Moves based purely on heat**: a lot of materials have a relatively high burning point, which means that you have often a good range before reaching combustion levels. For example, generating heat from touch can go from quickly kill targets to melting locks without torching the whole building.
The list can be expanded, but the point is made: I believe you should take your distance from the traditional *Avatar* setting, which is quite graphical, and follow your own path. Since your story involve stealth, focus on subtle stuff. Make your character focus on moves that help his purpose and allow his power to work in relevant ways. By the way, you don't even have to follow the classic distribution of personality traits according to elemets that is present in Avatar.
Besides, if your character was disciplined enough to be hired as a spy/assassin in the first place, there should be no reason for him to not be disciplined enough to learn to use his bending in a way that helps him doing his job.
[Answer]
## Kill using arson
In medieval times, open fire was the only way to create artificial light or to cook. So accidental fires were not uncommon. So when you want to kill a person, just torch the whole building they are in. If you want to make it look like an accident, shoot the fire beam at some place where a sudden fire is plausible, like a stack of firewood next to the cooking place or a table with a candle on top.
## Kill openly using a fire jet, then use it to get away
Political assassination are sometimes not supposed to be stealthy. Sometimes you want to demonstrate power and incite terror by killing someone in public. In that case your firebender could strike and then use his flying ability to escape from the scene.
Regular soldiers would be ill-equipped to prevent him from escaping. Drawing a bow takes a few seconds. They won't be fast enough to shoot him before he flies away. Even someone with a loaded crossbow in hand would be unlikely to hit a moving target that fast. The only people who might be able to chase him are other superhumans who can fly at least as fast as he can. When any of these are around, he might have to fight them before he can escape. But unless the opponent has many such benders (or at least one who is a lot more powerful than him) among their vassals, that's a calculated risk. Or maybe killing someone to draw out the enemy benders so he can fight and kill them is in fact his plan.
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**Touch of death**
Your assassin (is that the best way to use a fire bender? anyway...) jets fire from his hands. Maybe it does not need to be through air. If he touches a person and jets fire through them, the person would cook.
If he does it fast the victim would cook so fast there would be a steam explosion. Sort of the polonium signature of this particular assassin. But if it is not that hot they would die, possibly with minimal marks on the outside. Your brain shuts off at just a few degrees above body temperature. If he is careful he might be able to just knock the person out then spirit them away; added value for this character.
Cooking a person from the inside out would be noticed if the victim exploded. If cooked on low heat, that would make no sound and no light. It would be tricky to figure out why the person died at all.
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A lot of interesting things have been brought by people to help you with your main problem, but I saw nobody talk about your character not working alone:
You said that a country usually had 1-2 benders, let's say his country has a second bender (air type). Being part of an intelligence group if he had the help of an air bender he could create some sort of firegun prototype. I mean with the help of the team they could understand how there is no fire without oxygen, and with the airbender make some sort of oxygen ammo.
As you probably know some gas are highly flammable, so if some airbender could isolate and compress one of theese gas (like N2O for exemple which is naturaly emmited by earth) it would be a good start to replace black powder.
(Even though compressed air could be a good start to build weapons, and could be known by every airbender, this could be improved)
This could make him (or an ally) the first real sniper which is not realy the type of medieval assassin you seem to look for, but could still be a great assassin.
[Answer]
How about some fire bending adaptation of techniques to assassin?
For instance:
* Heating a grain of sand to the point of incandescence and shoot it to the brain of the victim
* Boil the victims blood
* Increase victims body temperature to the point of heat stroke?
* etc.
This is more of a character design approach but might work.
[Answer]
Lots of good answers for potential means of turning your fire bender into an assassin. I wanted to touch on a reason the intel team would consider the bender to be an asset even though their particular talents tend to be a bit flashy.
The bender is (literally) built in fire support. When the mission is blown and the team switches from stealth to bug out mode, the bender can let loose as a distraction and or deterrent for pursuit.
**Have an operative that needs to get out of a stronghold that is now on alert?**
Throw a few fire balls at the main gate or ignite some out buildings while the operative slips out the back (or the rescue team slips in).
**Town watch closing in on your base of operations?**
Instantly torch the evidence and sneak away elsewhere.
**Soldiers in pursuit of the team?**
Set the street or a portion of the forest ablaze to force them to detour and give you more time to make your getaway.
**Someone getting to close to where you are hiding out?**
Bright flash in their face causing disorientation and night blindness for a few minutes while you slip away.
**Need to pin the teams activities on someone else?**
Let someone see and follow you to another faction's base/embassy. Now they suspect someone else of having a secret fire bender and working against them.
Not to mention the psychological effects on pursuers seeing someone using fire in hand to hand combat.
[Answer]
As far as how to be stealthy...
1. **Shadow Illusions:** create shadows or remove his own shadow by simulating the original light source
2. **Snuff out Torches (distance):** he shoots out a thread-thin flame to the target in order to connect the flame to his body, but once connected he can purge it
3. **Breaking and Entering:** once metal is heated up, bending it shouldn't be too difficult... allowing any metal lock to unlatch, leaving nearly no evidence
As far as how to be deadly...
1. **"Laser" Eyes**: Shooting a thin beam of fire from the eyes can do serious damage, and if subtly is required I would suggest pinging the horse instead of the rider
2. **Sharpened Weapons**: running fire down the blade bends the metal so that its perfectly sharp, including swords, throwing stars/daggers, arrows, etc
[Answer]
I made the suggestion that a firebender could bend the victim's bodyheat, and cause it to (e.g.) boil their blood, causing an embolism. I was told that the bender can only bend their OWN heat into fire.
Next question is, how fine can you make the fire? If you can make it microscopic, you can still apply the same mechanism. There might be a small mark on the victim, where it entered. How small? 1 millimeter? 1 picometer?
I would not expect a hole of 1mm (1/25 inch) to be found under normal circumstances (human skin is about 1.5 - 2 square meters, 16 to 20 square feet to . It would be a huge coincidence if a tiny burnmark was found, AND identified, by someone not expecting it).
Human pores are 30 micrometers (1/900th inch) diameter) - you might be able to "sneak" the fire in through a pore.
Images of firebenders have an airgap between their hands and the fire (most of the time? all of the time?) perhaps an inch/2 centimeters? So controlling the fire at this range is definitely feasible. Once it's in the victim's body, ideally in the bloodstream, increase the heat, boil some blood (only a tiny amount!) to start an embolism, then walk away. It takes time for the embolism to break off, and get into the lungs or brain.
This could easily (I think) be done by a touch on the back, shake of the hand, or the like.
I was unable to find any information about the delay (from blood clot to death), but I found a reference to someone who had an air embolism, who survived (not without symptoms) for 12 hours.
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[Question]
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Imagine you have any kind of conditions for the world, any time period — assuming airships are working on laws of physics (no steampunkish "deus ex machina" garbage), what would make an abundance of airships or balloons actually make sense?
[Answer]
A zombie apocalypse!
No, wait! I'm not kidding. That would be a perfect opportunity to bring back lighter-than-air transportation. After all,... the vessels are lighter than air.
If you have an army of staggering undead rampaging around on the earth below you, wouldn't you want your vehicle to remain airborne even if it runs out of gas?
I would!
[Answer]
As mentioned before, hybrid airships are getting back in fashion, it has been made more secure than before and it hits the middle ground between efficiency and speed. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mmsRH.png)
It uses less fuel than planes and other air transportation, and it is faster than trucks, trains and ships as the image from <http://www.lockheedmartin.com/> so elegantly explains.
It means the best of two worlds. Cheap and fast. And it is able to get through to difficult terrain.
Also it could be used as a cruise ship for the same reason that people sails around in tallships, they are not as efficient as other cruise ships either in crew or in speed, but they have charm and nostalgia - and some people are willing to pay for that.
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# Expensive fuel
Airplanes are economically feasible only because fuel is still relatively cheap. But if fuel gets much more expensive, airships are a good alternative to airplanes: Still faster than ships (and not bound to navigable water bodies), but much less fuel use.
In that expensive-fuel world, airplanes would only be used if a really fast transport is needed (for example emergency aid transport; also the military will certainly continue to use them). For most overseas cargo, ships would continue to be the ideal solution, but passenger transport would likely be done primarily by airship. Over land, airships would basically take over the role airplanes have now, although they would feel the competition from trains and trucks more than airplanes do, as their speed advantage is less.
One advantage of airships over a combination of vehicle and ship is that when part of the transport is over land, and part is over water, expensive transshipping can be avoided, as the airship can fly over land as well as over water. OTOH, the lower fuel consumption and greater capacity of ships may still make the ship more economical in those scenarios.
# Difficult terrain
Most land-based transport is only efficient if it can go almost straight on almost horizontal floor. Trains cannot go through sharp corners at all, and cars are slowed down very much by them. Making cars and trains that can climb steep slopes is expensive, and they will also be slowed down.
There are ways to get this artificially (tunnels and bridges), but if the terrain is sufficiently difficult not only locally, but almost everywhere, using airships may be more economical than building and maintaining lots of tunnels and bridges.
# No connected oceans
In our world, all oceans are connected, while landmasses (continents) are often separated by oceans. Now imagine a planet where things are the other way round: All land masses are connected, but the oceans are not. That means ships cannot simply go from one ocean to another. In that world, airships will have a great advantage over ships simply from being able to transport things everywhere.
# Easy to get lighter-than-air gas
Let's assume there's a natural source of molecular hydrogen of helium that doesn't require developed technology to use. Alternatively, assume an atmosphere composed of much heavier gases, so that some of the gases that are naturally produced by volcanism fit that bill.
Given natural and obvious availability of light gases, the concept of lighter-than-air travel would likely have been discovered earlier, especially given that its basics are much easier to figure out than the basics of winged flight.
Earlier development of airships means a longer period to establish them before airplanes are invented.
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I’ve read about real cases today where [gas lifting hybrid vehicles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_airship) are developed. I think it was in *Popular Science*, where it was meant for the logging industry. The gas lifting was cheaper to use than the conventional helicopter.
Being hybrid, not lighter than air, it still had sufficient power to maneuver and keep station in real weather conditions (and the overall size is reduced, reducing the wind problem).
So where it can complete is in the sky crane applications, especially where lifting needs to be maintained for long periods of time.
I see companies are [still holding high hopes](http://discovermagazine.com/2013/nov/02-hybrid-airship) for such ideas.
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Here are the main points:
* Safety. The ships have to be seen as mostly safe to have the number of passengers needed to make them economically feasible.
* Cheaper. It can be the fuel, it can be the way it's built, but this method of travel will have to beat out the competition.
* Efficient. It's going to have to do a better job of getting people or cargo from point a to point b. So it either has to be faster or be able to carry more than other methods.
* Marketing. I suggest you look at the advent of mass air travel and the ads for inspiration.
* Beta testing on a smaller scale, AKA war. Before airplanes became a mass transit thing, they were used in war. The funding provided by countries allowed it to be developed so that the tech could be expanded.
You say any time period. We have the tech to do it, but the above covers ANY time period. Look back to when [ballooning was first developed](http://www.eballoon.org/history/history-of-ballooning.html)--we're talking the late 1700s. If that tech had been funded and developed for war then and developed in the fashion laid out above, planes might not have been developed--or if they were, it would be less advanced because we already had a method of air transportation. I can see planes being developed later to compete with balloons, but if they are already entrenched in society, they will be seen as dangerous to begin with, and might eventually edge out balloons/airships later on.
Let me throw you a link to another question with tech-type answers here on the [earliest it could be developed](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/3028/what-is-the-earliest-that-a-civilization-could-develop-airships?rq=1). And the answers on this one [covers fuel efficiency](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/13514/how-fuel-efficient-are-airships?rq=1). And these answers cover ways to make them [better equipped for war.](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/229/how-can-i-make-steampunk-airships-less-flimsy?rq=1)
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Airships fell out of use for a variety of reasons:
* Spectacular incidents. The Hindenburg going up in flames is pretty bad publicity for the whole industry, even today that's the kind of thing you think about when someone says "airship".
* Lack of interest from the military. WWI saw the introduction of fixed-wings aircraft on the battlefield and WWII further accelerated the development of planes. Planes could fill every role better: air supremacy, bombing, transportation and reconnaissance.
* Because they were slower than planes, they were discarded for civilian passenger transport as well.
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However, if we take a look at existing solutions, we find that:
Boats are great for carrying loads of stuff but they are rather slow. The biggest limitation of boats is of course being boats, i.e. they don't go on land.
Planes are fast which makes them unbeatable for passenger transport.
On the obverse, freight air transport can get pretty expensive, and more importantly, it requires an airstrip. That means long stretch of flat hard surface, and that's the kind of infrastructure that can be prohibitively expensive to maintain for a small, isolated town.
Ground transport requires appropriate roads (for truck) or tracks (for trains). Trucks win over trains for the amount of places they can go to, however they are smaller and slower. In any case, they still require a road. In remote areas, that can be a real problem. Sure, you can build a temporary road (e.g. ice roads), but that's neither cheap nor safer.
Helicopter are just ridiculously expensive. It's just... why would you even?
So airships fit right in the middle of this. Their niche: high-volume transportation for low accessibility areas. Whether you live in northern Canada and they just don't have roads, or in the heart of Africa where there aren't much more roads, an airship can bring you supplies there in a moderate amount of time, for a moderate price, all year-round, in pretty much any weather.
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## Excessive and wasteful subsidies
A horribly corrupt government that showers the airship industry with ridiculous subsidies would make airships competitive to other forms of transportation because the heads of state are big friends of airship tycoons who would rather boost their own profits than to have people use cheaper and more economical methods of travel/freight.
Or a permanently nostalgic society that sees airships as a part of their culture heavily subsidizes airships to keep a sense of the glory days before airplanes become better options.
Either way, you asked for what would make airships economically viable. You didn't necessarily indicate that making airships economically viable had to be a rational economic decision.
Or...
## Punitive Taxation
In the wealthy Hamptons communities on Long Island, there is currently a vicious debate between the super-rich hedge fund managers and the like who fly to Manhattan on their noisy helicopters on Monday and back on Friday and the residents who would rather keep things quiet. It drives the locals insane.
The WHOLE POINT of the Hamptons is to make a ton of money elsewhere so you can live in a peaceful, quiet community for the rest of your life, shut out from the humdrum of the big city. It truly is a delightful, peaceful place, until some helicopter slices your quiet day to shreds.
So perhaps the local government levies enormous and punitive taxes on airplanes and helicopters, but airships - because they are quiet and less intrusive - are allowed as an acceptable middle ground between the desires of the community and the needs of the wealthy people who made it what it is, because who wants to drive on the Long Island Expressway during rush hour?
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Filling the gaps in the market.
As various other people have mentioned, airships are coming back into fashion.
They have a set of specific advantages over other aircraft.
1. VTOL, helicopters can do this, but helicopters are expensive, complicated and need a lot of maintenance.
2. Staying airbourne for long periods, this one is a real winner for airships. The Goodyear blimp being the best known example.
3. Flying slowly, again helicopters can do this, expensively, noisily and uncomfortably, but there is often a need for aircraft to move slowly and airships are a good fit for that role.
They have certain downsides, lack of speed, power and handling in high winds for example. Often considered the biggest problem hanging round them is the Hindenburg, but there have been a lot of plane crashes since then and it's not so fresh in people's minds.
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One idea that comes to mind is keeping the vessel in a (relatively) static area in the sky for long periods. Observatory balloons (e.g weather balloons, guard "tower" balloons) are in everyday use.
This is not a full answer (I agree with all of the above and would like to add), but here's something to look forward to, once we construct some graphene balls:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_airship>
Basically, a vacuum airship is much more lighter-than-air than known gasses, and it's non-combustible. When the tech to contain a vacuum with a really light weight material that will retain it's shape (and the vacuum) comes to be (I'm thinking graphene containers), we'll have cheap and efficient airships.
And why stop there? This tech can be used to reduce drones's energy requirements, and small carriers (air-cars) can use these as well. You can have platforms/houses/cities in the air, the sky is the limit (pun intended) :-)
Also - check this out:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zO9h_9g2eQ>
They make a lot of cheap clean power and are easily transportable.
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* Infrastructure (and regulations) which allow airships to dock on mooring masts in the city center, while planes are restricted to airfields on the outskirts. For instance, they need to be free to rain water ballast onto pedestrians.
* Access to cheap helium.
* A clever inventor who finds some tweaks early, like [gas engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blau_gas).
That might give airships their chance until they are replaced by helicopters.
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They are economically viable now - the problem is reputation. Everyone has seen the Hindenburg picture, and that is hard for people to deal with. Humans are terrible at risk assessing situations.
For transport of massive items, the only viable options currently are ships, trains, trucks and airships. The first three of those are restricted as to where they can travel (sea, canal, rail and road) so getting something big to an inland wilderness in a cost effective way can only be done by airship!
So... Fix the reputation of large airships (Zeppelin and larger) and the rest falls into place naturally.
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I would look at the modern popularity and revival of sailboats for delivering freight as a similar situation. Speed is similar to modern cargo ships, and emissions is zero. I think these two situations is enough for people to explore the possibility of sailing cargo, or in your situation, the revival of air ships.
<http://www.vtsailfreight.net/#home-section>
<http://fairtransport.eu/>
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Blimps are quite fashion nowadays, they can lift heavy payloads and they are indeed "greener" : low fuel consumption, and as the engines don't have to be really powerful they are quieter than common aircraft. In addition to that, their shapes don't redirect the noise to the ground, unlike airliners.
Furthermore, you can easily put electric engines on a blimp, and as they present a big, useless and static surface (unfortunately not flat), adding solar panels to power up those engines is much more realistic than the *Solar Impulse* model. By doing so, you almost never have to touch the ground.
Finally, the problems are that blimps are not happy when used in bad weather with strong wind or so, and they are really slow compared to other aerial transportation systems. But for limited-access jobs or commercial cruises they could be a great solution. By the way, some companies already trust in lighter-than-air aircraft like the French *Flying Whales*.
So, for a quieter and greener future, blimps could be a part of the solution.
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Since airships don't require complicated landing infrastructure and can fly over difficult terrain, they are most useful in areas that have poor accessibility by more conventional modes of transport, such as airplanes, trains or automobiles.
For example, according to [this](http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/24/africa/superblimp-africa/) article about the Hybrid Airship from Lockheed Martin and Hybrid Enterprises, about 90% of the mineral resources in Africa are already in use, and the last 10% is not economically viable due to poor access. Enter the superblimp. Since it has nice lifting capabilities and can safely land in a fairly level area of two to three (American?) football fields, it can push at least some facilities to viability.
Blimps would make the most sense in a world where building infrastructure would be prohibitively expensive or difficult.
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Redesign and Repurpose.
The classic blimp shape and design is old and stodgy and introduces a major single point of failure. We have lighter, stronger materials and the know how to make something [truly remarkable](https://wordlesstech.com/aether-luxury-cruise-airship-concept-by-mac-byers/), something sexy, something safe.
The airship should be [purpose built](http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/aeros-pelicanto-airship). Right now it's one size fits all. Wrong Wrong Wrong. Airships were used because they were the best bet for the technology available. We are way past that. Combine airship and drone technology for remote piloted workhorses or trick it out with the latest tech for the next "big" thing in luxury cruising.
In short, make it sexy, make it safe, make it relevant.
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Nothing, really, because of their very low speed and being really big sails. It's also the exact same reason that sailing ships have disappeared.
The thing is that (except in the rare cases of really strong storms) internally powered (air, sea and land) craft go *where* we want, *when* we want, no matter what the weather is like. That's why we ditched sailing ships and lighter-than-air craft as soon as technologically feasible. Enthusiasts try to make them viable, but don't succeed because these ships **aren't** practical.
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-military-blimp/runaway-u-s-military-blimp-wreaks-havoc-in-pennsylvania-idUSKCN0SM2F920151029>
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> A high-tech U.S. military blimp designed to detect a missile attack came loose on Wednesday and wreaked havoc as it floated from Maryland into Pennsylvania while dragging more than a mile of cable and knocking out power to thousands.
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i don't know what tech level the setting is but assuming it is around current tech
# tl;dr;
* higher air density makes airships more viable
* you can run them on solar
* they fail in a safer manner
* they require less infrastructure
* availability of lifting gas
* need to beat competition in at least some case
* because (at least some) humans like them
# Higher air density/pressure
since an airship works with buoyancy the lift is the mass of the displaced volume, a higher air density reduces the volume required. this does also increase the ease of creating rigid wings airplanes but the added air resistance will make the fly slower than on earth(unless you fly high)
# solar/electric drive
if you have light and efficient solar cells you can use electric driven props/turbines for propulsion. with current solar panels you get quite a lot of power, an airship the size of Hindenburg run on solar gets about the same power as the Hindenburg engines (but only during daytime). the availability of fossil (or similar high energy density fuel) fuel might be a problem for airplanes and other heavier than air vehicles.
# failure modes
a airplane when it fails will fall out of the sky like a stone, an airship on the other hand will slowly lose altitude (unless the lifting gas explodes). during ww1 the airships was hard to shoot down, bullet holes caused them to leak but not enough to down them in a timely fashion, it is even harder if the airship is built with internal compartments within the lifting gas.
# infrastructure
planes need landing strip several km long and in quite nice condition, an airship does only need clear space for it self to land, or it can hover in place and load/unload with a crane.
# abundance of lifting gas
* hydrogen is abundant and the best lifting gas by performance and you can also use it as fuel, but it has the downside that is is very flammable. hydrogen is abundant, it does require some trivial chemistry to extract it from water or other sources. but hindenburg...
* helium is very rare on earth since it evaporating into space quite quickly, but it is the next best lifting gas and it is safe... but expensive, today all helium on earth comes from natural gas deposits that has trapped alpha decay(helium).
* hot air is also a lifting gas, it is safe and abundant but requires a constant energy input to keep it warm
* on earth hydrogen, helium and hot air is the only options since other stuff in not lighter than air, on say Venus our normal air is a potent lifting gas
# the competition
in order for airships to be commercially viable there can't exist a clearly more viable alternative
- airships is probably not a viable option for bulk transport the same way modern airplanes isn't, but in some areas of the world it is the only option. but airships can pull of tricks like hovering a 100t load for precise placement like a crane.
- trains will probably win out in bulk transport over land, at least if the terrain is flat enough to run trains on and high enough demand to invest on the infrastructure
- cargo ships will win when transporting bulk over water, but it requires a fright harbor in the ends and a continuous stretch of water in between.
- road transport is mostly the same as trains
# legal/religious/human factor
human does all kinds of illogical things for example there might exist a religious rule that says it is a sin to fly like a bird, or that some other people pointed out that is some government policy that benefits airship over other modes of transport.
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After asking [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/45680/where-to-hide-my-evil-overlord) question, another question came to me ... why should my evil Necromancer Overlord depend on his minions? Why do evil characters rely upon their subordinates?
For example, in the manga Naruto, (warning **major** spoiler)
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> Black Zetsu is actually a agent of Kaguya, and has been trying to summon her for centuries. Same goes for other movies/books where the enemy is actually the agent of the Supreme Evil One, and is trying to wake them up.
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My question is - why delegate that job to the minions? Lets assume that I know for sure my minion will not betray me, but he is not immortal ... if he gets killed then my plan to rise to dominance will fail. **Why** do immortal evil beings rely on their minions and not put some sort of magical alarm-clock?
(Give a answer stating why leaving the job to the minion is better, as opposed to some other reason. Also my evil overlord is [sleeping](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/45680/where-to-hide-my-evil-overlord) in a well hidden place and has left the job of waking him up to his minions)
Note: *That this question is **only** about the magical world where the Overlord has **already** gone to sleep and has left things to his minions, and the other people are wondering **why***
[Answer]
**1. Intel**
You need a network of spies and informants to keep you updated. You can't learn / know everything you should just by yourself.
**2. Visibility**
Being the evil mastermind behind some scheme, you don't want to be found out. Using a screen (or several) of minions who only have need-to-know instructions, will keep you out of sight. You want a build-in system that ensures no one will betray you. This is similar to how a drug lord would run his network.
If someone has to take a fall, it better be a expendable minion, not yourself.
**3. Meat (bones?) shield**
You need someone to slow the heroes down when they come for you, so you can escape (or win). No better way than putting a ton of expendable minions between them and yourself.
This will also wear down heroes, making them tired, meaning you have a better chance of winning if they do reach you.
**4. Self respect**
What self respecting evil Overlord would do the dirty work if he can delegate it to lower beings? No need to assassinate someone if you can get someone else to do it.
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The advantage of minions over the alarm clock is mainly adaptability. If you sleep for hundreds of years, changes might happen that you cannot predict - anything from a change in the magic field that disrupts your carefully woven spell, to pesky heroes getting in the way. An autonomous agent working with your interests in mind can adapt to and work around unexpected problems.
Of course, the downside to minions is that they might act incompetently, or even choose to betray you. That's why you have several minions working in concert, so they keep each other in line.
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Two reasons: **Time** and **Space**.
Most evil overlords can only think or a limited number of things at a time. Similarly even with magic the number of places you can be at the same time is limited. Basically having minions to delegate to will easily increase your footprint in both time and space by orders of magnitude.
Most stories do not illustrate this very well since there is often one group of terrori.. **heroes** that the big bad really should be focussing on, that he could easily destroy, and who the story follows. But realistically there would be dozens of things to manage and keep track of that would be in widely separated locations.
Additionally the time of the mastermind is extremely valuable, he should be doing things only he can do, such as making his big master plan or casting that major ritual spell and delegate everything else to underlings. Even if the underlings will fail to do things that would have been trivial to the overlord, the things the overlord was actually doing instead should be vastly more valuable, than getting those lesser things done.
Getting tangled in trivia also makes the overlord easier to track and more vulnerable to countermeasures. The overlord should be either in his secure stronghold or moving freely and unpredictably. Spending few weeks or even mere days managing matters that could have been arranged by his enemies and that his minions should be able to handle is foolish.
Incidentally, most management manuals will probably give people in management similar advise about the value of delegating as much as possible. It is even an well established tenet of political philosophy to do things at the lowest and hence least expensive level possible. Lowest level will typically be also the most local, which usually increase efficiency.
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The minions are unionized.
The Sleeping Evil has had everything he needs automated for a long time. But the real evil of the world, a.k.a. policticians, are a bunch of neoluddites or whatever, and they have an agenda with the minion labour unions. The Sleeping Evil has no choice, for if he does not hire a minimum amount of help, the Council of Evil will make sure he never wakes up again.
Alternatively, the Overlord just feels [ronery](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEaKX9YYHiQ) in general, and would enjoy some company once he woke up.
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I think the dark lord would be dumb to not have a back-up alarm clock, just in case the minion dies.
But it's really hard to keep up on world events when you're sleeping, and there might be a certain set of circumstances that the dark lord is waiting for.
I mean, when it is prophesied that sometime in the next 100 years "a child will be born with hair of gold and a birthmark like an elephant which will be able to open the door of eternal night" that's great and all, but who wants to wait around for that to happen. But since you don't know exactly when it will happen you can't just set an alarm. So you have your minions and spies watching for the prophesied event so they can wake you, otherwise there's no telling how long it will be before the next opportunity will arise.
Another reason to have minions is as a backup insurance policy. Say the hero gets the drop on the dark lord and manages to imprison him in a crystal for eternity. Without a few faithful minions with hammers standing by the dark lord would be out of luck.
And since you have to have a few minions anyway, isn't it nicer to have someone with a cup of coffee and a breakfast tray gently waking you, instead of the BEEP BEEP BEEP of an alarm clock?
On a side note as requested in chat, I can think of a few examples of alarm clocks; where the stars have to come into alignment or some other predictable event happens to awaken the dark lord. It could even be a semi natural process, like a egg/cocoon that just opens when process is done.
Lastly, it might just be a magic spell that doesn't need any outside inputs. The magical equivalent of
```
sleep(100 years);
awakenMe();
```
**Edit:**
Another reason! You know how groggy you are in the morning, where you can hardly get your eyes to stay open, and I can't push snooze because my hand is all pins and needles from laying on it? Well, it's a lot worse when you've been asleep for decades. That would be a horrible time to have the hero drop in unannounced, yelling and swinging his sword around. A few minions around to perform the rite of awakening will also be able to keep the hero busy and give you a few extra seconds to limber up and get the dark energy flowing.
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The "Dark Lord School of Management" is based on employing people who are too dumb to realise that the Dark Lord is clearly evil and should be opposed. The great advantage of such employees is that any plans they make to overthrow you will be terrible, and easily spotted and defeated.
The downside of this school is that your minions are idiots and you have to do *all* the thinking yourself. However, if you're already convinced that everyone around you is a fool, this method is the obvious way to do anything, and it does let you get useful work out of idiots.
Sadly, that last advantage seems to recommend the method to people in the real world, who end up acting like Dark Lords.
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In the example you gave, Naruto, there wasn't much choice. She didn't have many options, it was a desperation exercise.
Other factors:
Reliability - If you are sealed away e.t.c. but have a magical alarm clock, what happens if someone who is watching over your seal finds it and dispels it? Whoops.
Building up a cult or number of followers who are following you from enlightened self-interest (power/money) is at the very least a useful backup.
Why rely on any one point of failure when you can have many watching over each other?
Also just because your magic is powerful, that doesn't mean it can do everything. There are going to be areas which are shielded from various forms of magic (scrying/teleportation), where it is far easier to use a sentient agent as a spy instead.
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In most fiction, the Overlord isn't all powerful or is in a weakened state. Even immortality has it's caveats: is it simply one cannot die from injury but still ages, cannot die from age but can die from injury, or cannot be killed but they have an otherwise normal body such that they can still be dismembered and scattered but still live?
Not being all powerful, the Overlord has to operate in secret. There's always a hero or some yin/yang force opposed to the Overlord that requires an agent or hidden cult to counter them.
Let's face it, an all powerful Overlord makes for a boring story: Chapter 1, the Overlord enslaved reality with a mere thought. The End. There's no conflict, and you can't have conflict if one side is completely superior in all regards. Even a complete underdog needs to be able to inflict a wound in defiance. In addition, in most games, the protagonist has to work his way through the ranks of trash mobs to get items/experience. It's a very short game if it starts you on the final boss.
Examples below:
Lord of the Rings: Sauron was weakened after losing the ring (shouldn't have been on the front line to begin with and lose it against Isildur, minions!). If he were to just storm out of Mordor, whoever he was pursuing with the ring would likely value over their own life over the charms of the ring and toss it in Mt. Doom to survive. He needed agents until he could find and corner them.
The Call of Cthulu: Immortal alien slumbering at the bottom of the sea in R'lyeh, demigods shouldn't need minions right? Time is relative to an immortal, after a couple billion years, that magic equinox that only lasts one night is a very *very* tiny window of time. There's also the issue of many of the elder gods not being used to Earth-rational physics and need to get a feel for walking in a universe with thermodynamics. Also to consider, being a giant elder god, humanity is kind of like ants in an anthill. Would you scoop through the entire anthill structure for those artifacts/annoying inspectors/would-be heroes or would you control ants to go about and do it for you?
Overlord (Light Novel): Ainz Ooal Gown may be all powerful in regard to his opponents, but he doesn't know that. For all he knows, the world he awakens from his slumber in could have a stronger hero on some other continent who hasn't hunted him down solely because the hero doesn't know he's there/awake. First thing Ainz does is gather minions for intelligence and labor.
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One option may be that The Necromancer simply has no other choice.
But in stories you usually don't want "the good guys facing the big boss at first", that will limit your progression so consider it not like a decision of The Necromancer itself but as a narrative device.
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Oftentimes, the Evil Overlord isn't "sleeping" by choice or in control of the circumstances of their isolation. As a result, they are forced to rely on methods to wake themselves up that have the potential to misfire, including relying on minions.
A couple of examples:
In the Artemis Fowl franchise, the primary recurring antagonist, Opal, is a fairy who is involved in multiple conspiracies. When her first conspiracy is uncovered, she is imprisoned.
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> From prison, she's able to organize a plot with her followers to break her out by swapping herself with a clone.
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So Opal escapes prison, but because she wasn't in full control of the circumstances that put her in jail, she was forced to rely on her minions.
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In The Legend of Zelda franchise, Ganondorf (or his power) is frequently sealed into a magical alternate dimension at the beginning of a game. In order to escape, he tricks Link into taking the Master Sword, which invariably breaks the seal. Undoubtedly, Ganondorf would have taken the sword himself if he could have, but again, he wasn't able to orchestrate the circumstances that kept his magic in check.
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In Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Mario and co. battle the X-Nauts, an evil organization that is trying to resurrect
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> a powerful demon that was sealed away a thousand years in the past after losing a war against humanity.
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The monster the X-Nauts are waking up isn't even orchestrating their efforts - it lost a previous fight and has been locked up with no contact with the outside world whatsoever! It's fortunate that some extremists believe that waking it up will serve their purposes. Otherwise, it would probably never have a chance to return.
[Answer]
One commonly given reason is to eat them.
That is, to be awakened/brought back, requires a sacrifice. The blood of an X, a receptacle body to inhabit, a wife, the life force of another in order to give enough energy to materialize, whatever. The evil bad guy is not able to awaken without this, so cannot kill the X on his own.
In some cases (wife, inhabitable body, nonfatal blood donation) the sacrifice might be a willing minion; otherwise, it's someone the minions catch and drag in.
Either way, there's an unavoidable dependence on minion loyalty.
[Answer]
A magical clock can only wake the Overlord at a specific time.
Minions, however, can wake him up when the **conditions** are ideal for him to fulfill his plan, based on what they have been taught by the Overlord.
[Answer]
Destroying the world is a big task. Specially, when you have lot of Super Heros roaming around.
If you compare number of Super Heros to Super Villains you will find that Super Heros out number Super Villains. So the reasons of hiring the subordinates are :
1. Hire subordinates which alternate powers
2. Hire a Large number of subordinates to involve Super Hero(s) with them while destroying the world
3. Boast your power on your Subordinates to feel good.
I hope that answers your question.
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In Renaissance period, would it be possible to safely bind ships together for extended periods of time?
Imagine if there was a fleet of large ships (say, two dozen) that have been traveling over a vast ocean for a long time. No land is in sight, they don't know when they'll reach their destination. They come well-provisioned for a long journey with capable sailors.
But then something happens, like the commanding admiral dies of sickness, and then the mission goes into peril. The captains want an assembly, but they need to fasten their vessels together. They aim to rope their hulls together, to use gangways to form bridges, such that the entire fleet is joined into one secure grouping.
Basically, I'm imagining them building a giant platform out of the fleet, such that the men can all walk (or climb) between every vessel, and that all the captains can hold an assembly in the middle, without their ships floating off. Is this actually possible to convene like this?
I imagine that the wind and waves are going to knock the ships around, and it'd be impossible to steer. They're just floating. Would it damage the ships to tie them together, and is it feasible for an entire fleet to do so?
How long could they actually last like this in the middle of the ocean? Would the makeshift platform be doomed as soon as they hit a storm or strong winds, or is there a way that they survive indefinitely (assuming plentiful food)?
Edit: It's possible that they might unhook ships from the grouping in bad weather, provided they had enough warning that a storm was coming.
Bonus question: what if there were hundreds of ships?
[Answer]
You can do it if the sea conditions are favourable (read dead flat calm), otherwise having the ships that close together, tied or not, is a danger to all concerned. Banging hulls weighing tens to hundreds of tonnes together even at relatively low speeds is never something you want to do if you can avoid it, you'd need at least as many mechanisms keeping the ships apart as holding them together. If their were any noticeable swell or wind the risk would be pretty extreme.
I would point out that the traditional venue for such a conference is in fact the Captain's cabin of the fleet flagship, captains were afforded expensive extra space so that they could conference effectively. People attending such a conference would travel between their ship and the flagship in longboats. The flagship of a fleet often changed during battles, sometimes even changing to an enemy vessel, as officers took over due to combat loses or ships went down and their crews, and commanders, moved to other vessels. In the event that the ranking admiral died the senior most captain, or possibly another admiral depending on the circumstances, should take over as a matter of course.
With enough rope and spars there's no real limit to how many ships you can put together except that the more ships you put together the more likely you are to lose some when the weather goes against you without warning.
[Answer]
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It would be doomed.
Disclaimer: I've based my answer on real ships, not hypothetical pontoon-like vessels.
A ship that is not able to steer its bow into the waves will take on a lot of water if a wave hits it sideways, causing it to sink. Also, the force of the waves will make them crash into each other with more force than anything they would have had with them would be able to withstand. Gangways and the like would simply break to pieces. Ropes would present an even bigger problem because a sinking ship would pull its neighbors with them.
Afaik even today's ships cannot be serviced by other ships (like tankers) in bad weather, because of above reasons.
[Answer]
## Less ropes needed, more fenders needed.
There is a well-known phenomenon where two ships close together will tend to get closer together. Whichever ship is to windward, it will experience more pressure on the windward side, because it's shadowing the other ship from the wind. The result, ironically, is that the problem is *stopping* ships from coming together, not keeping them together. The ropes are only needed to stop the ships shuffling around, not particularly to keep them together.
The issue then is stopping the two boats from damaging each other as the waves bash them against each other. This is actually harder than you'd think for a large ship. Fenders work in a harbour because the waves are much more limited. Out in the open ocean, it'll be very much weather-dependent. If you're becalmed, no problems. Any kind of breeze though, it really isn't going to go well. For ships, safety is being away from other ships.
A bigger question is why they'd need to do it. Semaphore, Morse and flag codes allow captains to communicate. If they did need to physically meet, each captain takes a dozen sailors in a rowboat and they meet on one ship that way. It's far easier than any of the alternatives.
And then we need to think about other reasons why you might not do it. If there's sickness, the ships need to maintain quarantine. Gunpowder is inherently dangerous, and random explosions are very much not unknown. Captains have total authority over their own ship, so there's no way an ordinary sailor would be allowed to roam randomly. But most seriously, sailing ships need to *sail*. Whilst ships are tied together, they aren't making progress anywhere, and that's another day's supplies used up. Running out of food and water was always a massive problem, so you'd need a really good reason for them to stop. Simply having a chat does not qualify.
In short then, it'd be hard to do this without damaging the ships, there are no good reasons for doing it, and there are very many good reasons why it shouldn't be done
[Answer]
If the ships are of similiar size and construction, sure, this is done frequently, even during the Renaissance era. You may even be able to still be underway, albeit with obviously reduced maneuverability and speed.
The elasticity and strength of the ropes as well as the fenders used to prevent abrasion and crashing between the member boats will be the most important factor. What you're looking at doing is called [Ship-to-ship mooring](https://www.marineinsight.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Imp-Mooring-Operation-ebook-final.pdf). Ropes at this time were surprisingly high-tech and had plenty of sufficient strength to do this. What could you put between the hulls which you would already have on board? Maybe large wooden balls could be crafted and covered with linen from the sails. Ancient fenders were often rope creations which would likely get worn out much faster under your conditions.
Weather will of course be a major issue. Depending on the size and construction of your ships and the sea conditions, you may not fair too well in bad weather. Lashing ships together had uses in this time period, but most often either in protected waters or for short duration. What you are proposing would likely not last through very rough seas, due to the boats now having another axis of common movement.
And as for a hundred boats, I'd say you're not going to stay together for long. It will take quite a bit time to maneuver the ships together (and I doubt you could do it in pairs, then join the pains, etc as a binary tree reduction... the first iteration would lose a lot of necessary maneuverability). Maybe the ships could break off in to smaller groups and hope that they don't get blown in to each other.
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Sure if their engineers are imaginative and they have the actual resources to do so. Obviously they can only use the resources they have with them rather than a forest to cut down for decking etc,.
The [Hellespont](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerxes%27_Pontoon_Bridges) was bridged by a line of boats decked over into a roadway for a whole army mounts and all to cross. Apparently 674 ships were used and estimates of the army size which included cavalry are 200,000 or more.
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# Danger at sea is hitting something
I think you are attacking this from the wrong angle. While at sea, a well designed boat should not sink. The problem starts when the boat hits something (coast, reef, **another boat**). So to stay safe, your boats should stay sufficiently far apart from each other to not risk a collision.
If you try to bind them, there will be constant little collisions between ships, breaking more things every time, until catastrophe arrives. If one ship begins to sink, and you are tied to it, well, not good...
To make the big meeting you are talking about, they can:
* [Use flags](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_flag_signalling) to communicate. This was fairly common before radio, and professional marine officers must still learn it.
* Wait for calm weather and launch little boats ([dinghies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinghy)) so that officers can meet on one big boat and decide on a plan. (If they are wise, this plan will not include binding ships together.)
If some of your ships are badly damaged, it is also likely that they've lost some crews. So what they should do is **scavenge** the damaged boats for pieces to repair the others, and distribute the remaining crew on the remaining boats. **Abandon the damaged boats** that are beyond repair, or insufficiently manned.
Beside, where are they going to find **material** to build the platform? Boats are carrying replacement parts, but this material was designed to repair a vessel, not to build some unplanned super-big-platform.
Keep in mind that ocean going vessels are **designed to sail through storms**, waves and the like. So repair them and keep them as boats. If you try to design something else out of your boats while in the middle of the sea, you are trying to bypass millennia of boat design. It will fail.
Lastly, if you bind your boats together, and something goes wrong, **everybody dies**. If you have many boats, some might be lost, but the rest can still survive (and maybe rescue others).
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Entirely possible to do if difficult. You want to think as much as you can about the movement of the two (lets say two to begin with) vessels in relation to each other. If the water is calm then strapping them together will be relatively easy as they will stay pretty synced up in their frames of spacial reference. As soon as the sea starts to churn up however each ship will react differently to the ocean below it and they will try and move separately from each other, putting strain on the join points.
Things with flex in them, like ropes (to a degree) will fair better than solid joins (unless those solid joins are so severe as to essentially make the two vessels one).
Basically I'd expect a working version of this to look more like a mesh of ships with flexible but strong join points that may incorporate a hard walking point but where most of the strength is in heavily braided rope attaching to reinforced connection points on each vessel.
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Try lashing the ships together in a line, not a bundle. As @Douwe said, if the boats cannot face into oncoming waves, they will sink. A straight chain of ships will allow them to collectively turn to face the waves so that they won't sink. The chain also allows the ships to steer apart so that they don't run into each other. In this design, the longer the rope, the better. Longer rope allows the ships to move farther apart and not get pulled as much by the adjacent ships moving up and down if they hit the wave earlier or later than your boat.
When one boat lifts up, the rope will pull both boats toward each other, and one boat farther behind or ahead in the wave might end up sinking other boats. How long the rope needs to be can be reduced by keeping the ships closer together in relation to the waves, but you run the risk of the ships crashing together.
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Would you believe the navies of the world have thought of this, because doing a naval resuply on the run, and stormy conditions would be advantageous. This is the sort of thing that winns wars. Thus being able to dock two ships would be great. Its just that, while it does work, it doesent work very simply.
So they have had to come up with many methods of doing this. It is called:
* [Underway replenishment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway_replenishment),
and tethering ships for transport of goods an men is possible. However, real solutions that actually work to some extent only appear in the very latest years of 1800's so you could say its tech of 1900's.
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Not strictly lashing together bridges at open sea in the Renaissance, but:
Consider the siege preceding the Fall of Antwerp in 1585. The besieging Duke of Parma (hence Italian, but fighting for the Spanish crown) built a 730m long bridge across the river from boats lashed together, and thus stopped food being delivered.
Now that river is very much tidal, with [5m differences](https://www.meteo.be/meteo/view/en/123498-Tides.html) up to Antwerp twice-daily, and each incoming tidal wave travels at 35kph (so: high tide in Antwerp is 45min after Vlissingen which is 75km downstream from Antwerp). The river itself flows "upstream" at more than 10kph with incoming tide, should you plan to swim it. From personal experience, as a sea-arm that river is as much or more "open sea" than any bit of the Mediterranean within 10--20km from the coast.
So with that in mind, I'd say yes, no problem for Renaissance multi-ship pontoons in the open sea (especially if larger boats than this bridge consisted of; larger is more stable).
[Very limited info found at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Antwerp> but pass the Dutch version there through a translator and you'll have more details (like e.g., [this](https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnl.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FBeleg_van_Antwerpen_%281584-1585%29&edit-text=&act=url)). The attacks on the bridge are very interesting to read about in themselves.]
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**Binding Ships are Possible**
This was a possible thing to do. The captains of the ships would tie their ships together with a thick rope between the bottom and the tops of the ships. Usually, they would use a very long rope so the ships don't crash into each other and they would also use more than just one rope. Since you're saying there is a bunch of ships, an entire flotilla, I think you would mean that you can't have just one row of ships.
To have more than just one row of ships, (I'm getting creative here), the captains would probably tie the edges of the ships together as well. This isn't that hard to do. But, most ships wouldn't do such a thing because... why would they?
During that time, there was a large number of crew members for each ship. These crew members were able to run the ship even without the guidance of the captain for a while. That means the captains can all row to one ship (usually the old captain's ship) and have their meeting there to vote on the new captain or whatsoever.
The ships won't drift away from each other and anarchy wouldn't ensure (at least, I hope). But maybe the captains might not be able to vote? (Then there will be WAR).
Good luck and hope this helped!
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There is always ONE Exception to the Rule.
We called it RAFTING and did it every Summer for about two weeks on the Chesapeake Bay. It was mostly dom=ne so that we could have all hands gathering for the Daily Cocktail Party/Dinner/Sleep function while travelling between Marinas. Typically the lead three boats will drop their anchors (Primary hold point, secondary and tertiary fail safes). You don't want to be drifting or a lone Ship in a remote part of the Bay, at night and while your asleep.
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Stories often have prophecies using convoluted ambiguous phrases, unclear wording, or oddly poetic form. Things like saying "no man may defeat me" only to have the person defeated by a female dwarf, or "The greatest gift of humanity shall be discovered by the one who learns the see the dark lord's true form" and the great power turns out to be falling in love with the dark lord, instead of some powerful magic like every expects.
They don't have to be plays on words, prophecies could simply be so poetic or figurative it's hard to understand their meaning, or leave out important context, or say something is important without saying if it's good or bad etc, the point is there is something about them unclear enough that it's not easy to act on them.
What is a good way to justify these prophecies existing as they do, as opposed a more clear and exact prophecy that is easily understood and more helpful?
I'm looking for more than "A wizard did it." It's not enough that the magic of the world makes it happen this way, why would the magic work in this way? Assume prophecies are not being written by a god or similar all knowing being with the intent of manipulating actions of regular humans. Finally, assume a prophecy is not an absolute prediction of the guaranteed future, how one acts on a prophecy may affect it, if a prophecy says a great army will come from the north and destroy everything you can fortify your north border in hopes of driving the army back and surviving for instance.
Why would humans create prophecies that were so hard to understand, instead of simple prophecies such as "to stop horrible event X just do simple action Y" sort of prophecies?
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**Through a glass, darkly**
The future is hard to see. If it wasn't, then everyone and their dog would be able to do it. To make matters worse, even when you can see the future it isn't a simple matter — it's not like turning on a TV in your mind and choosing the right channel to watch to get the information you need.
There is not one single future that *must* be, or else prophecy would be guaranteed to come to pass. Instead, there are threads of possibility, tangled together, that merge and split and merge again.
The threads of possibility gather and merge around events that are almost inevitable — the eruption of a volcano or a meteor strike would be easy to see and predict. The threads of possibility divide and separate around events that do not matter and could easily change — a man may wash his clothes in a particular river on a particular day, but any number of events may disrupt that from happening.
When you look into the future, you do not see with your eyes, nor hear with your ears. There may be flashes of images, but it is mostly feelings that will guide you. You will tap into the collective consciousness of the men and women who are experiencing the events. You will fear their terror as the smoke billows and lava flows toward them or as the bright flash from the sky makes the ground shake and fills the sky with dust.
To the novice looking into the future, there is only confusion.
To the expert looking into the future, there is still confusion, but they have learned to ride the waves of the ocean of time. There is much that they do not know, but they are able to catch at least a few fish of value.
As much as you may try to avoid it, your own desires and experiences will color your perception. This is especially true when you look into the future — if you look to see the Dark Lord's downfall, your understanding of it will be colored by that desire.
One person's future is almost impossible to tell. It is only if they touch the lives of many and their decisions may change the course of history that we may have a hope of seeing their future.
Do you know what is frustrating about telling the future to that kind of person? They're the kind of people who are actually going to *do* something based on what you say. So as you're looking at their future and trying to determine how to actually describe it, the future wriggles around like a live fish in your hands. Eventually you'll find some way to describe it that doesn't cause it to immediately slip out of your grasp, but as often as not it's not going to be as clear as they (or you) would have liked.
Now stop asking me who you should marry. <grumbling>Stupid kids, wasting my time.<grumbling>
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These kinds of prophecies are basically a form of [**Security Through Obscurity**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity).
For example, take the famous Tolkien prophecy that you listed:
>
> no man may defeat me
>
>
>
If that was, instead:
>
> I can only be killed by a woman
>
>
>
Then on one hand, yes. That does tell the good guys that they need to use female warriors to beat this guy. The problem is that it *also tells the bad guy*.
So instead of going through the field of battle like an invincible badass, only to be taken down by a girl with a sword, he instead will specifically watch out for females as threats and take precautions. Like bodyguards or a spell that highlights breasts, even when they're hidden under armor.
So while leaving prophecies vague makes it harder on the good guys, it also makes it harder on the bad guys. Consider your other example:
>
> a great army will come from the north and destroy everything
>
>
>
This may **encourage** people living north of you to invade! It's prophesied, right? But if it was instead:
>
> And there will come a scourge of destruction from the high mountains that will sweep away all and leave only a remnant of a remnant
>
>
>
That's not as useful for you, for the "build a wall". But it also is less useful for a charismatic warrior who wants to rally thousands of barbarians to join him on a Plunder And Destruction event. I mean sure, they *could* be a scourge. But so could a giant flood, or a series of storms, or a plague.
**Finally**, specific prophesies may backfire because it causes you to ignore other threats. Using your "army to the north" example, that might cause your nation to concentrate massive defensive forces in that single direction. Which leads you to get raided and weakened by everyone attacking from the east, west, and south, so eventually you fall to an army from the north that - had you taken a more balanced approach to defense - you might have had a chance to defeat.
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Two simple reasons come to mind (and both begin with "P" for some reason): plot and plausible deniability.
In stories, the reader wants to see the evolution of the character. When a prophecy is presented early on that indicates such-and-such objective will be achieved (regardless of clarity), the audience already knows that the objective will (almost certainly) be achieved (kind of the point of the story). The story becomes less about the goal and more about the journey to it: seeing how the characters evolve in their personal lives, as characters, and in their understanding of the objective.
Consider reality, though. There have been plenty of people over the centuries who have claimed the end was nigh (there's actually [a list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events)!) Not one of these has (yet) come true. However, we can't definitively prove a prediction is wrong until *after* the event takes place and the prediction wasn't fulfilled. If a prophecy is sufficiently obscure, then an organization can wait until after the predicted event doesn't occur to say, "Oh, he just misinterpreted the signs. This wasn't the predicted day of that prophecy."
Consider the following two prophecies:
>
> "If you wake at dawn on the 8th of December in the 2015th year of the
> Lord and see a crow perched on your windowsill, you shall know the
> world's end is that day."
>
>
> "A dawn shall come when a beauty in black graces your window and
> speaks of the end."
>
>
>
You can wake up tomorrow and say, for the first one, "Ha! The prophecy was wrong!" But everyone will point out that the second is still perfectly valid for the 9th, 10th, 11th, etc. Additionally, you could mistake the "beauty in black" for a beautiful woman, a handsome man, or [a horse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Beauty) and not realize that the inconspicuous crow picking at the apple core on your windowsill was the real harbinger.
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This is more of a suggestion than a comprehensive answer, but I just thought of it and I honestly think it may be the best option:
**Telling the future messes up the future.**
Think about it: if you go around telling everyone how they're going to die, and from that information they avoid their fates, pretty soon you're going to be living in a world that's completely different than you'd seen. People that were going to be dead are alive now, changing all sorts of things and generally altering destiny. This is bad for business, because now you're going to have to slaughter another goat or drink some more cinnamon-spiced coffee in order to update your visions. If you have to do this for every customer that comes in, not only is it going to cost a lot more money for supplies, but it's probably also dangerous to your health.
Plus, it's very possible that even the act of seeing the future can change things. If you glimpse too much, you may see enough to alter your own actions, thereby causing the very things you saw to not come true. Plus, if there are a lot of other oracles doing the same thing, you could all be interfering with each other, shattering the future into ever smaller possibilities. It's very possible that as far as the future is concerned, the more you know, the less you know, and vice versa.
Now, think about the kinds of prophecies you want: you tell someone something that is technically true (from a certain point of view) based on the little bits of the future you saw, but the knowledge and the customer's corresponding actions don't really have any long-term effects on how things turn out. Individual customers may be less happy, but you're technically still giving them what they want, and it's a lot easier on you and on other oracles. The future remains relatively stable, goat prices remain low, and your colleagues aren't making up prophecies about you being a jerk. Everybody wins (except all the people that die, but really, they would have died anyway, so it's not exactly your fault).
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There is a veil between present and future. As with any veil, you can safely make a small pinhole between the threads. Thus you may glimpse the future realm. You will not see much through such a tiny opening, and may not understand all you see. Be grateful for that. If you were to widen that hole too much and see clearly, the veil of time itself would be ripped apart; past, present, and future would swirl irrevocably together and Chaos would be loosed upon the world.
Or as the Sybil sayeth, "Don't push your luck."
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Even if a divine being issues a prophecy, it just about always comes through a mortal host (i.e. the prophet). Ever hear of the game "Telephone"? That's where you tell one person something, they tell another person, and so on around the room. What you end up with is completely different.
Even with just one person (the prophet), the message is limited by what the prophet can understand, consciously perceive and then write down. We probably receive trillions of pieces of information each second, but consciously focus on the tiniest fraction of that. That's how you can have an event with five witnesses who each have different stories about what happened.
So, the prophet may be left with an overpoweringly strong emotion which blots out key facts. Sort of like how, in literal life or death situations, people get tunnel vision and can miss seeing key details. It's quite reasonable to assume giving a prophecy is like this.
Also, a foretelling of the future can always be the most likely future, based on things at that point. If someone changes his/her mind on something important, that may never come to pass.
Sometimes, prophets enter a trance state to give their prophecies, and that can further muddle their minds. Especially if they take certain opiates to reach this trance state.
Also, some prophets are in the employ of the king/whatever, and may be VERY obviously interested in NOT revealing damaging prophecies, lest they lose their job or even their life.
Basically, even a divinely inspired prophecy must go through humans, and human issues and limitations are the limiting factor, not the divine prophecy.
And divine beings may never WANT to directly intervene with humanity.
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Many of these prophesies seem correlated to the moral lesson: "be careful what you wish for." Someone wants something so incredibly powerful or impossible that the "powers at be" are willing to engage in wordplay to get around granting it. Such prophesies demonstrate the limitations of language, which can be an important lesson to learn. Much of the interesting parts of life cannot be written down into clean crisp prophesy.
Or perhaps the mage just couldn't be bothered by the young fool who knew not what they were asking for, so gave it to him.
>
> "Will I find it?"
>
> "Shut up!"
>
> "Will I find it?"
>
> "Shut up"
>
> "C'mon, you're a wizard! Cast a spell so that I can find it!"
>
> "No."
>
> "C'mon!"
>
> "No!"
>
> "Laaaame!"
>
> "*sighs* fine..."
>
>
>
And, in a breath of magic...
>
> "May you find what you are looking for."
>
>
>
And you have to feel really sorry for the poor sap who convinced a sage to "bless" him with "May you live in interesting times."
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I can think of two reasons. The first works in any story and makes no assumptions on the source. The second is weaker and only works in some contexts.
### They are old
We know in our world that languages change significantly over time. If the prophecies are *old* as in several hundred years at least, they were first written down in a language that nobody speaks anymore. Any version characters in the story can lay hands on has been translated multiple times by people who are *not* experts in the respective source language (i.e. scholars that learned the dead language but do not really *speak* it). This process is bound to introduce errors, or at least ambiguities -- as any translation does. Multiple formulations and interpretations exist in the literature.
If the prophecy is *very* old or comes from a culture without written history, oral traditions may have muddied the phrasing additionally.
### There are rules
If your prophecy is to make sense or be "magically binding" in some way, its source is probably some magicky or deific process. As such, there [have to be rules](http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/).
* If it's **magic** the person producing the prophecy probably interprets some flow of raw sensation and creates a text, picture, melody or weave-basket based on it. That is, the product is subject to the person creating it; several people subjected to the same "original" magic prophecy stream will create widely different physical representations.
If it's a conscious process, art forms or even science may develop around prophecies. Certain patterns are denoted in certain ways in order to avoid ambiguities. Needless to say, any such corpus of rules is subject to change over time, and may be faulty. Also, prophecies probably overlap so one can try to find truth (and rules) by extensive comparative research.
* If it's **gods** (or any significantly superior lifeform) that provide the prophecies they are probably bound by some rules (otherwise they can resolve any conflict, anyway, which would make for boring fiction). A classic example is that different gods support different sides and have agreed to not help outright, that is they *have* to make prophecies cryptic -- as long as they decide to play by the rules.
Needless to say, in such settings any prophecy may be completely fabricated, designed to trick you, or self-fulfilling by design.
### They are bogus
Okay, a third non-reason. Arguably, prophecies are a rather cheap (and overused) plot device. If you want to play on that, maybe prophecies are just what they appear to be in our world: fabrications by enterprising individuals. Intended to provide material for camp-fire stories or pay for next months rent, centuries later they create a huge mess because adherents of one or the other prophet/religion try their best to fulfill or prevent one or the other "prophecy".
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Bear in mind that the prophet or sibyl is a mouthpiece for an utterly alien, inhuman intelligence. This has several implications:
1. The intelligence does not entirely understand the human perspective. To It, all time is one instant, so It knows what we call "the future" only as something else in Its total understanding. As a result, the questioner is unable to communicate his question to the intelligence effectively, and the reverse.
2. The intelligence and the questioner communicate through the clouded mind of another person. In all likelihood, constant direct contact with such intelligences has damaged the prophet's mind. Alternatively, that mind was already damaged, which is why it is open to such contact. Yet again, the process of making the mind function for communication requires deliberate damage. As a result, communication contains a great deal of noise to relatively little signal.
3. The prophet or sibyl does not know why the questioner is asking the question, and as such, the words don't mean much in themselves. "Will I win the war?" could mean a lot of things (which war, win in what sense, I meaning me personally or my side, etc.). The prophet has to project this question as a kind of total notion to an alien intelligence. The process requires the prophet to enter a trance, in which the conscious mind is significantly suppressed. As a result, the question may or may not be communicated accurately.
4. The prophet or sibyl may have to work at a remove from the direct contact, through cards, sand-cutting, ink swirls, etc. The process of developing some sort of meaningful correlation between the question and the so-presented objects, qualified by a dim impression of the intelligence's own Presence, produces very problematic results.
5. If nobody is asking a question, the prophet is simply seized by images, and has no idea to what they might refer. She sees pictures, hears sounds, and tries to describe what she thinks they mean. Others may study her descriptions and try to reformulate them as predictions. But the end-result may well only be comprehensible after the fact.
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A slight variation on a few other answers about the future being unclear, but perhaps the prophesy came to the prophet in a dream. Many people have difficulty remembering their dreams clearly so the result is a vague recollection, open to interpretation. You could also filter this through the psychological / emotional state of mind of the dreamer which warps the visions somewhat in the same way they would affect normal dreams.
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I'd explain it with a lack of knowledge. Maybe the person, who foresaw that future couldn't make out the details and instead they saw imagery, which carries symbolic meaning. They simply take that and express it literally, so interpretation is up to other people, not preinterpreting and because of that limiting what others could interpret. Not taking responsibility for wrong interpretation. I think this makes sense, if you assume, that the person, who foresaw the future is not able to get a complete accurate picture.
Another idea might be that multiple futures are possible and merge into one chaotic vision, which can only be described in a vague way.
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The idea is that future is contingent on *your* actions, as the prophesier. Luckily, with practice you can begin figuring out how your actions effect the future, but there are still issues.
For example, let's say you look into the future and see some dude serenading the ancient evil. You think that's awesome, so you write down "yo, some dude will totally serenade the ancient evil!" Then you receive a mental push notification. The future has been updated. The ancient evil read your prophecy, and has sworn off men.
Whoops! Luckily, you wrote the prophecy in pencil. You erase it, and the future goes back to normal. Few! But you still want to give the people hope. You write "the ancient evil will be defeated emotionally". Push notification, future changed. You go through some drafts, making changes, and *eventually*, you write a prophecy that is consistent with the future it causes. You are essentially using brute-force to find a [fixed point](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_(mathematics)) prophecy, or a prophecy consistent with the future it predicts. The most extreme examples of these are *self-fulfilling prophecies*, which are not just consistent but actually *cause* the future they predict.
This also explains why prophecies have such weird writing styles. The writing style also affects the future, so the prophecy writer experimented with different writing styles to get the one they want. This invariably leads to some weird styles.
Note: If you have a problem with the idea of the future *morphing* or whatever in a timey-wimey fashion (like I do), make sure to emphasis the future as seen by the prophesier is *contingent*. It is not guaranteed to happen unless the prophesier does not change anything. (Of course, you have to define what you mean by "not change anything". There are different equally valid options.)
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# Predictamancy
This is a thing in a webcomic called Erfworld. When you make a prediction, you are using magic to change someone's fate. You are basically spending some energy to create invisible forces and/or entities (it is never made clear) that will work towards making the prediction come true.
The broader the prediction, the more likely it will come true. If you say someone is going to DIAF, then any fire happening at any time will do to make the prediction come true. If you say they are going to DIAF in a castle, it's more restrictive, but still doable. If you say they are going to die from a firebolt fired by some specific person at some specific date in some specific location... The spell may be too costly to cast, or the fate agents involved may just give it up and the spell botches.
Keeping the conditions for prophecy fullfilment broad makes ot easier to cast and does for greater chances of success.
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My suggestion is that this is the only way for prophecies to be *always true* while simultaneously allowing people to react to them. It allows people to react to the prophecy and hopefully have it come true in a way that is beneficial to them.
For example, your prophecy says "a great army will come from the north and destroy everything." The receiver of this prophecy can act in a way which will allow the prophecy to benefit him. He could tell his allies who live to the south that they should loop around and when a great army of enemies attacks from the north the even greater army of allies will sneak in behind them and destroy them.
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One fun idea is the self fulfilling prophesy:
>
> A great warrior named Jon will arise from the people, conquering the oppressors, and shall be crowned king!
>
>
>
The following year a census finds 90% of the boys and 30% of the girls born after the prophesy are named Jon, greatly improving the odds that if someone rises up from the people to conquer the oppressors, they'll be named Jon.
Vague prophesies are great for this kind of thing, since you can take them and twist the meaning to fit whatever ends up happening, so the prophet will always be right.
It's much harder to get a prophesy like "on June 19, at 3:24pm, you will fall down the stairs and perrish" to come true.
Whereas "You will die falling" is much easier, so that when the person has a heart attack and collapses, every one will gasp "Just like the old gypsy woman said!"
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My story takes place centuries in the future, in the year 2567. Over 600 years ago, during 1962, an all out nuclear war broke out. Most modern day historians believe it to have occurred in autumn, but whatever happened, it caused the United States and Soviet Union to go into nuclear war, destroying ***everyone***, and ***everything***, in a ***RAGING INFERNO OF ATOMIC FLAME***
***You and I would refer to this event as the Cuban missile crisis***
My story takes place in an alt-universe where the CMC went hot, and all out nuclear war commenced. I want to make my story as grounded as possible, so my question is, what is the smallest change needed to turn the CMC into a nuclear crisis?
[Answer]
**Not Much**
Or, more specifically, *one* person making *one* decision could easily have done it.
That person is [Vasili Arkhipov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov#Involvement_in_Cuban_Missile_Crisis). During the crisis, he was the second-in-command on a Russian submarine, the *B-59*. On board this ship, there had to be a unanimous vote to use nuclear weapons - The captain, the political officer, and Arkhipov. The *B-59* was being depth charged by US ships in an attempt to get it to the surface. With no communication, and thinking they were being attacked, the captain wanted to fire a nuclear torpedo. The political officer agreed. Arkhipov, who was also commander of the submarine flotilla and who had gained stature in the *K-19* incident earlier that year, voted no. He was well-respected and also of equal rank to the *B-59*'s captain, which allowed him to convince them to do otherwise.
If he voted to agree, they would have launched a nuclear torpedo. It would be extremely easy for the US to retaliate and for things to escalate.
Simply because one man made one decision.
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Reflecting on @Andon's answer: One man's life could have done it.
[Major Rudolf Anderson, Jr.](https://www.history.com/news/the-cuban-missile-crisis-pilot-whose-death-may-have-saved-millions)
During the [Cuban Missle Crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis) Major Anderson was flying U2 recon missions over cuba. Despite being famously told in the movie *[13 Days](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Days_(film))* to not be shot down by special assistant to President Kennedy [Kenneth O'Donnell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_O%27Donnell), he was shot down.
And died....
From the above History channel link...
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> For Kennedy and Khrushchev, Anderson’s death crystallized their realization that the crisis was rapidly spiraling out of their control. “It was at that very moment—not before or after—that father felt the situation was slipping out of his control,” Khrushchev’s son Sergei would later write. Kennedy worried that retaliatory airstrikes would inevitably result in all-out war. “It isn’t the first step that concerns me, but both sides escalating to the fourth or fifth step and we don’t go to the sixth because there is no one around to do so,” he told his advisers.
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> That night, the president dispatched his brother to meet with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and offer a top-secret deal to peacefully end the standoff. The Soviets agreed to remove their nuclear missiles from Cuba, while the Americans pledged to withdraw intermediate nuclear missiles from Turkey and not invade Cuba. The tensest moments of the Cuban Missile Crisis had ended, with Major Anderson the only combat casualty in a standoff that had the real possibility of killing millions. ...
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> “Anderson’s death escalated the crisis significantly,” said Upcountry History Museum historian Courtney Tollison. “It could have provoked a cascading series of events that if you follow to their logical conclusions lead to a nuclear World War III. Instead, his death was a jolt to Kennedy and Khrushchev and pushed the crisis to a point where they had to take one of two paths, both of which had clear consequences.”
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Had Anderson not been shot down, or had he been taken alive as a prisoner, the crisis could have easily turned to all-out war.
**Alternatively...**
1. Had Khrushchev rather than Lieutenant General Stepan Grechko ordered Anderson shot down...
2. Had Kennedy failed to correctly guess that Khrushchev hadn't made the decision to shoot Anderson down...
The war would have/could have started.
[Answer]
To back AlexP up, it may in fact be *very difficult* to start an all out nuclear war of the type often envisioned.
Take a look at this [list of nuclear close calls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_close_calls). At least two of them were prevented by only one person, and others were prevented by only a handful. So – what, are we just getting lucky or something?
**The truth is, it's really hard to start a nuclear war.**
The reasons for this is many-fold. Nuclear weapons are greatly feared, especially by those involved in actually using them – and there are *a lot* of people involved (from the president, to generals, to pilots, to missile crews, to submarine captains, to the comms officers relaying orders, to the individuals actually pressing the button, and many more) – and any one of those people could prevent at least one launch. In a sense, firing a nuke must be agreed upon unanimously by everyone in the chain of command from the president to launch technician – any single 'no' will result in the delay or prevention of a launch.
There's a famous study called "[Men Against Fire](https://www.americanheritage.com/content/secret-soldiers-who-didn%E2%80%99t-shoot)" written by a well respected military historian that indicates that only about **15%** of soldiers actually:
* fire their weapons,
* at the enemy,
* with the intent to kill
when ordered to. Now, there is some debate about the study's methodology, but when you think about all the people involved in using nuclear weapons, even if that study is overly conservative, there's a high likelihood that many perfectly functional nukes would not be fired.
The study implies there's an 85% chance that any one person in that chain of command will say 'no' to a launch order. If there are just 3 people between the launch order and the nuke itself, you're looking at only a 0.3% chance of a launch. And hey – maybe the situation is different for nukes, maybe American military discipline is enough to overcome that in this case, or maybe individuals won't say no as long as they're not directly responsible for the launch. All the same, the odds of a full nuclear launch being successfully executed by all involved are pretty slim.
Moreover, with all the false alarms and the 70 some odd years *without* a nuclear holocaust, some generals complain that many missle crews wouldn't be prepared to retaliate in the case of an *actual* nuclear attack.
All of this is to say that if the US or Russia ordered a full nuclear attack of their entire arsenal, only a minority of their weapons would actually be fired. So the world ending in 3 to 7 minutes seems unlikely
That said, and to answer the question, the key would be to have the crisis escalate gradually. It's much easier to order a launch when there's actual fighting happening. It's much easier to launch a nuke when your home town has already been hit.
American intelligence indicated there were at most five nuclear missiles in Cuba. In reality, there were scores. I think the simplest change would be to have had the Americans escalate slowly with either conventional airstrikes or an invasion force (as many generals were recommending). We know Soviet commanders on the ground were authorized to use tactical nukes, so once they felt they would be overrun, it becomes much more likely that they would go nuclear.
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In 1961 the American Empire deployed one squadron of 15 [PGM-19 Jupiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-19_Jupiter) nuclear-tipped medium-range ballistic missiles in Turkey, at bases around the ancient city of Smyrna, which the Turks call [İzmir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0zmir). This was perceived as an aggressive maneuver by the Russian Empire, which at that time did not have any effective means of defending itself against an attack with medium-range ballistic missiles.
In reponse to the American deployment of MRBMs in Turkey (and Italy), Russia started a very visibile program of deploying a number of [R-12 Dvina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-12_Dvina) (which the Americans called SS-4 Sandal) in Cuba, with the capability of hitting most American territory; they also embarked on a program of preparing launch sites for their intermediate-range [R-14 Chusovaya](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-14_Chusovaya) (aka "SS-5 Skean" in American materials), which, if deployed, could hit targets in all the contiguous territory of the U.S.A.
The American leadership realised that the time window when they could have started a nuclear war with a reasonable hope of success had closed. After a few days of tense negotiations, which, among others, resulted in the establishment of the famous [Moscow–Washington hotline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow%E2%80%93Washington_hotline), the two superpowers agreed to dismantle their advanced missile bases -- Russia took back its missiles from Cuba, in exchange for America taking back its missiles from Turkey.
The truth is that by 1962 in was already too late for the U.S.A. to launch a successful nuclear war against the U.S.S.R. The Americans had had their opportunity in the mid-1950s, when they really had overwhelming nuclear superiority; but it so happened during those few years when America could have indeed won a nuclear war with Russia, they had [Dwight D. Eisenhower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower) as president; Eisenhower did not want war, so there was no war. And then the window closed, and neither superpower could hope to start a nuclear war and win in any meaningful sense.
But what about 1962? What could have happened in 1962 to precipitate a nuclear confrontation? In real life, nothing. The Americans never even considered a nuclear response, and the Russians knew very well that they could not hope to launch a nuclear attack against the U.S.A. and survive. But in fantasy?
In fantasy one could imagine the members of Kennedy's [EXCOMM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXCOMM) falling prey to the panic which permeated American media, or being co-opted by those congressmen who agitated for a muscular reponse. But I don't think that even a nuclear attack on Cuba would have made the Soviets retaliate with nuclear strikes against the U.S.A. An attack on Russian targets would have been necessary; how to make the American national command authority lose its head and order missile launches against targets on Russian territory is left for the storyteller to imagine.
The good news is that at that point in time the two superpowers did not yet have the capability of killing everybody on Earth; while most interesting parts of the U.S.A., western Europe, and European Russia would have been destroyed, most of Asia, all of Africa, Central and South America, and Australia would have escaped with minimal ill effects. Great point of departure for an alternate history novel sequence.
[Answer]
You might want to look into a movie titled The Bedford Incident, made in 1963. In this movie, a US sub chaser and a soviet sub mutually destroy each other, but cooler heads prevent an escalation to full scale war. And of course there's Doctor Strangelove, where a full scale war does break out.
In the actual crisis, the soviet sub did not fire a tactical nuclear weapon, as @Andon pointed out. The firing of that nuclear torpedo might well have triggered a series of escalations for two important reasons. First, the "nuclear threshold" would have been crossed and the US would certainly have considered a retaliation using tactical nuclear weapons. Second, an attack on a warship or merchant ships has signaled US entry into war in the War of 1812, Spanish American War, and World War II. Those two psychological factors could easily have signaled the beginning of a war.
Also, you have to consider President Kennedy's public announcement that any missile launched from Cuba would be treated as a direct attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response.
And finally, you might want to look into the post mortem analysis conducted jointly by US and Soviet officials as to what might have happened differently. I don't know when this was held, but I know Robert McNamara was part of the US team. Both teams concluded that we came very, very close to all out war.
[Answer]
There are a total of four known incidents that occured during the Cuban Missile Crisis that would have sparked a Nuclear War. The most likely was the sub incident detailed by @Andon discussed.
Also during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a series of Bombers, armed with Nuclear Bombs, was staged at a small runway at a U.S. Air Base when an emergency alert started the scramble of the planes. The Alert was soon identified as an intruder alert, not an incoming attack alert as the planes were almost ready to take off... the crisis was averted by an air-force personel driving his jeep onto the run way in the path of a plane while the situation was stood down. The intruder was later identified to be a bear playing with the AFB's fence, setting off the alarm.
Later that same night, a routine polar recon flight flew off course after the pilot was disoriented. He had become turned around and flew into Russian Airspace while trying to get correct co-ordinates from his base. His radio alerted him to a Russian Music station broadcasting as his first sign of trouble. Russian fighters were scrambled for intercept but the lost pilot was able to make it back home. None other than President Kennedy was briefed on the situation the next morning, and he was not at all happy with the pilot.
Finally, the U.S. early warning systems were tipped off to an attack inbound from Cuba during some point early during the crisis. The problem was found to be with the calibration of the EWS's new directioning. Prior to the knowledge of missiles in Cuba, the EWS was pointed towards to north pole, as it was the shortest flight path between central Russia's missile fields and the States. These systems were shifted to look southward when Cuba became a problem in great haste and calibration issues occurred. The New Jersey station detecting the inbound launch were scrambling out notices to important people when the missile started drifting over the Atlantic and away from the U.S. Turns out, they did not detect a Cuba originating launch, but a NASA launch from Cape Canaveral. In all the confusion, no one in the government thought it was a good time to tell NASA to delay their rocket launches for the time being.
[Answer]
One of the most serious but less-known trigger-points during the Cuban Missile Crisis was the fact the **Soviets had approx 100 tactical nuclear weapons already deployed on Cuba.**
Soviet commanders on the island did not need permission or launch codes from Moscow to fire their weapons, and were already positioned near Guantanamo with instructions to defend in this way.
American military leaders were unaware of these. During the crisis, military leadership argued repeatedly for a full-scale marine invasion of Cuba -- for which they had already drawn up plans, and were eager to execute.
An invasion by the Americans would have been met with a nuclear strikes on Guantanamo Naval Station and American fleets. With invasion fleets destroyed, the only action remaining to the Americans would be an immediate nuclear counter-response.
* <https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-secret-soviet-tactical-nuclear-weapons-cuba-cuban-missile-crisis-coda>
* <https://www.politico.eu/article/terrifying-lesson-of-the-cuban-missile-crisis-nuclear-weapons-kennedy/>
* <https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/10/cuba-almost-became-a-nuclear-power-in-1962/>
As mentioned in other answers there were also several other potential trigger-points: a nuclear-armed submarine under attack, a spy plane shot down, Castro's request to the USSR to launch a pre-emptive strike, as well as the naval blockade.
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[Question]
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A bigfoot is hiding in the Canadian Pine forests. Why haven't the thermal imaging satellites picked up the huge animal all this time?
Is there some way an animal can hide from thermal imaging cameras? Maybe by putting snow on themselves?
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Not all warm blooded animals stand out on thermal imaging - the example that comes to mind is the Polar Bear, which is so effective at heat retention that scientists are [trying to mimic it](http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/scientists-make-polar-bear-inspired-invisibility-cloak/) for stealth and camouflage reasons. The Canadian forests are also quite cold so it would be of little surprise to me if a bigfoot creature which inhabited such a region was also close to invisible on thermal tracking.
As for hiding from satellite tracking, this would be a lot easier than you think for several reasons; first is that just because we have complete satellite coverage across the planet doesn't mean that all that data actually gets looked at; most of it is only checked if there is a good reason to do so. It may be possible for instance that Russia may be spying on Canadian ground due to mineral resource and oil competition for instance, but even then that means looking for new humans or building operations that might be oil wells, mines, derricks and the like.
Secondly, even if the tracking satellite data is being used by scientists working on wildlife studies, something the size and thermal signature of bigfoot is probably going to be 'assumed' to be some form of bear. Bears are known to be in the forest, whereas bigfoot isn't and as such the default categorisation will be to something that is expected to be there, not put to the side as a potential spotting of something new.
Finally, there is also the fact that we're talking a forest, meaning that visuals are going to be obscured from full view most of the time, and at best even if you were evaluating satellite data to refine the location of a ground team to go in to search for bigfoot, seeing an obscure animal profile from space and then going in and trying to find that same animal on the ground for definitive proof are two very different things. Bigfoot may not know about satellites, but it will definitely know about these dangerous creatures called humans that clamber through the forest looking for them.
Above all else, never undervalue complacency as a shield; when in doubt, most people who are going to be reviewing the data are going to interpret the data in the manner most conducive to generating the least amount of possible work for them.
Spies are not going to loudly proclaim the discovery of bigfoot and have to explain what their satellites were doing there in the first place.
Prospectors are not going to loudly proclaim the discovery of bigfoot and have to justify why they should be allowed to disturb a pristine environment with hither-to unknown life forms roaming around in it.
Even climate scientists are not going to loudly proclaim the discovery of bigfoot and have to explain their interpretation to the mainstream body of scientists without any clear proof to support their statements.
This is all especially so when you think of the fact that most people will be of the opinion that if bigfoot is out there, then he would have been found by now because, let's face it, we have all this satellite tracking technology out there that would have found him by now...
So, you not only have to combat complacency, but a growing belief that 'someone else should've found him by now' that becomes stronger the longer bigfoot remains undiscovered.
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I wanted to expand on some of the answers already given. I am not a biologist or zoologist and I do not use the thermal bands of satellite imagery. But I am a geographer I do use satellite imagery for change detection and [NDVI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalized_difference_vegetation_index). Tim B II and Keith Morrison gave good answers but I wanted to go into a little more technical aspect. It also gives me a chance to nerd out on [remote sensing](https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-remote-sensing-and-what-it-used?qt-news_science_products=3#qt-news_science_products).
So there are 3 resolutions we are concerned with in using satellite imagery. [Spectral resolution](https://landscape.satsummit.io/analysis/spectral-bands.html), [spatial resolution, and temporal resolution](https://landscape.satsummit.io/capture/spatial-and-temporal-resolution.html).
**The spectral resolution** is the wavelength of radiation (UV, IR, thermal, or visible light) of interest. In the case of [thermal imaging of coal mine fire analysis](https://earth.esa.int/documents/973910/1002056/CK3.pdf/4e5b4e5a-d898-43b8-9e5c-ba7494aa58c8), they used sensors with wavelengths in the bands of 10.78 – 12.27µm. That is the main Thermal radiation band that can be detected from space without interference from the atmosphere.
**The spatial resolution** is the area that one pixel in the image covers. While there are some sub-meter spatial resolution sensors aboard satellites most are much coarser. Even at 1 meter resolution that means that every pixel in the image represents approximately 3 feet by 3 feet. I know sasquatch is supposedly a large being but it would probably be at most 1 pixel. If it was on the line between pixels it would probably be washed out by surrounding vegetation.
**Temporal resolution** is how often that area on earth has images taken of it. Most satellites for imaging are zooming around the earth in an orbit going from pole to pole. That means the earth turns underneath the satellite as it cuts a diagonal swath. Because of this for a satellite to take an image of the exact same patch of earth it can take up to 16-20 days. This can be mitigated by constellations of multiple satellites or geosynchronous satellites. [Geosynchronous / Geostationary](https://gisgeography.com/geosynchronous-geostationary-orbits/) stay in the same place relative to earth and therefore have fine temporal resolution but are much farther away (farther out in space) and thus have lower spatial resolution.
There is a balancing act between these 3 resolutions. When we get better resolution on one the others usually suffer. Here are some comparisons of satellites and their resolution:
[**LandSat 8**](https://www.usgs.gov/land-resources/nli/landsat/landsat-8?qt-science_support_page_related_con=0#qt-science_support_page_related_con) bands 10 and 11 are the thermal infrared at a resolution of 100m and 16 day temporal resolution.
[**Modis**](https://eos.com/modis-mcd43a4/) between the Terra and Aqua satellites has a temporal resolution of one to two days but the spatial resolution for bands 31 and 32 that sense surface and cloud temperatures is 1000m
[**SuperView-1**](https://eos.com/superview-1/) has a panchromatic (black and white) resolution of 0.5m, and with 4 satellites has a temporal resolution of 2 days but has no thermal sensor
[**GOES**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOES-17) (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite system) 17 is a geosynchronous satellite that takes imagery of the continental US every 5 minutes but the spatial resolution of the thermal band(s) is 2 kilometers (1.2 miles).
So as you can see even if Bigfoot was out and about the few seconds when a satellite passed overhead on the 2nd or 16th day of repeat it would be lost in the background at most sensor’s resolution. Clouds and trees to some extent can also obscure some of the sensors.
When I do remote sensing I usually do pan sharpening, some sort of classification, and change detection. Pan sharpening is adding the panchromatic (black and white) band to the visible bands to create a higher spatial resolution image since the panchromatic band usually the highest resolution. Then I do supervised classification. I pick out some areas in the image and tell the software that they are trees or houses or roads then the software will check every pixel in the image and try to assign it to a category. It is not perfect but it works pretty well. Classification is the step where it might "find" bigfoot but it would just be one pixel in a group that the software could not place and lumped into "unclassified". Then there is change detection. I take old classified images and ask the software to compare that to new images to highlight what has changed. I am not looking at every pixel of an image or even looking at the images most of the time just what areas have changed and displaying that.
In my opinion aerial orthophotography (airplanes taking pictures) would be a better route. I know that Los Angeles County has 4 inch spatial resolution imagery flown every year. That would allow one to see such a creature but there would still be vast areas that would have some kind of methodology to look at the study area.
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Simple reason: satellites don't actually work as well as they do in TV and movies. While visual imagery can be used to count individual animals, infrared has a coarser resolution and thus, at best, you might get a small blob indicating something living when it can get a glimpse through the trees.
Which causes a small issue: why would someone think the thermal blob was a sasquatch and not a grizzly, black bear, moose, cougar, or other mammal?
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**Bigfoot is not a mammal.**
It does not show up on thermal imaging because it is cold blooded; a terrestrial amphibian. This also accounts generally for the tremendous ability of Bigfoot to hide. It can seek out bodies of water and estivate for long periods on the bottom. No-one thinks to check the river for Bigfoot.
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For other non-heat related reasons, first, the Pacific North West is entirely within the boundries of the United States and Canada, who share some of the strongest relations of any nations (not to mention the longest continuous border between two nations in the world). Most sattellites that can pick up a (large) ape like mammial are not going to be thermal imaging satellites but spy satellites. And these types typically are looking in visible light spectrum rather than thermal imaging because they are looking for military activity from both the U.S. and Canada (*pfft*).
Well, the former of the two does the vast bulk of the heavy lifting in the alliances, but the Pacific North West doesn't have much in the way of strong activity, Califorina is much more developed than Origin (most Americans know it as the state they died of dysentery trying to reach in that video game) or Washington, though the latter has a major submarine base. California entered the Union well before they U.S. even had the other two as territory, let alone states.
Spy Satellites are looking for movements of supplies and equipment and people, and while the best are reportedly able to be able to read news paper headlines, it's usually monitoring movenment of bulkier equipment than people. Because the orbit gives it a limited window to take these pictures, they're not going to be looking at other things, but the general bases they are tasked to look at.
And of course, while they have a top down view, it's very easy to hide from them under cover. When India detonated *Smiling Budda*, it's first nuclear bomb, it came as a surprise to the world. India was aware of the eyes in the sky so the test sight was given covers to hide the nuclear device prior to detonation. Naturally, that cover was vaporized rather quickly after detonation, but the first warning that there has been a nuclear detonation anywhere in the world is going to come from geologists, not spy satellites (The U.S. Geological Service is the reporting agency for any nuclear detonations and in many cases, they're work is how we know there was a big boom).
I say this because the Pacific North West is technically a rain-forest and the largest one in the temperate regions of the planet to boot. The foliage is incredibly dense, and the region spans from Northern Califorinia, through Origin and Washington states, into British Columbia and southern Alaska. The terrain is fairly rugged as well and even if you were looking for Bigfoot with satellites, the foliage could be too dense to see, and a wild bipedal humanoid in brown fur will look similar to a hiker or camper in the woods and wouldn't be considered something worth looking at. If you're going heat signatures, the same thing applies. While Sasquatch is not recognized as existing, it's still hypothesized that it would be genetically close to *homo sapien* and reported sightings will usually start with the witness saying his/her first impression was that it was a large man. Big burly men in brown clothing in the woods is fairly typical in the region and wouldn't be an initial cause for alarm. Most times, the reported sighting is flagged only when the figure starts behaving more animal like than human like (there's a recording you can find on Youtube from a 911 call where the caller is calling the cops about an unidentified person who killed his dog while it was outside. At one point he sees the person and describes him as looking like a very big man (Figuring at least 7 feet in height) and built like an American Football player and the caller can't make out any details other than he's covered in black clothing. It's not known if this is an actual encounter, but the suspect pool of 7 foot tall beefy humans is rather limited (extremely tall people tend to be very skinny. Most competitive bodybuilders are well under 6 feet tall because even if their taller counterparts work out just as much as they do, it takes longer to get to a size that looks big in competition.).
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Too many other heat sources.
Bigfoot while large, is not more massive than a mature black bear, or a moose.
The population of BF is small. At least when I've ventured into Willmore Wilderness (North of Jasper Park) I usually will see black bear, grizzly bear, and moose tracks, as well as horse tracks from hunting parties, I don't see human/ape like tracks.
So the population of BF is small compared to the population of these other critters.
The best time for detecting a thermal signature is at night, when the surface of the earth is cold compared to the surface of BF.
With people, aka the naked ape, we like to keep our skin about 8-10 C cooler than our body temperature. This allows us to dispose of surplus heat without sweating much. At lower temperatures we put on synthetic fur (clothes) to keep our heat loss at acceptable levels. Many animals go through an annual fur growth/shed cycle to do the same. They will also seek out places that reduce excessive heat loss. If you camp, you can easily test this. Spend two nights out, one night directly under the stars, and one night under any tree with a dense canopy. You will be warmer (and have less condensation on your sleeping bag) under the tree.
Now, if you have been in the rockies, you will know that they come by that name honestly, and there are many rocks. A boulder with the sun shining on it in the day will get quite warm, and will take hours after sunset to cool off. Patches of bare earth also act like this.
So:
Bigfoot in the day time is a blob of warm barely warmer than the surrounding land.
Bigfoot in the evening is a warm blob in a bunch of other warm blobs -- stationary ones called rocks, and moving ones called moose and bear.
Bigfoot at night is either napping under a tree, or foraging much like a bear.
Bigfoot at dawn might be caught if in the open, and someone tries to correlate sub meter thermal pixels, with shadows that are the wrong shape for moose.
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[Question]
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If a small group of an advanced civilization got stranded in a medieval-like society on another planet and they start to interact in a peaceful way, what would be the first technologies that they could teach to them? For this, consider the following type of technologies:
* They know FTL technology (although they don't have any available)
* They have lasers weapons, high tech armors and force field technologies
* Their computers have AI
* Their communicators can reach a whole planet
* They were able to learn to communicate in the language of that medieval society.
* Their own planet is out of reach, either physically or via communication.
* They are almost like a regular human, except for their skin color (green). For all purposes, their physiology is similar to human. The people in the medieval society are human.
* The planet is similar to our Earth.
How much can they improve the technology in that society in a short span of time (maybe a year)? Would they "skip" some levels of technology (like the first gunpowder technologies)?
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**A year isn't going to cut it, you're looking at about a generation at least for any noticeable progress.**
The problem is the lack of industrial base. Medieval society is a hair's breadth above subsistence farming. Technology is largely driven and supported by population pressures, without that they don't have the need to progress nor to maintain anything you might teach them. They're going to need a cultural bootstrap first to get them up to a level to be able to spend time studying.
Your first problems are medical and maternity care. You need some surplus population, so you need them to stop dying in childbirth and to stop dying in childhood. This isn't so much a technology as a service you're going to be providing for the duration.
Now you need a cultural change, [long drop toilets and shoes](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/how-a-worm-gave-the-south-a-bad-name/), to prevent hookworm infection (among other things) which can put a serious crimp on intellectual development. Don't underestimate this, the reputation of the US "South" for being lazy and dimwitted is based on the hookworm problem.
Next you need decent nutrition and surplus food. Again, the intelligence of the adults you first encounter may have been limited by substandard nutrition. This requires you to get them off subsistence strip farming and onto larger fields and bulk production. The 4 field crop rotation system and other similar "fundamental" technologies haven't yet come along.
You should now have a society in approximately the position Britain was at the start of the industrial revolution. Surplus population looking for work that's not in the fields and ready to start your technological revolution.
**So what can you teach in a year?**
To the population:
Sanitation, the importance of the long drop rather than just going in the woods.
4 field system, you'll probably find them on a 2 or 3 field system already, it's an incremental improvement.
To the elites:
Better mathematics, mechanics, physics, the basics of elements and the periodic table
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The situation you describe is almost exactly (part of) the plot from the book "*A Fire Upon the Deep*". Which in my opinion presents a very plausible level of success. In fact the specifications you offer (1 year-ish time period, lack of homeworld contact for the high tech people) match the conditions in the book very closely.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep>
In this story two nations on the medieval planet are on the verge of war and (for plot reasons) it is desirable that one nation win this war for our (small, I think 4 people?) band of people from the high-tech FTL civilisation.
They introduce gunpowder and radio communication. They specifically DO skip some technologies (muzzle loading cannon - early gunpowder technology). Note that in the book our protagonists from space have no intention of hanging around and don't really care about the long term health of the medieval planet at all, they just need the war to go a certain way.
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As an interesting side point the book "Fire Upon the Deep" is set in the far future and the protagonists "go online" to the future-istic galactic internet-equivalent to look up something like: "how do I tech up some barbarians quickly", and find enormous amounts of theoretical material to help them. I like to think that this thread is one of the ones they looked at.
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* Basic sanitation, including the [germ theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease) of many diseases.
* Animal husbandy and plant improvement based on [Mendelian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelian_inheritance) genetics.
* If they have the data and sensors, mid-term weather forecasts. Imagine a serf knew that there would *likely* be two more dry and sunny weeks before the harvest is due.
* Food preservation technologies like canning (this requires jars or tins, of course).
* Understanding the impact of nature and nurture on human development; the children of the serfs can become engineers if you teach them.
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If the goal is truly technological transfer, nothing meaningful is going to happen in a year.
There is a saying I've encountered while working in sales-related capacities, which is that you never sell a *product*, you sell the *lifestyle* that a product makes possible. I think that that's an important element here. Early interactions will be largely gifts, as the medievals won't have anywhere near the requisite knowledge to understand many of the aliens' everyday technology but may need to see some dramatic possibilities to be convinced that learning is worthwhile.
The accrued, maintained knowledge of technology is incredibly important to building, deploying, maintaining, and enjoying the benefits of technology. "Teaching" technology can only mean *giving* the group the ability to enjoy that technology into the future without need for the givers' involvement.
In Asmiov's first *Foundation* novel,
>
> A militarily weak but technologically advanced group dominates a technologically weak but militarily more powerful group by ensuring their access to advanced technology but explicitly denying them the knowledge needed to understand or maintain it themselves.
>
>
>
So while your extra-civilizational aliens can *demonstrate* some mind-shattering capabilities, none of the examples in the question can be plausibly "taught" to them very quickly.
Even if the aliens can gift a functionally unlimited number of computers along with a functionally unlimited number of copies of *Windows for Dummies*, thereby allowing the medievals to enjoy what computers have to offer, it'll be a *very* long time before the medievals can actually produce, repair, or even broadly *understand* their computers.
The aliens themselves may not even have a strong practical understanding of the technologies that the medievals are ready to absorb-- having a super high-tech sani-pod toilet isn't realistic to transfer, but indicates that the need to know how to dig an ideal latrine trench is pretty far in the past for the aliens. The aliens may not really *know* how to solve medieval problems, in the same way that many modern people don't know how to grow, forage, or hunt for food effectively. We may understand various principles which apply, but do not have a working knowledge of how to really do the task itself.
Instead the aliens will need to provoke changes to how the medieval society operates such that the capacity to learn, preserve, and transmit new technological information across generations will exist. There are a few broad categories which may be involved:
* Food surplus: Medieval labor was almost absurdly allocated to food
production, typically of necessity. Reducing the need to work in the
fields will allow more people to study and learn what is necessary to
"gain" new technologies. In particular you'll need to see that students have time to study, and teachers have time to teach. Better food production and storage are achievable, and will be immediately valued.
* Hygiene/Nutrition/Basic Health Maintenance: Lots of medieval people
died and/or were malnourished in various ways. The aliens don't need
to fix everything, but some basic ideas (like handwashing with soap,
safe disinfection practices, adequate heating of dangerous foods,
etc.) will not only increase the health and capabilities of many
people but will also help them live longer (to learn more, and
participate in transmitting knowledge to future generations).
* Literacy/Large-scale Printing/Information Storage and
Curation/Redundancy: It doesn't take much complexity before oral
transmission becomes awkward, and it scales poorly. But a society
that becomes used to the ideas of storing knowledge in a retrievable
format, referencing that knowledge, and protecting it from loss will
be far more capable of "learning" new technologies.
* A suitable industrial base: Technological advances in this scenario
will often require production and processing of many components, such
as specific metals, solvents, buffers, and many others. To be able to
"have" higher technology, the medievals will need an economy that is
capable of producing and servicing that technology. Some of these
industries will need an extra boost, as they won't be useful without
the technology they enable, but the medievals will need to be capable
of sourcing and producing their own inputs, which in turn will
require transmission of knowledge about things like geology,
engineering, chemistry, metallurgy, and more. The more tech you want
to give, the more of this the medievals will need.
* Better/More advanced engineering: The medievals are probably going to
be pretty aware of different limitations, like building height, from
their own experiences. Some quick, dramatic improvements are probably
possible with alien intervention, and specialized knowledge may
already exist (such as the masons' guilds in medieval Europe).
* Some sociopolitical ideas: Specifically, the medievals will need to
be prepared for (relatively) rapid changes in their society compared
with how things have been for generations. As a significant example,
suddenly freeing up a lot of labor from the fields will produce a lot
of people who need something to do during the day, and will need to
access things (like food) through some new avenue as their customary labor is
no longer needed. A medieval economy is unlikely to have a whole lot
of job alternatives or labor market slack, and bad consequences are
definitely possible.
There are more, but this is a very basic sampling of some elements that would help prepare a medieval society to adopt new technologies.
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It will also depend on the state of knowledge of the medieval society. If they don't have good chemists or biologists, but *do* have some pretty advanced mathematics, then a curriculum starting with math and then branching to, say, engineering might do well. Teaching microbiology (in any practical way) may be impossible, as the medievals won't have the technology to build the things that can demonstrate the information to be true, let alone used-- they won't be mass-producing penicillin any time soon.
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If the goal is truly technology transfer (rather than a quick, focused boost in specific directions), then a good additional step might be things which are empirically useful without a full understanding of the underlying theories.
As an example, there is a huge amount of applied statistics which could be conveyed that would quickly and noticeably cause improvements in health, productivity, and risk mitigation. And a lot of it can be done without technology beyond modest math, things to write on, and things to write with. This is useful in itself, and could also promote the idea that studying abstract knowledge is a valuable way for individuals to spend their time.
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The other answers are excellent and thought provoking, but I’d argue that you need to invent the printing press almost immediately. Without reasonable speed of instruction, it will be difficult to teach the necessary skills to bootstrap many of the other improvements. Of course, this does require a significant push for literacy, but I'd argue that many of the other advances require this in any case.
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Not so much of an answer, but I'm not allowed to comment yet.
Anyway there is an Anime currently airing called [Dr. Stone](https://myanimelist.net/anime/38691/Dr_Stone)
featuring some guy who seems to know basically everything from todays science. The plot is, that every human was petrified for several thousand years and thus every piece of technology is gone. So he wakes up and finds some other humans with the technology of the stone age.
He starts to recreate the modern technologies step by step, some to impress the people to gain their support, some to secure his well being. I'm sure you can at least get some good Ideas out of it.
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From a technology point of view, aliens can create and study a set of independent (advanced weapons required for negotiations with authorities) small closed guilds a-la "free masons" which would be able to keep (and develop very slowly) technologies on semi-religion basis in generations. The technologies should be a set of precalculated tables and some "secret" ritual-like techniques (AI required to make information system which is stable in multiple rewriting in generations)
This guilds should be:
1) "Free masons" as is - builders with advanced knowledge (tables!) of material strength and tensions, algorithms for stability calculations.
2) "Free gunners" - gunpowder, guns and explosives of different sort.
3) "Free miners" - with knowledge of minerals and were to find them and how to mine them
4) "Free blacksmiths" - just a lot of recipes of different metal alloys.
5) "Free clockmakers" - for advanced machinery. Aliens can leave steam,combustion engine ideas for them, but they will not be able to reproduce it in a given time. Electricity knowledge goes here (in form of Volt element mostly), but will be of a limited use (galvanics). Some electromagnetic generators and devices can be given to this guild as a predesigned artifacts for wild-coping. But there main purpose is complex tools production (like looms or precise boring mills)
5) Alchemists - chemistry as it is, but in a more "magical" context (there are magical numbers in chemistry after all)
6) Medics - at least antibiotics and hygiene
7) Journalists - printing press, newspapers and so on.
All these guilds should support and help each other (like clockmakers creating tools for masons and alchemists - portions for medics), but keep there knowledge in a secret. If they don't - they would be wiped out and there knowledge would be lost.
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There are two sides to the problem. The first is technical and it's easy--if you can get the training tools and information to children, the next generation will have the full level of understanding and knowledge the race is capable of receiving, you are done training them and they will be as advanced as your children of the same age (assuming the same capacity). You don't have to teach the adults anything.
This first trained generation will immediately implement the steps necessary to improve their homes and cities without your interference--they will do what they can and built what they need to take the next step.
The second part, however, is much harder--the social aspect. You are very likely to run into problems from the previous generations, mostly a resistance to change in general and even more to being rendered powerless and obsolete. They might try to prevent the training--most likely calling it brainwashing. A smart enough race would probably have the social engineering skills to get around this.
Aside: Isn't it funny how we always portray advanced races as technically superior but assume they don't have a clue about social engineering? An advanced race should be able to socially engineer such a backwards race in a way that was undetectable and more effective than any military defeat. The only books I can think of that gave social engineering a fair shake was Asimov's foundation.
In part I think this indicates how clueless we are as a race about social engineering--we don't even think of it as much of a science, at this point I think we know more about quantum mechanics.
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Many answers so far identify the primary issue as social/cultural, but none feel like they hit that aspect squarely. I started thinking about it, then realised that the book "**Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court**" was actually the prototype for a good answer. So I'll draw freely from that book, below.
Your problem is that your aliens are a small group of outsiders, in a medieval setting. They want to quickly pervade society with completely new ideas and inevitably, also with major social implications. For a handful of beings to change a whole society's technological and social basis, it has to overcome huge inertia. That was the issue which ultimately destroyed the protagonist in Mark Twain's story. So we need to do better.
*And we have a year to do it, for the OP....*
That said, I think Mark Twain's protagonist had the right idea. It was just executed without thinking enough about the massive upcoming backlash.
# Medieval society
Medieval society is top down. Like many modern dictatorships, it's a "strong man" hierarchy. Seizing the top, and consolidating an iron control over the layers below it, is essential to any new pervasive knowledge, skills, or change. Your aliens can do this; they can detect and monitor society far better than Twain could have realised, and we can assume them to be socially competent and have many many more ways to head off a troublemaker, than just execution. Twain used ridicule, we could think of many ways to remove possible flashpoints and figureheads, and awe the society so much that rebellion doesn't happen. That includes bringing them to describe what's happening and its benefits (genuine reeducation, not the Chinese version!), finding their priorities and marketing the changes to them in desirable terms, offering them power or safety (we don't care about lower power levels so why not), flooding society with miraculous information - a visual broadcast in every town and village, a holographic alien projection in charge of every settlement, the image of the alien council in the sky from all parts of the country.
In short, control the top, and ruthlessly awe and dominate the rest. Install those willing to follow in the top layers below you and remove silently all opposition (education or death, you choose). Do whatever is needed, so that you can direct that a given action, or social practice, will happen, and be sure it will, regardless whether it seems confounding to the existing people. Then and only then, will you be able to promulgate all the skills and technological bootstrapping, you need, as fast as possible.
That will be your fastest way. Much faster, and much more certain, than trying to convince people to do weird non-traditional stuff in towns and villages across the country. Take control, dominate, and place yourself in a position where you can make such directions and be sure they'll happen. Then, when you do, it will already be a social norm that "we do what our overlords say", and inertia will be far less an issue or not at all, in practise.
# Order of teaching
I've divided this into three areas. They can all be done in parallel.
# 1) Technology
Control can be fast. Really fast. Once you have sure control, you can rely on it to skip steps, or do things in parallel. For example -
* **Mining certain ores:** You'll need those for manufacturing, as well as for products. Think of having the right kind of raw materials in production for steel, for furnaces, steel, and the start of mass production - tools and transport.
* **Producing relatively pure water:** Not for health, but again for manufacturing. The OP focuses on teaching technology not healthcare. You need basic raw materials for that, and water that's relatively clean is needed in many industrial processes.
* **Furnaces:** The major forms of mass production will need furnaces in their supply chain - think quick ways to produce glass, metals, and later, for welding or power production.
* **Transport/logistics:** You'll need to task a part of the population with transport, until you bootstrap to a point of having reliable tools, and basic engineering for things like wheels and profiled steel.
What is interesting is, if the aliens vanish, those types of industrial precursors will probably continue to be maintained so long as social order exists. They really are fundamentals.
# 2) Education
A second stream will be education. If you just focus on teaching, and leave aside any implementation, your aims crudely are (1) to get key knowledge out there and saturated in society, and (2) a smaller group of advanced scholarship/knowhow underway.
My rationale here is that changing healthcare, education etc is a huge slow undertaking and won't meet the OP need of technological improvement within a short time. What's much better is to teach many people a 6 month crash course in knowledge and knowhow - then send them back to their communities, where they can autonomously use that knowledge as they see fit. The knowledge will pervade much faster, and be used in particular for goals that you set, and actual societal needs.
So for example, you teach hundreds of people, high school (16-to-college) mathematics, or basics of medicine/sanitation, or essentials of chemistry and physics, or principles of engineering, and an overview of basic technologies (tools, power generation, etc). Then send them away and teach the next batch.
The knowledge will pervade and be used towards your goals, without draining your resources to implement a medical *system* or educational *system*. The *systems* will spontaneously arise if you educate widely.
*Of note - writing takes time to learn. Most people aren't literate. You don't have time to fix that. Use AV or VR or holograms or verbal teaching instead, for now. I don't think printing will help you for the while, as you are trying to teach such new concepts that a book won't help. Better to teach and develop things initially at least, by showing and by training, not by circulating books.*
# 3) Societal structures for technology to develop
Last, you'll need some basic structures. We use corporations and government established bodies as vehicles to do works. Your society doesn't have those and will need them, or something like them. Meaning, they need a way to mobilise wealth and cooperation, to establish engineering companies that produce basic tools and components, basic sanitaryware, basic products and services of other kinds, standardisations as needed.
Fortunately you control the hierarchy. You order it so.
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Some basics which are freebees (as in, teachable immediately):
* The wheelbarrow
* Iron plow
* Oxen yoke
* The stirrup
Some slightly longer-term (but simple):
* The flying buttress in architecture
* Punctuation
* Standardized spelling
* The caravel in ship design
* The printing press
* Utensils for food
* Crop rotation
* Calculus
* Watches
* ~~CPR~~ Emergency medical procedures
* An understanding of germs and infection
* Improved metallurgy
* Improved road construction
Realistically, there are two major bottlenecks in the middle ages. First is survival but more important is the ability to communicate over distance. It means that scientific concepts propagate and can build on each other.
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The *[1632](https://www.baen.com/1632.html)* series is a [many-book](https://www.baen.com/images/series/ring-of-fire-series-by-eric-flint.png)-long exploration of this topic. In this series, a 1999-era West Virginia town transfers technology to early-modern-era Earth. The premise that that the Americans arrived via time travel implies that faster-than-light travel is possible, even if the Americans have no idea how.
The first technologies that the Americans seek to transfer are:
* A credible demonstration that existing military technology is obsolete.
* A credible demonstration that it is not worthwhile to try to wipe out the Americans.
* A credible demonstration that the Americans are willing to give away wonderful technologies.
* A credible demonstration that it is not worthwhile to try to establish a worldwide monopoly on access to the up-time technologies.
* Literacy.
* Libraries.
* The scientific method.
* Credible fiat money.
* Personal grooming kits. They are cheap, encourage good hygiene, and associate "higher status" with "early adopter of technology".
Beyond that, major themes include:
* Tools to make tools to make tools to…
* Better roads
* Better rolling stock
* Locally made products
* Organizations run by locals, with advice from "up-timers"
* Allow reinvestment of profits (which requires limiting government expenditures, making the tax system less arbitrary, and reducing corruption)
* Better sanitation
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since they are peaceful i guess computer (they can make advance robotic right?) that would help them for increase production and workforce to early industrialize them, or as revolutionary warfare like drone warfare.
that unless they dont get accused as satanic or witch by the mass or religions though.
and when i say computer, i mean an advance [automaton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton#Medieval)(which exist in medieval) or robot not just literal pc or laptop, or other automatic engine/machine like advance farm tractor.
that will make the people have more free time and food, and not require to wait till a lot of population to work or teach with, since with the help of the AI computer mean early industry, so you can mass produce the stuff without need many human worker,
weapon and armor technology is your alien self defense your alien maybe peaceful but the environment and the people here may not, so i suggest to never teach them that.
FTL definitely not the first since it probably require other advance technology such as metalurgy,computer, and fuel, etc (i dont know much about FTL technology but i believe it require alot of stuff) also including to teach massive of people which require an established trust first hand.
communicator probably the second because first it probably use by the alien to interact to gain trust before teaching the people how to build their advance communication.
and computer AI will ease them on this other advance technology developments, or help the people to learn, or help advance and discover their own invention.
and although i dont know how long such ai computer will improve the technology of the society, i believe it can give massive boost to other technology developments.
and for energy or fuel source, medieval society already know oil so the alien may can tell them that oil is a nice source of energy, unless the alien have better alternative fuel than oil.
also [printing press](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press) exist in medieval era, and basic printing machine exist before that like in asia especially china and middle east at least some reach europe, so learning advance computer is not far fetch for the medieval people at least for the scholar type like monk which have a lot of free time compare to commoner peasant, but they are not dumb as people think they just dont have free time to be literate nor have the resource.
and depend on the era medieval people actually wash or take a bath alot (until black death make people never take bath from the superstition of public bath, and conotation with prostitution workplace) and they even have [soap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#Medieval_Europe) so medieval people actually know some basic sanitation.
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You may want to consider European Medieval Society was based on a stratified society that in general reinforced the idea of immutable way of life. Change happened slowly, generally in realm of a weapons race but even that took centuries.
1. The average mid-level feudal lord was not that responsive about a means to improve the lives of the serfs, for that was a way to control them. But, talk about a way to take over the next kingdom and you have his ears. I may sound a bit jaded, or even like Karl Marx, but thing in a pragmatic way: if his realm gets more productive, the neighbors might get jealous, so he need first and foremost to ensure invasions will not happen.
2. The church had a lot of control, and it was based on it being the source of all that was truth. One could argue it was to their interest to control information, primarily to keep the masses under control but also to do the same to the lords. Now, if you show up and offer to give some new knowledge to a lord, (1) how would that fit the church teachings and (2) what is the piece of action to the church so it can protect its interests?
3. What would be the effect to a Medieval society of having educated serfs? And, as others said, those serfs would have to be way above subsistence level to be able to be educated, so they might also have time to wonder about their society. is that a question nobility and church would like to deal with?
My previous paragraphs might sound a bit typecasting, but the point I am trying to make is the social side is more challenging than the technology.
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If you're looking to get a civilization up to speed so they can continue on at that level after you're gone then the minimum you're looking at is one generation.
Basically the current generation is too far gone you need to start with the children.
Start schooling to taking one generation from primary to university levels, bring them up around your technology, make it normal to them. Tech them in your language so all your resources are available.
You are basically bringing them into your culture rather than trying to bring their culture up to your level.
You can basically skip every technology your civilization doesn't use anymore. Just teach them how to make your technology using your technology. Basically if you have Star Trek style replicators that can be used to make new replicators, you don't need to build a old tech industrial base starting with industrial revolution level technology, just build a basic industrial base with your tech level that can be expanded. They will have the educational foundations and the information resources needed to understand more basic technology in the future if the need arises.
On the contrary, if you don't have the resources to do this you are pretty stuffed. If your ship doesn't have the necessary materials to setup this basic replicating industrial base and you are dependent on their technology for your survival their isn't much you can do.
You do not have the knowledge and tools suitable for the intermediate technology to get them up to speed. Your technology is too far removed, it will just be a useful tool until it breaks.
If you are dependent on the native civilization for anything other than manpower to add to your colony it's a pretty good sign that you will have to join them rather than them joining you. You will go to their level and struggle to get them to tech up slowly. You may have limited success, but it will be slow and there is no guarantee it will continue after you die.
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[
I am looking at tactics for using missiles as space-to-space weapons. The missiles in question will be chemically fueled, higher acceleration but lower deltaV than the warships.
Since they are essentially self contained, you can chuck your entire missile load out out a hatch, and fire them in one massive salvo.
Against a single target this seems always like the ideal strategy. Laser/Particle Beam/Gun point defense is all limited by energy throughput, making it essential to minimize the time PD has to engage the salvo. Since active defenses are not degraded, saving missiles makes no sense. If your wave did not get through, neither will any equal sized follow-up.
Edit: Heat may degrade active defenses, but if you fire the second salvo along with the first one, you have a much better chance of getting them through than allowing engagement time.
What device or method could be used to draw out missile combat and make multiple waves a desirable tactic?
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## Short-Term but High Effect Shield
Introduce a shielding capability that is extremely effective but has a short duration and long cool-down. Maybe a ship can run it in 5 second increments, store up to 30 seconds worth of shield, and needs to restock or take a huge amount of time to replenish the reserve.
This essentially gives it the ability to absorb the 6 largest salvos sent against it. IF you only send a few huge waves, they will all be blocked by the shield. If you keep up a steady bombardment or many smaller waves, the shield becomes much less effective.
There should be numerous physical/handwavium ways to create a shield like this.
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* You can never be certain that what is *currently* just one target will stay just one target. Each side would be wary of being *tricked* of flushing all of their missiles against a part of the enemy force.
* Missile seekers might observe the defensive EW of the target and transmit this data to the follow-up salvo, increasing the hit probability. This is balanced by adjustments in the EW.
* It could be easier to *temporarily degrade* the defenses of a target than it is to kill it outright. For instance, a near miss might blind the sensors of the target. So the 'main wave' of the attack could be preceded by a few 'defense suppression' missiles. (Since the 'main wave' knows the timing, it can cover or avert the seekers to protect them. Blinding countermissiles would still be a problem.)
* In a similar vein, the 'main wave' could be followed by a few missiles to 'clean up' cripples before the damage control teams can get them back into battle. Mixing them into the main wave could mean that these missiles are wasted against an intact point defense.
* Missiles could work better if they are *guided* for most of the flight. This requires sensors, computers, operators, and communications on the launching vessel. These could be in short supply.
[Answer]
Answer inspired by "[The Matrix Revolutions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_Revolutions)"
One of the effective anti-missile weapons is an EMP charge. Once an incoming wave is detected, a powerful missile carrying an EMP device is launched. Once in proximity to the wave, the missile is detonated, making the entire wave ineffective. The EMP charges, however, are large missiles and are unlikely to be deployed against individual attacking missiles or small salvos.
[Answer]
Decoys and electronic warfare.
You've been tracking that battleship as it closed to engagement range (yes, you have engagement ranges in space. Fire your missiles from too far out, your enemy lets them burn then zigs out of the way.) You fire off 100 missiles and your target release a dozen decoys. Decoys don't have the resources to pretend to be a battleship for too long and they are trivial to kill. Your missiles split up, each target has about 8 missiles going for it. Your 100 missile salvo is degraded to 8.
What you have to do is fire some missiles and see what happens, followup birds have their targeting adjusted based on what the first birds learned.
There's also the issue that if you fire too dense a group of missiles that the enemy will fire a missile at your missiles. Even a nuke doesn't have much punch at any distance in space but all you need is a mission-kill and frying their seeker does that. So long as you can avoid running into a fried missile it's harmless.
A dense group of missiles also causes communications issues--you're trying to punch a signal through all that exhaust which will contain some very energetic chemicals.
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Here are a few possible answers that come to mind:
Sure lasers can't punch through the armor of the enemy ship, but if the enemy was to deploy a large missile loadout out one of their hatches, the laser could destroy that. In addition to instantly wiping out most of the enemy ship's missiles, the explosion created by shooting the loadout would heavily damage the ship itself. That is why the ships would choose to deploy smaller loadouts one at a time- if a laser shot the loadout, the explosion would be smaller and the ship would still have missiles to use.
Maybe the ships are fighting near an object that neither of them want to destroy. It could be a planet, or a field of explosives ([space mines](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpaceMines)) that will explode in a chain reaction if hit. If any of the missiles miss their target and hit the object, something bad will happen. If both sides want the planet intact or both have ships within the minefield, they will use precision strikes instead of carpeting the enemy with missiles.
@o.m. brought up the idea of sensor interference messing with targeting. Building on that, having large salvos of rockets fire at once blinds sensors, resulting in a lot of wasted missiles that miss their target. The rocket engines on the missiles and the flashes of light missiles create when they explode could both interfere with sensors.
The shielding on the ships might be thick enough to sustain several blasts from rockets. If the ship has a limited number of rockets, they will focus on one spot on the enemy ship to try and punch through the armor. Salvos would be single shots with a few seconds in between, with all of the shots focused on a single spot on the enemy ship.
As @G0BLiN suggested, missiles themselves are limited. Launching large salvos is wasteful if a few missiles might take out an enemy ship. Ships would deploy only a few missiles at once, then wait for the explosion to clear before determining whether to fire again.
Unlike on Earth, where reinforcements are nearby, reinforcements in space are far away. They need to be out of the line of fire- behind an asteroid or planet where the enemy can't shoot them. Missile or ship resupplies might take hours or days, so rationing of missiles is a must.
[Answer]
## Fratricide
Chronicidal and Alexander's answers combine to be the winner.
In the back and forth of nuclear war, one thing the US tried was the tight-pack. Earlier, they had tried spreading silos far apart, forcing the enemy to counter with 1 missile per silo, which the enemy promptly did, set up to arrive time-on-target, or all together to overwhelm any ABM systems.
So the US threw the "Time on Target" strategy right back in their face. With the tight-pack, the US put them close together - hardened enough that all but the direct-hit target would survive. But close enough, that a time-on-target attack would ensure that the first missile would cause **[fratricide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fratricide)** -- all the subsequent missiles would slam into the shockwave of the first missile, and be damaged sufficiently to not detonate.
So in your case, it wouldn't be shockwave, it would be something like **shrapnel** - suppose you had interceptor missiles of roughly equal warhead `velocity x mass` to the attacking missiles, so their collision would cancel each other's velocity before causing a massive explosion of sharpnel to occur relatively stationary in space. This creates a localized [Kessler Syndrome](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj-7_vu_srgAhVs5IMKHRiHCnQQFjACegQIBRAK&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FKessler_syndrome&usg=AOvVaw21Shy79lMO2FDaQmuvGhMV) between attacker and defender, then causing *fratricide* of a salvo *of any size* -- the bigger the salvo, the bigger the Kessler Syndrome.
The ship would stock two kinds of interceptors.
* small, designed to break an incoming missile so its attack would be ineffective, but it would do little to change the velocity vector of the incoming missile and its soon to be shrapnel bits; those would continue on past the defender at roughly equivalent speed, and be dealt with by the defender's normal micrometeorite shield. These were numerous but its launch rails or targeting could be overwhelmed by a salvo. So... they also have
* Large, designed to match the `mass x velocity` of an attacking missile, and create this "Kessler syndrome" field of debris. These missiles are more precious, and would be reserved for salvos large enough to overwhelm the first defense.
As such, attackers find that the most effective attack is a "happy medium" - too small a salvo to justify trotting out the Kessler defense weapon, yet large enough to get a couple past the single defenses **if you get lucky**. So you have numbers of such salvos until you get lucky.
See also [Hellfire vs Arena](https://books.google.com/books?id=SnEIDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=hellfire%20vs%20arena%20tom%20clancy&source=bl&ots=GwI9PgW8xt&sig=ACfU3U0HBtJ-2Kli9mhyzNoKUY8qnlFQ1g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwix4rjygMvgAhUtpoMKHUI7DOYQ6AEwCnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=hellfire%20vs%20arena%20tom%20clancy&f=false). Too small a salvo (1) is efficiently dealt with by the Arena defense system. Too big a salvo, well, it would certainly squish the tank, but would be totally unmanageable from the attacker's end, and would run you out of ammo, leaving you unable to attack other tanks. Generally it's a lose if the ammo you throw at the tank [costs more](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3553442/characters/nm0000671) than the tank.
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Space is big. So, solutions that rely on area effect weapons or fratricide probably won't work. The attacker would want the missiles to spread out anyway. This allows the missile swarm to get some of the missiles to the target even through debris and extreme maneuvering of the target.
If you aren't looking for a super science answer like a limited time shield (stops everything for x amount of time from, for example: Macross), then look at the "wild weasel" (WW) electronic decoy from Star Fleet Battles. A similar tech was used in the Honor Harrington novels. If every large ship has one or more of these, they can divert all or the majority of a single wave of missiles.
In that case, the missile cruiser would either want to plink away with small groups to avoid the deployment of the WW or fire groups just big enough that they need to deploy the WW and hope that you have more groups than they do WWs.
Anti missile swarms. Small missiles that target incoming missiles. If it takes 2 anti missiles to take out a missile but the anti missiles are 1/4 the size of the attacking missile, you can wipe the alpha strike and till have room for offensive weapons. This works even better with fleet antimissile ships.
Layered missile defense would work too. Anti missiles, lasers and short range gatling guns. Thin them out in each band. If multiple ships can coordinate, they can block for everyone.
The best case for solving the problem is to not make the missile swarm the best or the worst but come up with rock-paper-scissors strategies.
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# Guided Point Defense
Point defense can, in theory be very effective in space. Given the speed at which objects are traveling, it doesn't really make sense to include a "warhead" on a missile to be honest. The missile IS the warhead, since a collision at several thousand meters per second will likely destroy the enemy ship on it's own. The only reason to make it a missile is to give it extra speed for said collision, and to re-direct itself to keep the enemy from dodging.
Using this same logic, you could conceive of a point defense system that essentially acts like a smaller version of the above. It would simply be small bullets with cold gas thrusters on the sides for maneuvering. These would then attempt to collide with the incoming missile.
A collision at those speeds would disable the missile's guidance systems. It *would* still be hurtling towards your ship at speeds great enough to vaporize you if it hit, but without guidance a simple maneuver would allow your ship to dodge out of the way.
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**You're firing unstable high-yield devices**
The missiles are sort-of stable when in storage, but as soon as the rocket engine starts firing, the thing heats up, which primes the explosive. When hot, a tiny nudge will cause them to explode, detonating any other missiles near it.
These things are so high-yield that they don't even need to hit the ship, they just need to get near it. If you fire a big salvo, at maximum you have a single near-hit since the defenses take out one, and a huge shockwave from the resulting explosion makes the other missiles obsolete.
The missiles are on erratic courses to avoid being hit by defenses, but throwing out a bunch at a time increases the chance one missile will get hit, and one is enough to ruin an entire salvo. As a result, a usual attack is one missile at a time. Launching many missiles is only done in utter desperation up close, and will likely obliterate both ships.
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Missiles *explode*. If you launch them all as a single dense cluster salvo, then my Point Defense only needs to detonate 1 of your missiles to trigger a chain reaction. If you spread them out to prevent that, then you are either launching a bombardment of continuous waves, or launching less missiles.
Of course, by dropping missiles as you travel, you can also increase your angle of attack - but that takes time, and your target can move.
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If you desire multiple missile volleys to be the standard, then you need to have some active degradation of the defensive systems. This could be achieved by having specific payloads in your primary volley that cause this degradation. Any active defense requires high speed, high precision sensors. They need to be looking in every direction, all the time, across a number of RF bands.
So sending all of your highest yield at once against the enemy isn't as likely to produce results against a pristine sensor array. Sending an initial wave to obscure, overwhelm, damage, or destroy those sensors will then let your killshots get through.
So lets say you launch 100 missiles at once, with 10% of them designed to locate enemy sensor arrays and relay that info to the rest. Another 10% of them are designed to target those sensors with a dense, shot gun like blast of small inert projectiles. Another 10% are designed to intentionally fracture into millions of pieces to overwhelm radars. Another 10% have their own laser systems integrated and try to fry the sensors/ point defenses from range. The remaining missiles could have smaller payloads or just be inert decoys.
The point is that after a primary volley, the enemies sensors and point defenses have been partially damaged. This process can be repeated until they are blind or helpless enough to finish them off as you please. This approach will be expensive, but hopefully less so that using your rarest, heaviest, most expensive weapons in a single massive assault that could very easily be overkill, or could also leave you a sitting duck.
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One fairly obvious solution:
**Kessler Syndrome is undesired.**
Explosions in orbit can render a planet unable to attempt space travel. If it's groups fighting over territory, you'd need to make sure that each volley doesn't cause a chain reaction. In a stable orbit, this could mean generations waiting for debris to fall. However, ships in approach and not in a standard orbit may expect most of the material to fall into decay and burn up IF it stays inside an appropriate window (still very risky).
In other words, if they blow up too much too fast, they blow up everything, and nobody wants that.
It's the same reason most current militaries build weapons more about efficiency than raw power. It's easy to build a weapon that will wipe your opponent off the face of the planet at the push of a button. It's hard to design one that will do that AND leave you in one piece too.
Edit: Additional notes
In general, due to a lack of friction to slow down the shrapnel, missiles in space are a bad idea overall, and are just as like to destroy the ship firing the missiles as the ship hit. Equal and opposite reactions with a friction-less environment mean there's a good chance shrapnel from the missile will go flying back towards the ship that fired, shredding it. Not only does this apply to missiles, this applies to ALL explosive and projectile weapons. In space, the best weapons will be capture weapons and weapons for close combat, and shrapnel-less energy weapons like gamma bursts and EMPs and microwave weapons.
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**The firing ship can only control so many**
Missiles go fast. This causes some Doppler shift in... Most things. So, the launching ship is in control of the missiles from launch to hit. Bigger, better sensors and bigger, better computers. While the missiles have some on board targeting systems and computers (In case of effective jamming), the ships are better.
But a ship can only effectively target, track, update, and communicate with so many missiles. So while they could fire everything, it's less effective.
Similarly, fewer missiles means if the enemy can coopt the command and control mechanisms, fewer missiles are lost. Each salvo would have different, generated encryption keys, so while the enemy might manage to divert one salvo (Highly unlikely that there would be enough delta-v to get back to the launching ship), it'll be more difficult to do so for the second one since they have to start back at square one. If they are launched in one wave, they all have the same keys and can potentially all be messed with.
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One "solution" to your question would be missile launchers that impart a significant velocity to the missile in the "launch" sequence - if I remember correctly Tomahawk missiles have very low velocity upon launch i.e. when exiting the launch canister - while rocket-assisted artillery rounds have a lot of velocity at the start.
The "explanation" for this feature (forced launch) would be that the missiles accelerate slowly at low speed, so launch at high speed lowers (by a lot) their time-to-target (also, "fuel" used for early start acceleration can't be used later for maneuvers).
On reverse, the missile launchers are limited in energy used per minute either by cooling issues, or by energy generation issues.
These being said, the "large EMP defense" mentioned above is a very valid answer.
Another possible answer would be that the total surface of the ship is limited (for real or handwavium reasons) so it simply doesn't have the surface area to launch everything in one go.
Yet another possible answer would be that the missiles can only survive behind a lot of plating, and creating a lot of tunnels through that plating makes the armor too weak (this you could "support" with stories of battleships lost by "lasers through the missile tubes" phenomenons).
And yet another possible answer would be to have shields that can only have very small and temporary "holes" - if you try to open "windows" for a full salvo, the entire shield will fail - and even a small hole opened more than a couple of seconds will propagate outwardly and lead to instabilities.
Well, plenty of ways for a technologically oriented party in a war to introduce "overpowered" technologies and win against a brutal opponent...
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No one answered with current doctrine?
You dont send a destroyer across the atlantic to unload it's entire missile rack on a single target. It's expensive overkill and leaves you vulnerable to future attack while you try to make it back to port for a reload. Especially when the defender can signal others to your location, and those others could attempt to catch you as you try to flee.
Another option: most of the missiles will likely be kinetic, meant to slam into the space ship and tear through. This means they cant be detonated easily and destruction of the missile means the debris will still be able to tear through you. Solution? If the enemy sends a single giant wave, you can predict their course and put a big bomb in their way a distance away from you. This bomb will disable the guidingsystems of the missiles (if not destroy them) and blow the debris and damaged missiles off-course from your ship. At the very least it'll reduce the total damage received.
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The missiles have Fission devices as their warheads
In addition to fireball and debris cloud effects, fission weapons have a unique problem: chain fizzling. When a nuclear fission weapon detonates, the chain reaction inside it's core generates a large number of high energy neutrons, such a high neutron flux will cause fission reactions in nearby cores , even if they are subcritical.
The result of such fission reactions is that, due to the large amount of heat generated by the secondary reactions, the internal components of any fission weapon would experience thermal shocking and decomposition, which would disrupt the precise geometry that is needed for implosion type weapons to properly implode and assembling a critical mass.
Essentially, one detonated fission device causes other devices nearby to deactivate, therefore, the missiles have to be spaced separately enough from each other, which would stretch a salvo into a more continuous flow, instead of a short burst.
Also, the enemy can employ a neutron bomb based point defense system, by launching a neutron generating device on a missile into the enemy salvo and detonating the device inside the swarm, one shot of a slightly larger missile can easily disable an entire salvo.
Since neutron bombs or other area effect weapons in space would be quite large and heavy, they will be also slow reloading and one ship won't have too many of such devices. Therefore it will be much more wiser to spread out the shots instead of clustering them, and hope that the enemy will not be able to take out the entire salvo within one or two reloaded they have before some of the missiles reaches target.
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Wouldn't they follow similar engineering principles? What forces them to create weirdly shaped structures in movies/games?
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You appear to have a perspective problem. In this case, that can be taken quite literally. After all, we have some [really weird structures](http://pulptastic.com/33-wierd-buildings/) on Earth that were designed that way. A thing is weird only because it's not encountered on a regular basis.
[Architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture) is also a very subjective thing. It's as much an art as a science. An architect is just as often concerned with the appearance of a design/structure as with its functionality, and there have been plenty of architects who create fantastic and functional structures. So what humans consider to be a weird design could be an accepted norm for an alien species.
There's also a difference in species. An alien species may not have the same spatial needs as a human and their structures are designed towards those needs.
Environment also plays a role in determining the design of a structure. One wouldn't want to put a square building in a location with high winds; a rounded structure would better resist the wind. Sloped roofs are preferred in snowy regions, to prevent the snow from building up and collapsing the roof.
Finally, and maybe critically, there's the [Rule of Cool](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool). People go to the movies to see extraordinary things, not to be reminded of the places they live or work.
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As always, the answer is **"Lots of reasons"**
For storytelling purposes, having a clear visual difference between cultures or species is very important. It provides an immediate, intuitive way to identify different groups at a glance. We're limited in our interaction with most media - we can't smell, taste, or touch the aliens, only see and hear them, so storytellers need to use design to show these differences.
In-universe, it's not entirely certain to what extent our own designs are independent of our psychology. While humans may make a clear distinction between "Inside" and "Outside", another species might not see the world the same way, weaving inside and outside together. If they think more three-dimensionally than we do, they may have structures built that blend what we would see as different floors together much more completely. A collectivist species would probably not understand the concept of having different buildings for different activities at all, or having 'personal space'.
Then there are physical differences. Design can be an excellent way to show physical differences between species, even when they're played by the same human actors in different rubber forehead prosthetics. Compare these weapons from Star Trek:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fV0xz.jpg)
A Cardassian handheld weapon.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1nVFv.jpg)
A Bajoran handheld weapon.
While the configurations are similar, notice that the grip of the cardassian weapon extends from the body at pretty close to 90 degrees, an angle that a human would find very uncomfortable. The bajoran weapon has a much more familiar angle to its grip. This fits the fact that cardassians are intended to be an enemy species that look very different from humans, while bajorans just have bumpy noses. The design in this case is intended to suggest that different species not only have different rubber prosthetics, but that their limbs are hooked on differently.
So, while all species face the same structural design considerations, the goal they're trying to reach with their structures and technology can be very different, and they may be working with different physical needs - all of which can justify some very different designs, and keep concept artists fully employed.
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Other people explain this well, so I'll just leave pictures. Short answer, is that there is more than one way to accomplish the same task. Consider the differences between United States and Russian crewed spacecraft:
Russian Soyuz
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8b9AB.jpg)
American Apollo Command Module
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/26FBD.jpg)
Now I'm over simplifying a little. These crafts were made in different eras, for different purposes (general Low Earth Orbit vs Moon missions), but you can see that there is a clear aesthetic difference between the two. Engineering can be done many different ways and still accomplish the same task. When all of the engineering constraints have been met, you have to just do aesthetic design on what is left, and that is informed by budget, culture, resources, and more. As far as movies/tv/other medium are concerned, it provides an easy way for the audience to tell the different factions apart.
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# Form follows function
Why are modern cubesats made with 90° angles, as opposed to cylinders like you normally picture rockets and modules to be?
For inhabited modules, roundness is best for holding air. For equiptment racks, stackable blocks are best.
Seagoing vessles are an excellent study of how shape plays a role in function. The streamlining or the bulb-nose; outriggers, pontoons, or hydrofoils; all are engineering features with function and reflect different approaches.
An alien ship will look like it does because of the technology used, plus other issues such as launching support and to cope with any special environments it encounters.
Solar sails or microwave wisps have characteristic looks for the tech. Pressurized modules look like propane tanks anywhere in the galaxy.
# Form follows building tecnique
Future and/or alien tech may look like vegetables, not boxes, because they are “grown”. Systems that hook up using superconductive flux pinning may end up with distinctive protrusions because of the material located right there to guide the flux. Ships built using a nanofab with a 1-meter orifice will end up looking like a tangled ribbon.
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Boils down to aesthetics. We tend to gravitate towards symmetry as our general design, and much of what is natural on earth follows a pattern of symmetry. However, the fact that we as a culture see that as "beautiful" we try to design a structure for something that is alien to that viewpoint. The assumption is that the thinking of other life elsewhere will NOT be like our own, which results in buildings we might find ugly, highly inconvenient to build, aesthetically irregular, etc. Purely because if we built them in the image of our own designs it wouldn't "feel" alien.
There is an opposite point on this that I'd like to suggest as well. Most of the time we view alien life as more advanced than our own. Therefore their ability to design seemingly impossible and strikingly beautiful structures can also be factored in. In this respect art is a highlight of intelligence and so it might follow an advanced being might actually have a superior aesthetic pallet compared to our own.
Lastly, taking into consideration material on hand, gravitational differences, technology, air and water quality, geology, etc. Building sky scrapers might not be feasible or could be far simpler (on lower gravity planets). So on a large planet you might see many squat buildings, or underground facilities because larger buildings might have too much stress to stand. And on small planets you might have spidery, fragile-looking buildings that would otherwise collapse here on Earth.
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I'm going to throw my two cents into this. Every other answer on here makes good points, and several touch a little on this idea, but none quite spell it out.
The in-universe reasons for these differences, if they are even explained at all, are *almost* always just the result of being shoehorned in to fit an aesthetic, say something about the species/faction, or give an excuse to just have them look different.
Whatever the case, 9 times out of 10 it is simply a means to an end. When building a universe, it behooves the creator to design other species or factions markedly different from what we're used to for several reasons. Here are just a few examples:
1. Visual differences allow the viewer to easily distinguish between groups.
2. Extreme ("alien") differences create intrigue and sometimes fear or other emotions depending on the design. Just think, what's more intriguing: An aircraft hovering by using rotor blades, or a solid, featureless sphere that hovers with no visible source of power?
3. If the aliens had design aesthetics that resemble our own, it would create an immediate amount of sympathy with them. The viewer would on some level relate to the aliens, and therefore they would seem less "alien" and more like a long-lost sister species.
And that's just for starters. But the point is this:
**TL;DR** Aliens looking different from us is usually just a device to affect the viewer's impression of the species. Any in-universe explanations for this almost always are designed to fit the aesthetic, not the other way around.
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If you want a answer as a person watching the movie/playing the game, it attracts people. It's the same reason aliens look weird. It gives them a more exotic look, more interesting, and makes you want to take more interest in their culture and behavior because if they were to build homes like us and look like us they wouldn't be as interesting.
If you want an answer as a person inside that movie/game - they don't have to follow similar engineering principals. The aliens probably sense the universe differently, so perhaps that could be one of the reasons. They could have different senses, a different way of seeing, etc. which makes every alien community different but with similar aspects. Perhaps their behavior and senses make them think of different things as beautiful (or safer as they also may have different building materials) than us humans.
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### In-universe
It often doesn't matter. When you're actually in space, there are a couple shapes that are useful and many more that are serviceable.
* A sphere minimizes the surface area to volume ratio. So if minimal surface area is important, a sphere is the way to go.
* A cylinder or ring allows for gravity simulation by rotation. So if you expect your spaceship to spend a lot of time in free fall but want an up and down, you need to pick one of those shapes.
* If you're going to land your ship, you may find an aerodynamic shape with wings that allow gliding to be important.
Beyond those though, it doesn't really matter what shape you choose. Perhaps your ship will never land, will always be under acceleration (or you have a better form of artificial gravity), and you don't care about minimizing surface area. Then you can choose whatever shape you find attractive.
For those shapes, it's going to be aesthetics, not function, that drives the choices that you make. Aliens are likely to have a very different idea of aesthetic beauty than humans.
And conveniently enough that works with the **out-of-universe** reason: alien ships should look alien so that we can tell them from the non-alien ships.
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I think there are two completely different questions here. "Why do movies and games depict alien engineering as weird-looking?" and "Would alien engineering really look weird?"
The first question is easy to answer. They design it that way so that it looks distinctive and cool. That's what we watch movies and play games for: new experiences that are cool. Designers can make things whatever shapes they want; the only constraint is that they don't break the suspension of disbelief for most people. And when you tell them it's alien, most people shut their brains right off.
The second question is much harder. But I think the answer is it would look a lot less weird than most people think. Engineers need to make things that work. They are constrained by things like math and physics, which are universal.
For example, human engineering uses lots of squares and right angles. This is not an arbitrary choice. Rectilinear shapes are easy to treat mathematically (computing areas and volumes, constructing the angles and so on) and they pack easily in two- and three-dimensional Euclidean space. We should expect alien engineers to show the same preference for rectilinear shapes because they would get the same advantages from them.
Even aesthetic concerns aren't as arbitrary as you might think. For example, we happen to like simple geometric symmetries. But that's not a construction of our culture; people all over the world and all through history have shown a fondness for geometrical symmetry. Turns out it's an evolutionary adaptation: symmetrical structures are easier to balance. And engineers continue to use symmetry, because it works. We should expect alien engineers to favor symmetry also, for exactly the same reasons.
They only real reason for alien engineering to be different from ours is if they're solving a different set of problems. The aliens might live on a different scale from us (either spacially or temporally). They might require a drastically different environment. (I hesitate to think how hard it would be to conduct a space program for an aquatic species.) Even these differences are limited though. No one's ever thought of a plausible basis for life other than water and carbon. (I mean, maaaaaybe hydrogen fluoride and carbon, but HFl is rare and water is the second most abundant molecule in the universe.)
DL;DR: H. P. Lovecraft felt it was mere arrogance to believe that our human ideas of engineering, biology and morality were universal. But it turns out that stuff is a lot less arbitrary than we thought in the 1930s.
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We are used to earth-bound structures. Aliens came from different part of the space.
1. The have different aesthetics. When two nations on one planet have different tastes why to expect the aliens have the same style as [culture X, age Y]?
2. They came from different planet. They may come from heavier planet than the Earth is and thus their structures tends to be touher. If they came from ligter plant they structures may be ligter. If they came from planet with wild atmosphere, their design would be more aerodynamic and tough, if they came from calm planet their design may be more "artistic".
3. They have different body shapes and ergonomics. Everything they build is to suit their needs, not ours.
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Why are alien buildings/ships unusual looking?
Because otherwise they'd be too familiar, boring and just plain not evil enough.
Alien cultures are "supposed to be evil" so that "killing them all" is giving you a "nice and warm feeling".
For further study, the movie "Spaceballs" makes fun of this in such an "obvious and childlike manner" that most people (which includes those without any sense of humor (ooh, incorrect generalization)) can't even see the philosophical, political, sociological and artistic comment that is being made.
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It's called **Art Direction**. It's telling you how to feel about the story and the situation. It's an associative visual language. Art direction is telling the viewer how to feel about the story through visual cues.
If an alien city's buildings all look like Ancient Rome, we can make assumptions about their society, their government, how they will react to strangers. We'll fill in the blanks about their culture and their fundamental values. You don't need to waste time explaining their political landscape or religious history. In **Star Wars**, it doesn't take long to understand the Space Nazis are bad. In **Alien**, you know the wrecked spaceship is a spooky bad place full of scary deaths – in fact you know it long before the characters know it. You see it through the art direction.
Unfortunately cookie-cutter production and audience expectations for the familiar often make a mess of it. Too many Hollywood projects mindlessly imitate other Hollywood projects, and too many over-produced films are just CGI-salad to begin with.
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Pffft you meatbags with your crude understanding of physics and primitive euclidian geometries.
The underlying assumption that all physical laws is constant across all time and space, or that different forms of life could not have reached different conclusions in mathematics and physics, which could be right, wrong or just different is far less believable than idea that they could have, especially given humanity's limited understanding of the universe.
To demonstrate, take a simple bit of information theory.
* Suppose every decision that is involved in engineering something boils down to a yes or no question (or a range of tolerances which represent a boolean expression).
* Each yes or no decision is 1 bit (or shannon) of information, the nature of which would be decided by the alien environment and the race's empirical observations.
* Suppose for the sake of argument there are only 64 necessary design choices (e.g. straight or curvy, sleek or rough, metal or plastic). Obviously you would have to be more specific, so the real number is significantly higher.
* Now each bit of information is in either the off (no) or on (yes) state that allows for 2^64 states.
In other words for just small number of design choices the possible shapes of ships are an astronomical **~18,000,000,000,000,000,000**. The **likelihood of an alien ship being anywhere similar to something a human would think up are astronomically different**.
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A relatively common idea in Sci-Fi and especially speculative evolution is the idea of humans or some other intelligent species ending up losing their sapience(often done for the sake of horror).
While the most common explanation(forced genetic modification) makes sense, I've always been skeptical of the idea of it happening naturally giving how much of an edge it's given us, especially in regards to the idea of it being from some massive cataclysm.
So what are some potential explanations for why a sapient species would end up losing its intelligence?
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## Losing Our Natural Intelligence: Idiocracy
The movie Idiocracy so famously answered this question, that the movie's Title has become a bit of a trope. Idiocracy predicts 3 evolutionary pressures that work in tandem to reduce intelligence in an advanced society.
### 1. Technology replaces the need for intelligence.
As technology becomes more advanced and automated, the intelligence required to survive is no longer important. Being smart enough to find ways to irrigate your fields with water gives you a much better chance of survival in a neolithic society than the guy who does not. But, in the modern world, you can be pretty much anywhere between mentally disabled and a genius and still only have a negligible chance of actually starving to death. So stupidity is not selected against like it used to be.
["One of the most consistently replicated findings in the social sciences has been the negative relationship of socioeconomic status (SES) with mental illness"](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/ort-7513.pdf). This means that in places where socioeconomic status impacts your odds of survival, that it can be used as a good predictor of if you are likely to pass on psychological deficiencies.
So, in countries with less access to technology, where starvation is still a major source of natural selection, being mentally deficient increases ones odds of starving to death by a greater margin than places that have the technology and resources to care for thier poor. For example, when you compare the food security rate of [Iran](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6983490/) with the [United States](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2005/03/low-ses), you see that the effect of being poor increases your odds of going hungry by very similar ratios, but in the United States, the food insecurity rate is only 12.5% whereas in Iran, it is 37.8%. This means that your socio-economic status is about 3 times as likely to cause you to starve in Iran as in the United States.
So even if people with mental disabilities in poorer countries are being born at the same rate as mentally healthy people, they die off more quickly removing them from the gene pool encouraging the evolution of greater intelligence. This factor alone does not encourage people to evolve to be dumber, but it does take away the evolutionary presure that causes us to evolve to be smarter.
### 2. The intelligent are often targeted in politics.
[Anti-intellectualism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism) is a common part of modern politics for a number of reasons. People in power often target the intelligent middle class because smart, well educated people are much harder to control, so they use the media to push ideas that smart people are dangerous or otherwise socially contemptable. Different kinds of 20th century governments attacked thier own intellectuals in different ways. In Communist Russia, the "Great Purge" included the slaughter of writers, artists, and anyone else perceived as having the mental faculties to be a threat to social equality. In the Fascist states of Central Europe, philosophies arose that condemned any knowledge that was not "practical" making it easy for leaders to suppress any line of thinking that moved against the state, and the people doing that thinking along with it. Then you have the Populist movements more common in the far Western nations that emphasized a uniformity among all people which lead to the out-casting of the overly smart.
While anti-intellectualism does not in every case lead to the intelligent members of society being killed, it does make them less sexually fit. Up until very recently, being labeled a "Nerd" was a good way to loose a lot of your reproductive rights; so, smart people had far fewer children. While many of the Anti-intellectualism trends of the 20th century have been reversed in Western Civilization, in many parts of Asia, being too smart is still a good way to have society turn against you. If these trends ebb and flow over enough generations, you will see a strong selection towards lesser intelligence.
### 3. Intelligence itself selects against reproduction.
In the past, smart people had a lot of children because it was the duty of a child to support thier parents in old age. You did not plan for retirement by investing in 401ks and Social Security, you planned for retirement by having as many children as you could afford to support when you were young so that when you get too old to support yourself, they would do it for you. However, now that there is no longer a practical benefit to have kids, smart people are choosing to have fewer children than they did before. It used to be common for people of lower socio-economic status to have 3-5 children and people of higher status to have 6-9 children, but now that there is no security in having children, we've seen the lower echelons of society continue to average about 3-5 children, but in many particularly educated parts of the world, the wealthy are averaging less than 2. This means that the drop off in reproductive rates among socialized nations is not uniform, but that it is specifically causing a drop off in the reproductive rates of its smarter members.
Since smart people are generally not meeting a the basic rate of replacement, then even if they are intelligent enough to survive to reproductive age 100% of the time, their population is dwindling and being replaced by people with people less intelligent than themselves.
## Losing Our Nurtured Intelligence: Dark Age Collapse
Intelligence can best be described as a combination of Nature and Nurture. For example, [IQ tests performed on in the Sub-Saharan region](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289609001275) where there is minimal access to education and technology show an average IQ of 68-71. By civilized standards this makes the average Sub-Saharan person qualify as legally retarded. Thier brains are not smaller, they are just as genetically capable of intelligence as civilized humans, they simply fail to develop that intelligence due to lack of exposure. Even though they are just as good at solving the problems that they face on a daily basis as we are, they face much fewer complex problems that require logic, math, literacy, and/or science to overcome.
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Going from a state of High civilization to Low civilization has certainly happened several times in human history as the result of massive cataclysms, and has had profound, measurable impacts on how innovative the peoples of those regions were. The [Bronze Age collapse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse) for example was a time period between 1200-1150BC where a series of wars and famines destroyed most major cities in the Eastern Mediterranean region causing population declines in some areas as high as 90%. The sophistication of art, writing, and technology that was common of the late bronze age largely disappeared from this region for 100s of years as these regions reverted to a more-or-less stone-age civilizations before new technology, socio-economic structures, and classical philosophy took root. Something similar happened after the fall of Rome too. Rome brought a level of technology similar to the Early Industrial Revolution to most of Europe. They had indoor plumbing, water powered factories, complex logistics networks, a formal school system, etc. but after [Rome was destroyed in the Goth War of 535-562AD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_War_(535%E2%80%93554)) ([No not 476AD](https://time.com/6101964/fabricated-fall-rome-lessons-history/)) most of that disappeared and triggered the Early Medieval Dark Age.
These cataclysms cause a lose in general intelligence because they destroyed the underlying framework that educates, encourages, and enables the development of intelligence. But, the effects of a cataclysms is only temporary. Within a few hundred years, people tend to rebuild those missing frameworks, and it is usually followed by an intellectual golden age like the Greek Classical Era or the European Renaissance.
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**Environmental Pressure**
As other answers have stated, the environment dictates evolution. Take, as an example, H. G. Wells' *The Time Machine*. For millennia, the Eloi have had their needs met without any effort on their part. After a certain point, the "edge" intelligence gives a species that never has to work for survival will likely become vestigial and die off.
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Intelligence is costly: it takes time and resources to build such brain, and the environment has to be above certain standards, otherwise the result can be intelligent but emotionally dysfunctional mind.
The social environment can also impose restrictions: eg. inquisitive and questioning mind -- typically associated with higher intelligence -- can be classified as an unwanted trait. Intelligent creature can be seen as a threat to the status quo. Powers that be might not like to be challenged.
The cons are always weighted against the pros. It does not always pay off to be intelligent. If the cons are too prevalent, viability of the whole population can be enhanced if everyone is less intelligent.
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Two environmental factors, perhaps working in tandem:
1. Brains are expensive in themselves, costing energy, taking time to build, etc. If they are excessive, so that a stupider being lives better and has more children with that energy and time, the being will evolve stupider.
2. Brains may lead beings to do stupid things out of curiosity. In a hazardous environment, this may be a danger in itself. A stupid, incurious being will live to have children.
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Evolution takes orders of magnitude longer to kick in than how far movies are willing to look forward, therefore they need to have a bigger impact events than what evolution may provide. That being said, within hundreds of thousands of years any of the below could happen.
# Constant factors impairing brain
There are multiple factors that could cause the big brains of ours (I use humans as an example but should apply to most carbon-based sapience) to be using up too much energy for the gains they provide:
1. Low oxygen. In a low oxygen environment the brain is one of the first organs to catastrophically fail. The humans surviving lower oxygen % would be the ones who have lower oxygen needs by having lower weight, brain activity etc.
2. Low air pressure. Low air pressure reduces humans' ability to absorb oxygen. This ties back to 1.
3. Constant exposure to psychoactive substances (e.g. alcohol). If the brain is impaired it does not provide that much of an evolutionary advantage.
# Factors impacting birth
Anywhere where a narrower hip is an advantage above brains the hips may get narrower leading to higher birth mortality of the bigger headed infants.
# Factors impacting lifespan
Currently humans take about 12 years to be fertile and they take much of this time to develop mental capabilities (complex language, mathematics, drawing etc.) which is a fair tradeoff for a 50+ year expected lifespan. If external factors (famine, lack of water, pandemics, radiation etc.) were to reduce the expected lifetime drastically then there would be less time to be dedicated to education. This in turn would probably lead to being smart being less of an advantage.
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A lot of what you consider "sapience" is really just nurture, not nature. If you look at primitive tribes, they are quite a bit different from what you likely take as a "normal" human, but even they have substantial culture. You should really look at [wild children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child) to see what the "physiological foundation of sapience" looks like.
The basis for development of intelligence, culture and society is steeped in mystery. You can't have a "hard science" answer to it. However, we can speculate that human brain capacity is just barely over the threshold for what's needed to be civilized. Clearly, even a little capacity for culture snowballs quickly and amplifies what faculties the brain has. Therefore, it's unlikely that truly advanced sapience would have evolved in humans. As soon as basic sapience came about, culture would begin to dominate fitness, and the evolutionary pressure on innate sapience would disappear.
If you buy this line, you can conceptualize the sapience of modern man as an extremely fragile crystal vase (=the brain being just barely smart enough) cushioned by a thousand mattresses (=millenia of cultural, societal and civilizational heritage). While the mattresses are there, the vase will secure and nothing could explain people suddenly regressing, it would be incredible. But take away the mattresses, and you're a hair away from disaster. That means, enduring global societal collapse - not hard to imagine, early civilization prospered because of freely available resources (coal and metals literally just lying around in fields). Those resources are now exhausted and require significant expertise and investment to extract, retracing the steps of our ancestors would be much harder now.
The assumption that sapience gives you an edge is not that robust. After all, if it was so powerful how come none of the other animals bothered? Humans did it in a few million years, and yet dinosaurs just never did after 100s of millions? It seems more likely that sapience is almost always not worth it selectively, but humans arose from a rare coincidence: Intelligence happened to deviate into the less fit sapience just as the environment was a perfect storm to kick off and nurture culture. The implication is that when you repeat the "birth of sapience" experiment, most of the time the environment will not be a perfect storm, and highly intelligent species will occasionally see the sapience mutation arise but it will never "take". In fact, these repeated experiments have already been done: Parrots, dolphins, dogs, cats, pigs, squids, octopi...
In sum:
* Sapience will not devolve while culture continues, because culture itself is a strong selective pressure maintaining sapience
* If culture is erased by catastrophe, sapience is left with only a weak positive selective pressure, or even neutral or negative
* The environment of early man might have been uniquely suited to promote sapience and culture, natural environments at other times are not necessarily the same (obvious reasons are resources which are now depleted, but there may be other subtle ones)
* Without culture, sapience can easily devolve
* In absence of culture, if non-sapience is beneficial, it can become fixed over time to reduce the risk of sapience arising in the future
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## A metaphysically immense screwup
As you (and various answers) have mentioned, the classic answer is some sort of genetic shift that causes congenital brain damage (or, at least, lack of intelligence), *a la* Planet of the Apes. However, I don't fully buy this. As a former assisted living aide, I've spent much of my life around brain-damaged and/or mentally retarded (in the technical sense of the term) people over the years, and I've never seen either produce anything approaching non-sapience. You're either still sapient but impaired, or it makes you a vegetable; there's no middle ground. Perhaps there is some condition capable of doing this, but if so I've never heard of it. Instead, it seems to me that there must be something else which imparts sapience, some sort of soul, "image of God", or *imago Dei* as the theologians call it.
Now, traditionally, this is something imparted to humans (and, in a sci-fi context, other sapient species) by God/gods/the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Anything with it will be sapient, no matter how stupid; anything without it will be non-sapient, no matter how smart. With this in mind, the answer to your question is obvious: somebody goofed (to use an *immensely* technical term /s), and in so doing disrupted, destroyed, dispelled, or otherwise \*-ed their species' *imago Dei*.
Perhaps the species experimented just a *little* too much with transhumanist bioengineering, creating *things* so different from the species' base form that they could no longer be considered the same species. Perhaps they committed such heinous crimes against pasta-kind that the Flying Spaghetti Monster revoked their sapience privileges. Who knows; perhaps an eldritch entity from the 42nd dimension sneezed in their general direction. The point is, they had souls, and now they don't.
This route can lead in a lot of very interesting directions. For example, in John Scalzi's *Old Man's War* series there's a species called the Obin.
Now, whereas pretty much every other species in the known universe uses something along the lines of "the people" as their name, the Obin are *different*. A literal (and quite accurate) translation of their name is "the lacking". This is because, out of all the species they know of, they are the only ones that aren't sapient. While they think, create technology, work technology, and do other intelligent stuff, they have absolutely no sense of self. They're all just really smart animals.
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> It turns out, this is because they are a herd species uplifted by another species, the Consu, which are well on the "sufficiently advanced" side of Clarke's Third Law. More importantly, the Consu think that the *imago Dei* is a curse, so they explicitly chose not to [import soul](https://xkcd.com/413/) when uplifting them.
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The Obin *really* don't like being soulless, so they go to great lengths to try to acquire them.
**Edit:** I realize that most people probably wouldn't view this as science-based (although many theologians would beg to differ). I'm just putting this out there as food for thought.
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They develop artificial intelligence and robotics that completely frees them from any need to support themselves, so sapience becomes unnecessary.
Then genetic drift slowly degrades their intelligence whilst the AI figures our smarter people are less happy and subtly encourages the population away from intellectual pursuits and towards physical prowess, boosting the mating potential of the stupid.
Enough time passes and you have a stupid species permanently maintained by machines it has no hope of comprehending.
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Environmental conditions that favour brawn over brain in addition to social and cultural regression (e.g children not being fully/correctly taught the language of their parents) could produce an evolutionary pathway that results in reduced intelligence. This answer is purely speculative though, I do not have the knowledge to make confident statements on the matter.
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Two options that stem from the same idea.
A very infectious bacterial or viral airborne parasite that infects the population which doesn't kill but instead attacks the frontal lobe reducing the average IQ by 70 to 90%.
The second option is again an infectious pathogen but now it infects our reproductive system causing all newborns to have multiple mutations. These mutations are often fatal and or affect the brain reducing the population's IQ.
Achieving non-sapience wouldn't be instantaneous but it would be a byproduct of being affected by either of these conditions for multiple generations (10+). As each generation comes and goes the push to naturally select intelligent beings would be reduced, because in the first there is an external source outright limiting it and in the second there would be a greater push for any being that could actually survive to sexual maturity.
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## Sapience Must Become Maladaptive...
Contrary to popular opinion, species don't just lose something because "they don't need it anymore." A species that is fed and happy isn't going to have much evolutionary pressure because, as a fed and happy species, they are successful. To lose sapience, it has to be maladaptive.
## ...But Not Too Maladaptive
It would be pretty easy to just say that there's a virus that hits sapience somehow (attacks that part of the brain?), but let's be honest, anything hitting a species that fast is probably going to wipe out sapience by wiping out the species completely.
So how can you *slowly* kill off sapience in a species?
## Introduce a Predator
Make a predator that hunts your species. It'll eat any member of this species, but it has a special organ that "hears" sapient thought. To this predator, intelligent, self-aware members of your species might as well be screaming. Dumb members are whispering. And those without sapient thought? No "noise" at all. They hunt all members of your species, but the most sapient are easy prey.
This need not be a fast solution. Imagine that these predators might kill 5-10% of each generation.
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## Welcome to a brave new world!
Huxley had explored this in his book, *Brave New World*. Workers - or Epsilons - were 'cloned' by making sure that the embryos would split, and to do so, the worker embryos were subjected to different nigh-deadly doses of stuff, among them radiation and alcohol, which also had the "desirable" side effect of making the workers dumb and docile. Or let me quote you how *Epsilons* are made, from chapter 1:
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> He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of test-tubes was entering a large metal box, another, rack-full was emerging. Machinery faintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go through, he told them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an egg can stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided into two; most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned to the incubators, where the buds began to develop; then, after two days, were suddenly chilled, chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the buds in their turn budded; and having budded were dosed almost to death with alcohol; consequently burgeoned again and having budded–bud out of bud out of bud–were thereafter–further arrest being generally fatal–left to develop in peace. By which time the original egg was in a fair way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos– a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins–but not in piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a time.
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**There is a great story by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes called "the Locusts"**
The locust is a grasshopper that, when facing overpopulation, grows larger and more gregarious and nomadic. They begin traveling in swarms until the overpopulation issue is resolved, then revert to their smaller, more docile state.
*Spoiler alert*
The story suggests that human intelligence shares a similar transient quality. Depopulate the earth by migration to other planets, and they revert to an earlier condition.
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Most of the answers thus far have focused on "intelligence" as being a spectrum or gauge, which is the most common definition. On that scale, we may consider sapience, as H. Beam Piper once wrote, as "a mental boiling point".
Most answers then consider how a species that has achieved sapience would end up reducing their average intelligence, but remaining sapient, staying above that boiling point identifiable by traits like a means of symbolic communication (speech/writing). While those answers are good at answering that reading of your question, there's another way to interpret that question, by considering "intelligence" as "the quantity of mental capability required for sentient thought" and thus a rough synonym of "sapience". Read that way, the question is, **how can a species that has developed a sentient mental state lose that ability to think at a sentient level?**
We have not, in the real world, ever seen this happen, at least not to our knowledge, because to our knowledge we are the only sapient species on this planet, and there have never been more than a handful of distinguishable (but at some level interrelatable) sapient primate species. However, our knowledge of the taxonomy of life on Earth is woefully incomplete; less than 1% of all species to have ever lived on the Earth are extant and thus available for behavioral study, and the fossil record is a notoriously poor source of clues as to a species' mentation (and that's of the species that leave a good fossil record).
So it's absolutely possible that some sauroid species in what's now the Yucatan Peninsula achieved some recognizable form of sapient thought, less than a million years before the nearby Chicxulub Impact wiped them off the map completely, fossil record and all. If the species that ascended to sapience were located further away from the impact site, it might have survived longer and/or their remains might be better preserved, so you'd think we'd have found a couple good fossil skeletal examples. Again, we think we know of less than 1% of all species ever to have lived on this planet, so the unknown space in which such a creature could have existed is fairly large.
Now, that leads us to a pretty good possibility. Sapience tends to require fairly high macronutrient intake for a given body size; that brain needs a lot of blood glucose to function properly. Mass extinction events like the Chicxulub Impact cause a pretty thorough collapse of the food web, and the species with the highest caloric needs often come out on the losing end pretty quickly. **Climate change, asteroid impact, extinction of a key species (honeybees are a good candidate) are all really good ways for *h. sapiens* to find ourselves at an evolutionary dead-end.**
Now, that's kind of cheating, because losing our ability to think because we're dead probably wasn't what you had in mind. However, if you consider our genetic relatives in the primate family as kindred enough, much as we consider modern-day reptiles and birds to be the closest descendants of the dinosaurs (however actually distant), it may well be that some marmoset in the tropical latitudes, on a land mass big enough to stay above the oceans' surface, may end up being the primate family's scion, that some future sapient octopus-derived species will describe as "the closest living relative to these far larger and more intelligent bipedal primates, whose fossil record is endemic on every land mass".
There is an important and closely-related point to make here; The definition of homo sapiens (and, we think, any other life form we identify as sapient) is defined as a species in large part based on that trait. If the human genetic line were, by any chain of events, to "devolve" to a sub-sapient mental state, in whole or part, any remaining sapient observer may well no longer consider those examples to be *homo sapiens* and therefore no longer "human". So there's somewhat of a tautology here; we're human because we're sentient, and if our genetic descendants lose that trait, they'd no longer be human.
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Anyway, bringing this to an *actual* answer, **it's kind of hard to envision an Earth populated with a genetic descendant of modern humans are no longer sentient, where that didn't happen due to an initial cataclysm that, ironically, makes life easier than before for those who survive the event.** The cataclysm would have to be minimally damaging to the non-human ecosystem (otherwise the food web collapses, which definitely makes life harder and thus forces the remaining humans to have to think more), so asteroid impact is right out, and nuclear war is iffy, but possible if the theories that nuclear winter wouldn't happen are true. Pure climate change is going to make life harder for most as well.
**The only such cataclysm I can think of would be pandemic**, something that makes COVID look like hay fever. *Contagion*'s fictional MEV-1, but even more contagious and deadlier (IIRC, MEV-1 had a mortality rate of 20-30% with an R0 of 4; something closer to 90% mortality with the same contagion rate would about do it), would literally decimate the world population, but for less advanced civilizations, isolated from the developed world and its deadly disease, life would actually get better in the next few hundred years after the virus had burned through the world's population. The severe cut in CO2 production and the dramatic release of pressure on game, fish and forest would, within just a few decades, produce an abundance of living biomass helping to sequester atmospheric CO2, not only reversing climate change but making the caloric needs of your tribe that much easier. If you don't have to think as much about where your next meal comes from, or coordinate as much with fellow humans to get it, you could, conceivably and eventually, arrive at a new steady-state where humans don't *have* to use their impressive brainpower anymore, and over many generations those abilities could atrophy, seeing the species regress to ice-age or earlier intelligence levels.
**The biggest counterexample refuting such a theory is the Sentinelese people.** The inhabitants of North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean are fiercely territorial, attacking any outsider who so much as sets foot on the island, such that there is no record of a successful, friendly communication between the Sentinelese and anyone else. There really is no talking to some people. In near-absolute isolation from the rest of the world, the Sentinelese are basically frozen in a neolithic state of development, one of very few known societies to be completely unpolluted by the last, oh, maybe 8,000 years or so of human mental, societal and technological progress. Yet despite all this, **the Sentinelese are definitely sentient** based on everything we have been able to observe at a distance. They have a spoken language, if not a written one, they know of fire and how to produce it, and they make force-altering machines, such as knives and bows and arrows.
While there are some glimmers of these traits among more intelligent animal species, there's no true comparison to be had except to ourselves; these are human beings, however primitive, and they're sapient. Thousands of years of human history passing them by has not changed that, and it's very unlikely thousands more will see much difference. They know what they need to know to survive, at least within their own isolated environment, and whatever folklore they pass down that keeps them so violently wary of outsiders has served them well, as most of the rest of the Andamanese people that populate the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have fared considerably worse against encroachment by non-indigenous cultures (technically part of the Indonesian archipelago, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are an Indian possession and also close to Myanmar and Thailand).
So at the end of the day, having no more complicated a possession than a bow and arrow doesn't mean you have no inherent capability for sentient thought; quite the contrary, this level of technology is well inside our definition of sapience, and this knocks a big breach in the idea that the human race could ever "lose" our sapience. Merely not progressing isn't regressing.
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## you rule our forced genetic tampering what about, accidental genetic tampering?
1. Colony worlds will be especially prone to this, since the starting population is small. They decide to tamper with the colonist to make them better adapted to the local planet but oops it turns out the tampering has no adverse effect on adults but made all your kids stupid.
2. Then you have voluntary tampering, designer babies people making babies who are more attractive, no few are likely to intentionally make their kids dumber but what if it is not a direct effect, the effect skips the first generation or Gene X is determined to be responsible for brain cancer type Y so people get it "fixed" in their kids, but it also turns out to be necessary for normal brain development. Or more realistically gene babies type A breed with gene babies type B and the two alteration don't play well together in the brain. You would need to combine this with something that kills off a lot of the population otherwise it will get fixed, maybe a plague that gene babies are immune too.
3. Another option is war, country X creates a gene altering virus to make all (choose your minority here) stupid or their kids stupid and low a behold people willing to commit atrocities don't have the best minds or safety protocols and it affects everyone. Or they make it to kill and instead it just shuts down the tiny number of genes needed to make us smarter than chimps.
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## Peak of Evolutionary Intelligence has surpassed and reboot via Devolution
Intelligence is an evolutionary trait that may take millions of years and several thousands of generations to develop. Your species is sapient and intelligent which makes me think that they are very likely to hit the peak of the *collective species intelligence* very soon. It's almost impossible that the species would continue to evolve eternally. If they are careful enough not to bring up their own doom, Nature may be likely to bring them the catastrophe.
Note that the biggest power a sapient and intelligent species has is its own sentience which if lost would render the species to perish. Non-sapient species might not be at that great disadvantage because as we develop more and more sentience, our ability to survive become more dependent on our sentience. For example, humans have created artificial means of curing diseases and prolonging life. If all our technology were to vanish suddenly, we wouldn't quickly return to way we used to survive some hundred years ago or so. There will be required something much more tremendous for that. So once the peak of their *evolutionary intelligence* is surpassed, they would start to decline their intelligence and probably sentience too. This would not happen overnight. It might take several thousand years. But it would be inevitable since it is largely natural.
If you want to take it further, you may say that after a continual decline of intelligence, there would be a reboot and a new cycle could start such that another sapient and intelligent species would arise, would reach a peak and again declining. This all could be *natural* and *inevitable* regardless of their efforts to undo it. The **peaks** of the successive cycles could be more or less drastic.
It is kind of similar to the fall of the Galactic Empire in *Foundation* trilogy by Isaac Asimov in which the Empire falls apart no matter how much the Emperor resists.
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The end has come and gone, and the survivors of humanity have adopted a new religion - dismantling the sins of the past. Dismantling the cities, roads, towns and relics of the past by hand. The resources being returned to nature as best they can.
With no industrialised technology, how much work would it be to dismantle a city? Assume that the results are being taken away by canal barge for disposal.
Bonus points for suggesting things to do with a skyscraper of glass, or tonnes of tarmac that fit the atonement philosophy.
Assume knowledge of up to steam tech... But no desire to use it.
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**Background assumptions**
To start, using cranes as a metric for roughly the level of sophistication that a steam-punk-era civilization can create, from what I've found, the disassembly process is around the same scale of magnitude as the assembly process. I think this is a good metric for the ratio of assembly to disassembly time on the level as a city as it has some complicated bits of machinery, but is largely just tons of material. Also, the disassembly process of a crane is non-destructive and made for it's pieces to be transported, as, intuitively, the parts of the crane are supposed to be used again elsewhere.
As such, perhaps the answer may just be roughly the sum of the time it takes to construct each building in the city (or at least on the same scale of magnitude).
**Time for some estimates**
Before I begin, clearly this is a very rough estimate with huge assumptions, but I reckon to be pretty close to an actual value within a scale of magnitude or two.
Mathematically, let's use $\frac{storey}{humans\times time}$ as our base unit of estimation. The goal is to estimate how many storeys ($S$) there are in each building in a city, then estimate how long it takes to build a storey in man-years $(Myr)$.
The Empire State Building was built in about $1.12$ years, took $3000$ workers, and is $103$ storeys tall. Thus, it was made in $\frac{103S}{3000M \times 1.12yr}\approx0.03\frac{S}{Myr}$. Let's take this value and run with it.
Let's assume the average residential home has $2S$, and the average 'skyscraper' has $50S$.
New York City has about $274$ skyscrapers and $761000$ residential homes. In total there are about $1000000$ buildings. Let's use that data to plot a normal distribution for the amount of homes with $n$ storeys. We find that there is a $0.0274\%$ chance of a given building having $50S$, and $76.1\%$ of a given building having $2S$.
With some *extremely*-back-of-the-enveleope calculations and fiddling with normal distribution, I conjecture the average building to have about $2.1S$
**Final calculation:**
The dismantling time for a city about the size of New York and a process similar to the precarity of crane-disassembly would be
$$1000000\times2.1S\times\frac{3000M\times 1.12yr}{103S}\approx70000000Myr$$
So it would take $1$ person about **$70$ million years** to dismantle a large city **safely** and **package it all up for transportation**,
or **$70$ years** for $1$ million people.
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**Edit:** This doesn't account for parts of the cities that fall outside the scope of that which isn't a part of a "building". However, most of such infrastructure has much to do with attached buildings. Regardless, I imagine a "fully-disassembled" city would look precisely like spare bits of infrastructure that falls exactly into such building-less category.
**Edit 2:** This does assume that a storey for a residential home is as complicated as a storey in the Empire State Building. Taking vica-versa, having one story of a residential home being made by $20$ people in $0.5$ years yeilds $\approx 0.025\frac{S}{Myr}$, which is actually less fast than the metric for the Empire State Building. So luckily this hindsight doesn't nearly change my conjecture about the estimate being off by a scale of magnitude or two.
---
**Sources**
<http://www.centralplainscranes.com/FAQ_Crane_Operations.html>
<https://www.britannica.com/technology/skyscraper>
<https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/11/us/empire-state-building-fast-facts/index.html>
<https://www.visualcapitalist.com/100-tallest-buildings-in-new-york-city/>
<https://urbanomnibus.net/2016/05/how-many-row-houses-are-there-in-new-york-city/>
<https://ny.curbed.com/2018/4/23/17271092/manhattan-buildings-data-visualization-taylor-baldwin>
[Answer]
**Reinforced concrete!**
Let's just consider one aspect of what they have to remove - reinforced concrete.
Recently the block I live in was fitted with a sprinkler system. This involved cutting 2" holes in concrete walls of 6" thickness or more.
The first contractor *gave up*. Their drill bits were making no impression. The second contractor charged much more and had to use diamond drill bits with huge and powerful electric drills. These had to be bolted to the wall because they were too heavy to lift and a human couldn't exert enough pressure. Even so they had to replace the drill bits regularly and each hole took a lo-o-ong time..
If concrete is properly made it is immensely strong and hard. Also it does not have fracture lines like most rocks so it won't split with hammer and chisel.
To demolish properly-made reinforced-concrete by hand with only picks and shovels is impossible. You won't even chip it.
The only thing to do would be wait for thousands of years for the weather to wear it away.
[Answer]
**Longer than it would take them to go extinct** due to the ice age cycle... if nature didn't help.
Since nature will help, their combined efforts can cut the destruction time by 20-50%, compared to the buildings' natural lifespan.
Humans have already attempted to destroy the Colosseum during the Middle Ages. The wall plating was stripped, the clamps holding the stones together pulled out, everything wooden removed. In the end, it took multiple earthquakes to do meaningful damage to the stone and concrete structure, not humans.
Modern steel or reinforced concrete framed buildings are comparable in durability. Unlike wood and stone, their frames are continuous and can't be disassembled back. The steel inside the reinforced concrete is prone to rusting, but it's sealed in a way that prevents the ingress of water. Either the concrete or the steel is very difficult to damage without power tools.
The number of people you can employ will be limited by their primitive technology. Cities like Rome and Alexandria required technological civilizations to support their million-scale populations. Without technology, logistics and epidemics will limit your population to low tens of thousands, the traditional city size limit through the Middle Ages.
They can still do some damage - mostly by removing the windows, much sooner than they would break naturally, which will allow soil and water inside the buildings.
In a couple years, your population would be able to go through the NYC breaking all the windows, including the high-rises, the windows in which can otherwise last for many decades. The next step would be making holes in the roofs to help water enter the interiors.
In any case, their main tool has to be helping nature do its work. They'll get the most out of their effort by helping plant and animal life take over the buildings, which is essential to destroying them.
Smaller wooden and some brick buildings can, of course, be dismantled directly. If more destructive ways are appropriate, some larger buildings can lose their integrity from fires, although it may require accelerants. In most cases, interior fires will not destroy the stonework, but leave partially burned-out concrete structures. Just hammering on the concrete will only have very local effect.
90% of the work will still have to be done by natural processes. Rust will crack the concrete. Winds will carry the soil in. Plants can expand the cracks as they grow inside them. In colder climates, freeze-thaw cycles do the same. Eventually the buildings will be thoroughly filled with cracks and become vulnerable to earthquakes or in some cases to human effort.
[Answer]
**Don't break down and return the city to nature - return nature to the city!**
As others have detailed, dismantling the modern cities would be so great a project that a primitive tribe would never succeed - they would die out long before completion either quickly by focusing all their resources on this instead of survival or more drawn out by the simple passage of time. They might realize this fact fairly soon.
So to remove the scars of the sins of the past, use nature as your guide, engineer and god.
Do not break and dig up the tarmac and asphalt - cover it with soil (atonement work) and/or plant on it or around it with plants with strong roots that reproduce by suckers. [Poplar suckers](http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/%7Eskellern/trunkline/images/articles/poplar%20suckers.jpg) will make quick work on a road if planted in a strategic pattern. If the rest is covered with soil and seeded with [dandelions, elytrigia repens, horse tail](http://guerrillagardening.org/community/index.php?topic=3808.0) and others with strong roots, it will soon be indistinguishable from a field or forest.
Throw in some fast growing species that cover a great area quickly: periwinkle, phlox etc.
Do not waste time by completely tearing down urban housing. Manually tear down the roofs to expose the walls and let water inside and the structure will quickly come into disrepair. Plant strategic around it with ivy, japanese knotweed, bamboo and other fast growing, destructive and climbing species (sacred plants that cleanse the unholy ruins of the past).
The high rise is of course the big problem. Manually tear out the windows and interior. Carry enough soil up on each floor to plant trees at every window opening. This will speed up the natural degradation of the building, but maybe more importantly the columns will be green and wildlife will return.
[Answer]
**Symbolic destruction**
In the same way humans being did during different revolts, the people didn't look for a way to destroy/dismantle all the structures. Most of the times, revolutionary groups focused on lay down those elements who played a symbol of the power/hegemony of the previous ruler (person or entity, whatever).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gpQOZ.jpg)
If the aim of this religious group is to give back to Earth everything we took for our capitalist/homocentrist system, maybe they could decide only to get down some structures: big monuments and/or the highest/recognisable building of a city.
In order to destroy them, they can:
* localise and sabotage the weak points of them,
* dig around the basament of them (mining rock should be easier for
hand work than breaking a reinforced concrete block),
* set fire to the objective building before intend additional
dismantling work (supposing the furnituring inside is intact),
* colapse big buildings from inside in medium-high floors,
* flood underground parkings or subway tunnels after putting away part
of the aislant covers to lead the water to impregnate the ground
around, getting this way the worst damage you can do to the complex.
In the worst scenario, the sacrifice of one or two chosen during these missions (even using explosives, fuel for the fire or thermite) could serve as a kind of tribute from the "sinner sons of the perverse society" that ruined the world.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XQIbA.jpg)
As we can see nowadays, a sinked boat or an abandoned building/town is quickly recovered by the nature, with the vegetal cover spreading over the walls and finding ways for new trees to grow up from under the concrete. Even before that, the most curious animals will find in this structure a place to hide themselves or to storage their food, for example.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tggMd.jpg)
After several years or decades, weather, sysmical activity and lack of maintenance will lead to the fall of these giants that humans were not able to tear down.
Maybe then these people would see their objective accomplished to redempt for the past aspirations of their predecessors.
[Answer]
In *Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan* Spock says:
>
> SPOCK: I was not attempting to evaluate its moral implications, Doctor. As a matter of cosmic history, it has always been easier to destroy than to create.
>
>
>
[http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie2.html[1]](http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie2.html%5B1%5D)
Therefore, if Person or Group A manages to destroy what person or Group B has created, that doesn't prove that Person or Group A are as powerful as Person or Group B. It is easier to destroy something than to create it, so those who destroy something may be far weaker than those who created it.
There is a story that one of the Abbasid Caliphs wanted to demolish the ruins of a Sassanid palace at Ctesiphon to get materials for a building project at Baghdad or Samarra.
And his advisor said he shouldn't do it unless he could used the materials to build something that was just as splendid as the Sassanid palace, or else people would say that the Caliph had the power to destroy but not to build anything as great as the Sassanids had built.
The Caliph proceeded with the demolition for a while, and then said that the palace had been built so well that it was too much trouble and expense to keep on demolishing it.
And the advisor said the Caliph had to keep on demolishing the palace or else people would say that he couldn't even demolish what the Sassanids could build.
I don't know if the Caliph finished demolishing the Sassanid palace at Ctesiphon. There were at least two great Sassanid palaces at Ctesiphon. One was the "White Palace", known only from literary descriptions, in Ctesiphon proper, and another was the one that modern people call the *Taq Kasra* or Iwan of Chosroes or Arch of Ctesiphon, in one of the other cities of the Ctesiphon metropolitan area. And many people often confuse the two palaces.
Also see the similar story mentioned by Alex P in his comment.
The point of the story is that after the fall of civilization, primitive people who try to dismantle a large modern city are likely to end up with egg on their faces because they were unable to demolish what the ancients could construct.
In Victorian era Britain countless thousands of cheap and shoddy buildings were built, but important buildings were built very solid and durable. Mark Girouard, in *The Victorian Country House* 1979, Introduction, Section 10 "Materials Old and New" says: "The solidity of Victorian houses has always been remarked on, especially by those who have had to demolish them. It was a by-product of Victorian seriousness; everything had to be what it seemed to be, and made to last."
Demolishing a vast modern city full of many thousands of buildings, some extremely large, and many built very durably, would be an immense project for a primitive society without modern technology. It would be quite possible for them to devote so much time and energy to such a vast project that they wouldn't devote enough time and energy to surviving, and they would die off while a large part of the city still remained.
[Answer]
Millennia.
It's not just that there's a vast amount of material and every bit of it has to be freed, it's that it's impractical to break down things by hand. Concrete, in particular, and other hard materials. Witness that one of the Pyramids has a gouge in it where there was a twelfth century attempt to take down the Great Pyramids. Even that little took eight months.
[Answer]
Fred Dibnah style.
Fred was a British TV personality and steeplejack. He is famous for demolishing 100 metre high red-brick chimneys by supporting the base with wooden props. He then removed the bricks below the base, and set a fire in the base, burning away the props. The chimney would then collapse, hopefully in the direction he wanted.
For reinforced concrete buildings, this would be slightly harder, as it's a lot more difficult to remove the lower metre or or so of the building. Fred also relied on a draught through the chimney to get the fire going - for a skyscrapper you'd have to open all the stairwell doors (but not the ones to the floors), and either the roof door, or the one topfloor door, and knock out the windows.
You'd then have to clear the twisted remains of the building, which will probably be hard to do manually, as the remaining chunks could well be over what humans can lift.
[Answer]
**Frame challenge**
>
> Assume that the results are being taken away by canal barge for
> disposal.
>
>
>
What makes the disposal site a better place to store all the rubble? It seems as though they are returning one place to nature only to contaminate an even bigger area. Why bigger? Because they can't build so high. Therefore there will be a huge area of wasteland even bigger than the original city. They have simply moved the problem.
[Answer]
*ignore my mistake. This underestimates by a factor of about 12. Misread the source*
I dismantled an old rusty 10m x 4m metal shed with only hand tools (A crowbar, socket set, ladder, ropes, hammer, chisel, and hacksaw) during the covid19 lockdown. It took 1 man about 4 days to do 40 square meters. Walls, roof, and cieling.
It was my first time doing something like this, and I was taking breaks and relaxing throughout the project.
According to <https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/sirr/downloads/pdf/Ch4_Buildings_FINAL_singles.pdf> , New York has 375 million square feet of floor space. In usable units that's 34838640 square metres.
Extrapolating my experience to all of New York city, thatll take 3483864 man days to dismantle all of New York city's buildings.
1000 people working in parallel could do it in 3483 days. Or a little under 10 years.
Now, there are lots of quibbles with this calculation that say it should be larger, steel frames are easier to dismantle than bricks, tall skyscrapers are harder to dismantle than single story sheds. But there are also quibbles that say it should be smaller, teamwork should speed things up, and they'd learn tricks to speed things up on the job. A religious cult also wouldnt stop for TV breaks. I'm handwaving here and saying they cancel each other out.
Now this will leave street, foundations, subway lines, signage, highways, water and power infrastructure, etc. This is very hard to estimate, I dont see cities spend more on common infrastructure than residents spend on buildings (based on relationship between tax and property cost), so I can guess an upper bound; I'd expect this would be no more than another 10 years.
Some earthworks are below sea level. Eg undersea tunnels, or foundations below sea level. The empire state building for example has 17m of foundations, 9m below sea level. This would need to be done by dismantling from the basement down, chiselling and hand-drilling away until they reach bedrock, then removing the side walls with the water proofing membrane. Hand pumps / windmills / steam powered pumps will have to be used to pump water out as they go.
Returning the materials to earth will be tricky without the city, you need power to melt steel down, etc. You may need to add a 5 years of breaking small concrete blocks down into gravel and land filling.
Add 5 years for unexpected difficulties that come up as a buffer, and add a support network of 500 to feed, shelter, bandage any injuries, transport materials, and create and maintain the hand tools.
That adds up to 30 years. Maybe leaving a bit of time left in their lives to dismantle the asphalt highways leading to a neighbouring city, or scatter plants or topsoil to start regrowing the landscape.
A religious sect with 1500 very motivated people could plausibly dismantle New York city in their lifetime.
[Answer]
How long depends on the technology used, how many people are working, and how big the city is. I think this is an overly broad question.
I think a better question would be, what sort of technology could be used to demolish most of the structures in a city given a steam engine level of knowledge?
Once you've defined the tech, then you can define a typical city size and a typical work force.
Two types of technology available I haven't seen in any of the other answers are, obviously, steam, and, if the city is located in a "4 season" location like New York or London or any other city that gets cold enough to freeze every year, ice. You said they have no desire to use the steam tech for living purposes, but I'll assume they are willing to use it to achieve their ends.
Steam explosions can be quite powerful and could be used to demolish a building's support structures.
Freezing water can induce significant stress on a structure to cause it to collapse.
As others have noted, chemical explosives, solvents, and nature itself can be used to weaken structures. Re-introducing nature into a city is an excellent way for the workers to do something to aid in its return to a natural state.
Here's one last tool for demolition if you wanted to write it into your story. Having a large dam upstream from your city could kill two birds with one stone - return the river to its natural state and wipe out the city downstream. Releasing the water could be the main goal for your characters to start with. Bursting a dam is no small feat. But again, explosives, ice, steam, etc. can all be used to help break through that tremendous amount of concrete and release a stupendous amount of potential energy downstream. It would help to close all the normal water release mechanisms and fill up the reservoir so that the dam was as close to its stress capacity as possible.
I think a motivated group of 1000 or so could breach a dam in a couple of years or less - depending on how they did it. And the city could be nearly gone in an hour or two depending on how big the lake or reservoir was.
If there wasn't already a dam, maybe your people built one expressly for the purpose of destroying the city.
[Answer]
For this question, I will use New York as the example of a major city. By finding the average living space per person to be about 300sqft with 37.5% of the city zoned as residential and the total population to be about 8.3 million we can guess that this means you have a total of about 6.64 billion square feet of real estate that need to be reclaimed. Dismantling the whole city is beyond stupidly hard, but you may not need to.
## What it takes to help nature reclaim the city
If the goal is the reclamation of Nature, leveling the cities is a very wasteful way to go. As chasly points out in his answer, you are doing more harm to nature by tearing the buildings down to nothing, than you are by leaving them standing; so, instead of leveling the cities; you only need to help nature reclaim what is there. Many kinds of grass and small trees can grow well in thin soil with little light and water; you just need to knock out a few windows, carry in a some soil containing the seeds of various weeds, and let nature do the rest. Rain and light will come in through the windows to water the plants. The plants will begin to slowly break apart the concrete with the roots and in a few years the entire facades of these buildings will be completely overgrown with life. Much like the struts of Oil Rigs, they will make great shelters for all sorts of wild life too. Birds can roost inside and out, reptiles and rodents can nest wherever they wish. In the end, New York could host more wildlife in its mostly preserved ruins than it could by ripping the whole thing up.
So, instead of asking what leveling the city will take, I will first answer what helping nature reclaim the city might take. The first and most important step is going to be smashing out windows and propping open all the doors. Smashing all those windows and propping open doors would be relatively easy; so, the bulk of the work will be the time it take you to haul in all that soil.
New York is a very easy city to reclaim since the average distance from any point to the nearest waterway is only about 1 mile meaning you can bring your barges up and just wheelbarrow the soil to where you are going. Since I will assume your worker can only maintain a slow walk while pushing that weight, that there is a return walk, that the wheel barrow has to be both filled and unloaded, the window has to be smashed, doors propped open, and that you often have to go up many flights of stairs, that your average time to transport soil will be about 2hrs and that each load can transport enough soil for about 1 window garden.
[One source](https://www.reddit.com/r/estimation/comments/1gbeh6/how_many_windows_are_there_in_new_york_city/) suggests that New York City has a total of about 232 million windows. This means it would take ~464 million man hours to do a reclamation project even without tearing the whole city down... oh and don't forget harvesting all that soil and operating those barges is not free either. Harvesting and shipping soil would probably double the scale of your operation here too close to 1 billion man hours. This is about the same amount of labor as it would take to build the great pyramid of giza twice over making it a huge undertaking, but theoretically possible if you could afford to commit ~20,000 people to the project for a few decades.
## What it takes to level the city
If you wanted to break down entire buildings, you could assume you'd need to make 1 trip per 100lbs of debris you need to haul away. This is the equivalent of 2 sqft of an average building's floor plan, but you'll probably be closer to 1sqft per load when you consider walls and foundation, and other brikerbrack, plus added demolition time would probably equal closer 3hrs per trip. That is about 20 billion man hours to disassemble the city, plus however many billions of additional man hours it takes to haul it all back off the barges... so I would not suggest that unless you have a population the size of New York to commit to it...
[Answer]
to dismantle a cargo vessel of 40,000 tons it takes about three months and are used electric tool.
To dismantle an entire city i think it takes many years, it depends on the number of people doing it.
[Answer]
The advantage that future primitives have over our primitives is that they would be starting with the technology existing that will be destroyed. Our previous had to create from relatively nothing to slowly get us to where we are now. The future primitives would be able to use what was leveled to assist with leveling more.
If we have understanding of steam technology then we know how to make heat.
If we can focus that heat then we have a better chance of bringing down buildings than with mechanicals.
Bringing down a building this way would also allow for less of the workers to be involved for risk of injury. Tumble them into each other for maximum breakup potential, let gravity do the bulk of work.
Once structural members are exposed, use pieces dislodged as levers to split the larger complete sections apart. Use the bulk of your workers to hall away pieces. Leveled materials can be used as fuel for the heat source. This problem is paradoxical in that the very process of dismantling the buildings would increase the primitives knowledge therefore their capabilities for destruction will increase. As the ability to produce and focus heat would improve, so would the ability to break down components. There would be no reason to haul away materials, these would be used to house the generations of workers encamped outside the city, and to fill in the holes in the earth previously mentioned.
Lastly, I would suggest that steam power understanding might coincide or be predicated by an understanding of how to make explosives. These would obviously allow for the most rapid reduction to dust. Another issue is with materials designed by current moderns that aren’t nor will never be biodegradable. Let’s hope at least our future prime have a thorough understanding of chemical processes to help break things down into easier to handle constituent forms.
[Answer]
If the 'End' of society as we know it does involve a huge use of weapons that do destroy the structure of concrete and steel buildings, your new 'primitives' may stand a chance.
If not, current building methods are too well build to take down by hand (see most other answers, they have the details.)
So you may want to start your story by a recounting of the horrors of the 'End', the weapons used. And in that way explain how your people are able to take down the concrete and steel buildings.
How long it then still takes depends on the amount of damage those weapons have already done.
] |
[Question]
[
I am working on a short story that will take place somewhere twenty and fifty years from now and I want there to be a civil war occurring in the United States. I have seen a lot of speculative fiction that depict intriguing dystopias but I feel like a lot of them aren't plausible. Like even when partisan tensions have been high in the US in the last 150 years, it continually does not result in literal civil war. The only civil war we had was primarily caused by one of the most divisive issues in our entire history: slavery. I don't know if we have that kind of modern equivalent.
What possible events and/or societal changes would have to occur for America to plausibly have a second civil war?
[Answer]
**Lots of people think we're currently on the verge of Civil War 2.0**
Or that we're already in a "cold civil war". Haven't you heard the Claire Wolfe quote?
>
> “America is at that awkward stage; it's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
>
>
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Civil War 2.0 already has a nickname: the "boogaloo". No few observers expected it to turn hot *this Monday* in Virginia. That state has a new government that has promised to confiscate privately held firearms, and the citizens had a particularly large demonstration to tell their government to stuff it. Not unlike Massachusetts in 1775. So it's definitely the area to watch.
I don't want to start an argument about politics here (it's a habit I'm trying to kick), just wanted to point out that it should be pretty easy to research real-world reasoning why people think the boogaloo is nigh. If you want "plausibility", no speculation here is going to be more plausible than what's really happening.
NB: Hope I haven't frightened anyone. It'll all probably turn out to be nothing. Now excuse me, I've got to make another trip to the big box store for another truckload of canned food for the bunker...
[Answer]
The system under the Constitution in the USA makes that kind of fracturing pretty hard.
What makes it harder now is that a steady increase in power of the federal government has reduced the amount of power that each state has.
If you look at the Civil War in the 1860's, the wedge issue was slavery. The precipitation events, though, wasn't slavery itself, but the desire of the southern states to leave the Union. The war didn't start until the southern states seceded (left) from the union and formed their own government. There was enough resources in the South that it would do a lot of damage to the North if the secession were allowed to stand. This is kind of a top level view, but it gives a sort of basis for a future conflict.
If you want a civil war, you need a situation where there is a wedge issue, it's big enough for very large groups of people feel it right to leave the rest of the US, and that the resources of the areas leaving are substantial enough to be worth invading those that choose to leave (keep in mind, political capital is a resource.)
To throw out an idea:
Say there is a wedge issue over personal firearms ownership (I'm picking this kind of out of the air.) The 2nd amendment of the constitution gets repealed or some such. Now, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Arizona decide that they want to keep the right to keep and bear arms and they secede from the union They decide to form the Republic of Texas.
Here is the kicker that would lead to war: Texas has Oil. Texas has coastline. Louisiana has the Mississippi river delta. A bunch of oil platforms are in the Gulf of Mexico and many of the most productive oil refineries. Without those, the Republic of Texas could conceivably cripple the US economy if trade stopped. That would be a logical reason for war.
Of course, if it was just New Mexico that tried to leave, there wouldn't be much of a war because NM would be rapidly overwhelmed and it doesn't have all that much in the way of resources.
So that's what you need. A reason and enough resources to be at stake.
[Answer]
To steal from the book Unwind-- abortion is a big one. One side believes that the other is literally murdering babies, so they're primed to fight. The other see sit as a form of slavery for women due to the choices of others, so they're also primed to fight. Boom-- civil war.
I think that income inequality might finally boil over into a civil war at some point. Look at the Russian revolution-- it came about because of vast income inequality as the proletariat seized the means of production-- IE, the working class got sick and tired of getting paid starvation wages while their employers reaped massive economic profits and enjoyed wealth and luxury beyond anything that they could dream of. Kinda sounds like those CEOs with their golden parachutes who have been making billions off of stuff like Uber, dismantling Sears, taking money from the bailout in '08 and then running, etc. You could easily have the people who have been barely scraping by on minimum wage, who are up to their eyeballs in debt pushing back and taking over the local government in their area. I think it's especially feasible in a world where we've seen further automation and greater economic developments in competing economic powers such as China, which could further erode the number of jobs available. Some people will be decently well off ("I'm not rich, but I make enough to get by, and I don't want to lose all of that! If I side with the rich people, I'll probably have a better chance of keeping it!") while others will be desperate enough to kill ("I'm dying of diabetes, but some jerk who runs the pharmaceutical company charges $700 a dose! I can't pay that much!"). Perfect mix.
You could just have the spark be a particularly corrupt politician, who is clearly only in the role to further their own goals. Back in the day, we tarred and feathered politicians when we knew just how corrupt they were, and it wasn't a terribly pretty sight. I think it's pretty feasible that someone would try to do that to their elected official, and that it would spark ongoing violence with police, as copycat groups figured that it was actually a great move. Counter-protestor groups get involved, someone starts shooting, someone else starts shooting back, and before you know it, you've got a three-way war going in a town or two as the police try to prevent members of two very angry political parties from killing one another.
[Answer]
A lot can happen in twenty to fifty years.
Let us say that we finally figure out AI. We can build robots that can actually follow orders and be smart about it. Neat!
Except... these robots put a lot of people out of work.
So, on one side we have a *large* mob of unemployed angry people.
On the other side are the industry owners. Fewer, but better organized and well equipped. Also using robot soldiers.
To confuse the issue there is also "robot rights activists" who claim that these robots are slaves that should be emancipated. They will side with the mob against the "slave owners", but they are really a separate faction.
[Answer]
**An election season in which the left leaning Democratic party took control of both sections of congress AND the Presidency could lead to a civil war.**
*I will try to keep this as neutral as I can because I personally hate the party system and think it causes basically every heavily polarized political argument in our country.*
As the United states has a long history of fighting anything that isn't capitalism, the fact that the democratic party leans heavily towards socialism would make it reasonable that if they took control of 2 of the branches of government, they would be likely to start pushing through major social reforms. Taxes, gun laws, welfare, civil rights, basically every major issue would very quickly be legislated towards the left.
This, understandably would very quickly anger the right leaning, conservative Republicans who look at socialism as an equivalent to communism, and by all accounts, the plan of the devil (not even exaggerating that one). As conservatives lean pro-gun rights, and the staple argument is that they should have guns if they need to defend themselves from a tyrannical government, it therefore makes complete sense that at least a notable portion of the conservative population would be likely to attempt to liberate the country from it's socialist overlords.
At this point you can fill in the intervening riots and and government responses. The interesting point here would be that ON AVERAGE (not as a rule, and varies by region) most Police and Military personnel lean conservatively right. So it would be their job to follow the orders of a left leaning government, despite the fact that many of them lean right in their personal views. This could lead to a rift both between military and police, as well as within each organization.
Personally, I think it would be more likely that the military would majority side with the federal government as per their training to having sworn to obey the orders of the president, while law enforcement (many of whom have military training) is much more likely to follow regional majority. I would think that although the military has the structural and resource advantage, the liberal federal government would likely hesitate to use force. Meanwhile, radical conservatives paired with like-minded local law enforcement would be quick to form a reasonably large militia force.
By the time full fledged rebellion has been declared it is likely territory would be divided very much like the first Civil War, with the conservative South east leading the charge against the more progressive North east (I lived in Tennessee and have heard way too many people say "the South will rise again"). The west coast states will likely to be dominated by left leaning progressives, but will be solidly cut off from the northeast by the very conservative Utah and Idaho, (Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico will be a toss-ups).
This is just some personal thoughts on possible events. I could honestly keep going with this for ages.
[Answer]
>
> I want there to be a civil war occurring in the United States
>
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I don't, but I understand this is an hypothetical and academic view of the subject :)
>
> even when partisan tensions have been high in the US in the last 150 years, it continually **does not result** in literal civil war.
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(Emphasis added): Good observation. The reasons and value backdrop for this are outlined in the [Federalist Papers](https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers). Even with the divisive issue of slavery, *dissolution of the union* has always been considered less acceptable by Americans than allowing tensions and even sharp disagreement continue for as long as necessary to win the issue peacefully and maintain union. From Federalist No. 6:
>
> Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.
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>
**To your question:**
>
> What possible events and/or societal changes would have to occur for America to plausibly have a second civil war?
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The [**Declaration of Independence**](https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript) gives us some ideas, as does the 1861-1865 American Civil War, specifically South Carolina's "[**Ordinance of Secession**](https://archive.org/details/declarationofimm00sout/page/n1/mode/2up)." These are the primary documents behind which the initiators of the two great secessions of America in modern times rallied the people behind their cause. While one could critique particularly the latter of containing propaganda, these are nonetheless significant documents because their purpose was to galvanize behind them an armed fight for independence. These documents, unlike textbooks, could not afford to misrepresent the perceived injustices which would justify secession in the minds of most of their constituents, for fear of losing that fight.
The South Carolina Ordinance of Secession models itself heavily after the 1776 Declaration of Independence, and attempts to derive its legitimacy therefrom. Consider the nature of some of the alleged offenses common to both:
* Invasions against **property rights**
* Failure to uphold the **rule of law**, in particular due process
* Loss of sovereignty and **representation**
* Inciting the populace to **insurrection**
* Replacement of local **social institutions**
Specifically, unique to the 1861 Civil War: "The denunciation of slavery as a **sinful** institution", and the **election of a president whose opinions they didn't like**.
So, if you wanted to look for modern, current events and societal changes that could provoke a similar event, it would be most reasonable to look for these themes.
1. Where are property rights being increasingly violated?
2. Where is the rule of law not being upheld, particularly due process?
3. Where are citizens being denied sovereignty and representation?
4. Where are local people being intentionally divided, angered, and incited to rebellion?
5. Where are local social institutions being displaced and replaced systematically?
6. What very popular, entrenched and usually lucrative practices are being denounced as sinful?
7. Has it ever happened in recent history that a president was elected whose opinions were very unliked by nearly half the population?
My guess:
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> 1. Socialism, welfare programs
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> 2. Identity politics, political targeting
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> 3. Illegal immigration and ballot rigging
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> 4. Mass media
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> 5. Public education, erosion of religious freedom, attacks on family and states' rights.
> 6. Drug abuse, human trafficking, abortion, money laundering
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> 7. Reflect on your own prejudices for a second. Thanks. At least you've now identified them as such.
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Constitutionally-adherent citizens are not going to be responsible for initiating aggression, and will in many cases have to suffer tremendous injury before acting in self-defense. They would rather that the Federalist condition of union prevail, despite differences and even abuse. This is the American track record, which you highlighted.
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I don't think things like gun rights or abortion access are good hooks for a story about another civil war. Fundamentally, we've had those issues around for years, and we haven't had a civil war yet, so it seems less likely. Plus, if you choose one of those, you'll have to put the protagonists on one side or another. So, you'll be making a work that is very tied to political allignment. If that is your goal, that's fine, but if not, I'd pick something that isn't already so heavily partisan..
Looking forward, I think a good candidate would be AI-based automation obsoleting most of the workforce. While providing worker protections is more in the Democratic party wheelhouse currently, it is less of a party defining issue than it has been historically, so you can probably realign groups as necessary to make your story work.
This also has the benefit of being somewhat similar to the cause of the previous civil war. That is, of course it was about slavery, but one of the things about slavery at the time was that industrialization had started and slavery was becoming obsolete as a result. The political reality needed to shift to recognize the economic one -- that the North, with a head start industrializing, was going to be calling the shots for the time being, and the South was going to lose prominence. And one thing the North didn't like was spreading slavery across the country -- it doesn't fit as well in an advanced economy and it was generally considered evil and cruel by most of the developed world.
Heavily AI based automation could produce a similar economic shakeup. Presumably somebody could suggest a redistributive solution, which would essentially take us away from capitalism. There are all sorts of details that would need to be worked out, so you have plenty of leeway to come up with something evil and cruel to be the proximate cause of a war.
Just as an example that runs counter to what I suppose is the assumption that Democrats would push for the redistributive solution:
Perhaps there's a massive realignment and you have two completely made up parties: "The American Workers Party of America" (a nativist socialist party) and "US, inc" (a capitalist internationalist party, sorry you'll need a better name). Surely you can find shades of whichever party you like and whichever you dislike in either, and you can probably find plausible cleavage points in the modern parties to split each roughly in half and form these parties. You can retcon some events of the last 20 years or so to build up to this realignment. 70 years is a while, so it seems plausible, right?
The AWPOA proposes massive taxation on big business and international trade, which will be redistributed to Americans whose jobs are made obsolete. The degree to which the payouts are targeted specifically at their constituents, and the degree to which their party excludes various minority groups, is a knob you can turn to determine who will be the protagonists. These taxes lead to massive economic devastation in the Tex-Cali corridor (which has become a huge population center similar to the Bos-Wash corridor but much larger, and a huge tech hub). They decide not to enforce these taxes, one thing leads to another, and war happens.
Texas, California, Nevada, and New Mexico together is about 25% of the US GDP now, so the supposed corridor plus various surrounding states could be a plausible alliance to make it an interesting civil war, particularly assuming the economy follows a trajectory that is plausible, but favorable to your story.
[Answer]
One huge item that would prevent this is that the US Military is no longer made up of state militias, and military groups are no longer composed of people from single states. Bases in California or Texas, for example, are not manned soley or primarily by Californian or Texan loyalists.
So for your story, you may need to have the military be deliberately split into state or region based forces. I'm not sure what justification you would need to come up with for that to happen, but without a divided military, another US Civil War would be very short.
[Answer]
## Perhaps not a civil war, but rather a *coup d' etat*
Back when I was in staff college, we were all required to read LTC Dunlap's paper on "***The origins of the coup of 2012***" - because in the mid 1990's, that was far enough into the future, but close enough to contemporary times, to resonate with us. The bottom line from my seminar leader was: "We are here to support and defend the Constitution, not to rule" - and variations on that theme.
[Here is the paper.](https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3128&context=faculty_scholarship) Take yourself back to the year 1993 and read it with the political context of that time in mind.
Here are some core points that LTC Dunlap considered in "the unlikely happening" - a coup d'etat ,bloodless, and a Junta in charge in DC.
From the intro:
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> The letter that follows takes us on a darkly imagined excursion into the future. A military coup has taken place in the United States—the year is 2012—and General Thomas E. T. Brutus, Commander-in-Chief of the Unified Armed Forces of the United States, now occupies the White House as permanent Military Plenipotentiary.
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> His position has been ratified by a national referendum, though scattered disorders still prevail and arrests for acts of sedition are underway. A senior retired officer of the Unified Armed Forces, known here simply as Prisoner 222305759, is one of those arrested, having been convicted by court-martial for opposing the coup. Prior to his execution, he is able to smuggle out of prison a letter to an old War College classmate discussing the “Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012.” In it, he argues that the coup was the outgrowth of trends visible as far back as 1992. These trends were the massive diversion of military forces to civilian uses, the monolithic unification of the armed forces, and the insularity of the military community. His letter survives and is here presented verbatim.
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Factors included in the speculative paper:
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> 1. Americans became exasperated with democracy. We were disillusioned
> with the apparent inability of elected government to solve the
> nation’s dilemmas. We were looking for someone or something that
> could produce workable answers.
> 2. Since then voter participation has steadily declined. By 1988 only
> 50.1 percent of the eligible voters cast a ballot. Simple extrapolation of those numbers to last spring’s Referendum would
> have predicted almost exactly the turnout. It was precisely reversed
> from that of 1964: 61.9 percent of the electorate did not vote
> 3. Congress initiated the use of “national defense” as a rationale to boost military participation in an activity historically the exclusive
> domain of civilian government: law enforcement. Congress concluded
> that the “rising tide of drugs being smuggled into the United States .
> . . present[ed] a grave threat to all Americans.” Finding the
> performance of civilian law enforcement agencies in counteracting that
> threat unsatisfactory, Congress passed the Military Cooperation with
> Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act of 1981.20 In doing so Congress
> specifically intended to force reluctant military commanders to
> actively collaborate in police work. This was a historic change of
> policy. Since the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878, the
> military had distanced itself from law enforcement activities.22 While
> the 1987 law did retain certain limits on the legal authority of
> military personnel, its net effect was to dramatically expand military
> participation in anti-drug efforts. By 1991 the Department of Defense
> was spending $1.2 billion on counternarcotics crusades.
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>
>
I'll let the paper speak for itself if you are interested in seeing how a change from within might take place.
### Caveat: since 1993 some things have changed.
First and foremost, the political reaction to the War in Iraq has eroded public trust in the Military as problem solver that is a highlight of that paper. But I offer this answer because I'd like you to see how someone took a very similar idea that you have, and projected 'what was' into 'what could be'. If that paper serves its purpose of getting you to do a little "what is into what might be" that is enough.
What makes this answer relevant to your question is: a civil war, or a complete change in the character of the nation, may not take the form that you expect. It is as likely to come from within *and* be a shock to the system when it arrives.
A note on the Source:
*The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012*, by Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., was first published in the Winter 1992-93 issue of *Parameters*.
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"Free the slaves" and "State rights" were probably not something 95% of the population was willing to kill or die for ON ITS OWN. It is a slogan that subsumes the indirect links of regional (eg states rights, returning escaped slaves) and most importantly personal (eg jobs, taxes and tariffs) concern. Similar occurs in insurgency wars ... land rights, fuel price rise makes my taxi uneconomical, foreign occupation, that policeman didnt get punished for mistreated my sister.
The answer to your question is a matter of building the indirect links to the overall slogan of choice.
Using climate change as the example slogan, the USA might grow increasingly divided between green (renewable) and brown (fossil) states and it overlaps with partially related divides eg new tech vs old tech (surveillance, wealth, factories, environment) and liberal vs conservative (guns, abortion etc).
some headline "green" issues
* A project like the Dakota pipeline requires the modification to a highway ... why should the green state (that doesn't have the oil wells or refinery) pay ?
* Is inspection of tanker trucks passing through a renewable fuel only state legitimate state law enforcement or harassment ? Do the delays resulting from these inspections count as (unpaid, non driving time) rest for the truck driver under wage and OSHA regulations for all three states she crosses through ?
* States vs federal laws (eg marijuana). A hacker in a brown state remotely disables the engine of a hybrid federal vehicle in a green state, causing a fatal accident just outside the federal "reservation". This potential hero to the green staters was protesting the new anti-hunting regulations being enforced by his local National Park.
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If you're going for alternate history, I'd suggest changing Lincoln's election so that he appeared on all ballot forms, and there wasn't a huge amount of discontent at his election.
Ergo, no US civil war in the 1800's. I imagine slavery getting illegalized sometime much later, with slave-power being voted out of Washington and civil rights reforms happening at much the same time.
I think the core of making a modern civil war plausible requires there to be no past civil war. The way the US one went sort of set a precedent. (Don't try.)
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To understand a cause of any civil war, we should not consider official books as they to proclaim very poetic reasoning (moneybags vs poverty, slavery vs freedom etc). Actual reason is the same, all the time: there is an issue that's not resolved for decades. So at least one generation of people is grown at the environment that splits the society into beneficiaries and infringed ones. Combined with weaken government power, that triggers the war around.
Back to your case: let's hunt for the issues! The worst they are, the better for the story.
* Immigration laws and black labor market
* Healthcare and work safety
* Crime gangs and police violence
* Strange international politics and enormous budget expenses
* etc
That way, we can create a story-line:
* Sarcastic (like vegans vs green-eco as vegans do annihilate plants that give us an oxygen and green-eco are to cut-off the humanity by 50% or more to save the Mother Earth)
* Noir genre (a son of illegal immigrants trying to escape from the war and being non-welcomed on both sides)
* Thriller (a hero starts to fight on one side and then discovers an unpleasant truth causing him to twist the side)
* Melodrama (family man left his wife and kids at a shelter to fight for their future, then stumbled across a complex situation with a nasty beauty involved, and she's on another side)
* etc
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Money. Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, WA develop a new currency. The West Coast is tired of Washington D.C. and the East coast favoring the East Coast at a federal level. The East Coast favors the old system where America, controlled by the East Coast, in in charge of the nation's currency. The East Coast has NYC which is central to lots of economics, but West Coast's Los Angeles is also a power house.
So the West coast seeks to secede in the future, just as the American South sought to before. The East Coast doesn't want to lose the "sea to shining sea" aspect, and fights to preserve, strongly mirroring much of the reasoning of the first civil war.
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Long ago, the Supreme Court ruled that kicking Cherokees off their land would be illegal. We did it anyway, with the full support of the elected president.
The vote counts for impeachment of Trump, and the current inflammatory rhetoric from both sides in the senate tells me that neither side is interested in truth and justice. And long before this circus, I was saying the difference between them is which parts of the Constitution they want to ignore.
Given the the suggestions of violence I keep seeing (from extremists on both sides), and calls to “resist” from those not so extreme, it would not surprise me for a legislation to be countered by a court decision, and the extremists for and against to commit violence. But the next civil war (if it happens) won’t be region against region. It will be neighbor against neighbor.
Some might think violence against neighbors is unlikely. But more than once when I lived near a university, I witnessed football fans **celebrate a win** by destroying their neighbors’ property.
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Perhaps global warming might cause sufficient internal friction to eventually trigger a civil war in the US. There appear to be many who do not want to believe in global warming in part because of the implication for capitalism. And there are many who accept that changes must be made, that growth cannot continue for ever and that the Governments of the world need to take drastic action.
I can’t see either side backing down, but I can see more and more people being convinced that something drastic must be done prompted by increasingly horrific incidents like fires and flooding of large cities (New York or Boston perhaps caused by a hurricane that far north?).
At some point the majority of the people would forcefully conflict with the conservative political elite and vested interests in the oil industry and other big businesses. If no action were taken there might be a revolution, but if a party willing to take the necessary drastic action were voted in it might be equally destructive politically.
It might appear as fantasy now (and hopefully will remain as such) but the situation will get a lot worse before it gets better and such horrors cannot be ruled out.
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Civil war could be initiated by a major natural disaster, a surge in organized crime, or a prolonged economic crisis that the government is unable to substantially mitigate. If the government is perceived as impotent, it becomes much more likely that states, cities, or even neighborhoods would be driven to form their own governments, and be successful in doing so. After some time, the central government might attempt to reassert control. A state that has seceded might find itself fighting both the central government and smaller groups that want to secede from the state, but which also oppose the central government.
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Inequality and lack of social mobility in the US today are higher than they have been for most of the 20th century. Wealthy people who commit crimes escape with light penalties. The first time he was caught, Jeffrey Epstein was given a deal so favorable that he was able to return to preying on children soon after. The Sackler family built a multi-billion dollar fortune based on the strategy of deliberately addicting millions of people on opioids, which has resulted in over half a million deaths in America. Today the Sacklers are negotiating to give up some 3 billion for reparations while keeping another 13 billion stashed offshore for themselves, with no serious effort by anyone to put them into prison. Not bad for being drug lords.
We keep seeing the phenomenon of candidates losing the popular election yet winning the presidency. Similar things happen with other elections such as gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc. Election campaigns are dominated corporate money and political action committees with hidden sources of funding. Few people believe that "one person, one vote" reflects the reality of elections. Courts and judges are viewed as partisans by both sides. Americans today have much less faith in the system than previous generations did. The election of Donald Trump can be seen as the culmination of this kind of lack of faith in the system; people would rather throw a hand grenade into the works than listen to traditional politicians spin lines about fixing it.
Every social issue in the news tends to polarize around the two main parties. People identify with their own social group and demonize the other. Urban vs rural. Abortion. Gun control. You name it. Everything filters through the lens of Republican vs Democrat. Good vs evil. Us vs them. No compromises.
What I'm describing is essentially something like the social conditions in France prior to 1789. In short, nothing radical is necessary to move the United States to civil war. It just needs to stay on its current course and we'll get there. The trigger issue that sparks that fire could be anything, but the tinder is already being put into place.
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The answers so far posit a regional separation.
Look at other examples:
* England with the war of the roses. (Rival claimants for the crown)
* England during the Cromwell Period. (Protestant vs Catholic)
* Irish troubles was/is nominally a conflict about Protestants vs Catholics, but under the hood is more a case of class warfare: By in large the Catholics were not property owners.
* French Revolution was really class based civil war.
* France 16th century: Problem between Huguenots (French Calvinists) and the established Catholics. The Huguenots were, I think about 10% of the population at it's peak.
States are tied together firmly with trade right now. To get a civil war, you need to go irrational: People have to be willing to take a serious economic hit out of rage our outrage.
Possible plausible scenarios:
### Scenario 1. Regional based economic secession.
Trumpist style federal government cuts programs that benefit 'blue' states. California passes a law requiring that all taxes be paid to the State of California who then forwards payment to the federal government. Federal returns are no longer required. Enough Californians are pissed off with the federal government that the vast bulk of individuals and corporations co-operate.
Federal returns become an unenforceable law. As programs to California are cut, California reduces transfers to Washington.
Washington, Oregon, many other blue states follow suit. Neighbouring states amalgamate many services. Non-neighbouring states form a federation.
This can develop in various ways:
A: Becomes the new norm. While nominally part of the U.S. California and like states have in effect severed their political ties. The degree of trade with the remains of the U.S. can vary depending on your scenario.
B: Same thing happens internally in some states. California, Oregon and Washington rural areas east of the Cascades/Sierras attempt to separate from the state. Most will try to negotiate becoming part of the adjacent state (Nevada, Idaho) This results in a patchwork at the country level. Depending on how the adjacent states get along, this may become an uneasy truce, or a bunch of essentially self sufficient fiefdoms.
C: Is resisted by the remaining states. This is complicated by the number of defence establishments that are in blue states. The western seaboard is essentially cut off at the passes over the coastal mountain ranges. Many red state units called up are very short staffed, as lots of individual soldiers aren't happy with shooting at other Americans.
Overall military units using high tech gear quickly run out of material. Too many things are produced in multiple locations, and assembled on a Just In Time basis. Many red state units are essentially decapitated, with largely liberal officers refusing orders, or establishing 'white mutiny' or other forms of non-compliance, passive resistance.
D: The Trumpist Government uses nuclear weapons against recalcitrant cities. Given the distribuition of nuclear weapons, this doesn't end well.
### Scenario 2: Religious/Racist based civil war.
In this scenario the irrational fundamentalists / disaffected trump style supporters decide they are going get rid of the polluting dark skins/catholics/jews/. The scary bit about this, they have a large fraction of the firearms. It starts with a single mid sized city in the rust belt passing a law that certain groups have to leave. They are given a short period to do so. A local militia shoots/hangs/burns alive outspoken members who protest. The state governor who hails from that city decides to see how this will play out, and does NOT call out the National Guard to restore order. Media coverage by social media and drones is very thorough. This instantly polarizes the people especially in the red states. Other cities follow suit. Small towns put up signs: "No Niggers, spics, chinks, papists or kikes allowed in city limits after sundown." Catholic churches, and baptist churches with largely black congregations are burned.
Like the Rwanda massacres, people are given the choice: Kill that (other) or die.
Telling the players apart is difficult, at least telling a white racist from a white tolerant person is difficult. There is no obvious class, language, or accent difference.
This will NOT be on a state level, but will be at a much finer granulation. Take a look and red vs blue counties in the last election. For examples look at Myanmar, Rwanda, and Cambodia.
] |
[Question]
[
There is a solid glass sphere that is 1 mile in diameter. It is completely covered in dirt and rock, except for one small room that is built adjacent to the sphere. One of the four walls of this room is the surface of the sphere. What would the sphere look like to someone standing in this room holding a pitch torch?
I understand the answer might depend on what type of glass the sphere is made of. Please feel free to assume whatever type of glass makes answering this question easiest. The sphere can even be diamond, or any other "clear" mineral, if using glass is a problem.
EDIT1: Assume a very fine polished surface.
EDIT2: It seems I have to clarify. When I ask "what would the the sphere look like", I want to know what a person looking at the surface of the sphere would see. Unless 1 mile wide blocks of glass cause blindness, "nothing" is not an answer. I want to know, very literally, what looking into this sphere would be like. If the glass is completely dark, please elaborate: is it dark like a gloomy room behind a glass panel, or is the surface of the glass completely black as if made of obsidian? Would bringing the source of light closer to the surface of the glass have any effect?
[Answer]
If the glass is unflawed, the opening will look like a flat, nearly-black (but possibly also greenish) mirror .
When you look at glass, you see a combination of the light reflecting off the surface and the light coming through it. (Think windows at night.) This is the key to [Pepper's Ghost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost). If you look through enough glass, you will also see a green tinge, as the light is occasionally backscattered from the molecules that make up the glass, and the transmission spectrum of optical glass is [highest in the middle of our visible spectrum](https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/74652/88998)
In this case, there will be *no* light coming through the surface, since even glass isn't transparent enough for any meaningful amount of torchlight to travel a mile through it, reflect off the opposite edge, and travel all the way back.
So all you'll see is the light reflecting off the edge of the sphere, or possibly reflecting off flaws and imperfections inside the sphere (but I'm assuming "solid" rules that out). Given how big a mile-diameter sphere is, it'll appear utterly flat.
[Answer]
Also worth touching on refractive and transparent colour - which can vary wildly depending upon specific trace elements in the glass... and which can also significantly impact reflectivity and refractive index - as can heat: some glass compositions, when unevenly heated, create surface coatings not unlike thin film, which then hugely impact refractive index - think soap bubbles and their amazing coloured waves...
So it's *really* hard to prognosticate effectively with this little data.
I ***can*** say (I'm an architectural renderer, so I do in fact spend a fair amount of time thinking about and researching reflectance and refractance properties of specific glass types) that given you stipulate the sphere's entirety being covered in dirt and rock with the sole exception of ONE single opening adjacent to the glass sphere, there will be no other incident light, no other refracted light, and so you would *most likely* only have *surface* light interactions - how scratched the surface is, what finish texture (glossy, semi-gloss, semi-matte, matte; cracklure, rippled, frosted, etched) the surface has and to what depth that finish is applied will have profound implications on the appearance.
You *might* for example (if there's a scratched and almost frosted surface with some depth to it - say 1/2") get some significant ***sub-surface scatter*** (SSS) effects... or if the surface is matte but the matte portion is quite a thin layer, get none at all.
It would most likely look a lot like thick sea ice at the poles when exposed - incredibly dark, with a slight green-tinted SSS, but almost featureless unless light is at a *very* glancing angle.
[Answer]
Not really much of anything.
Assuming that the sphere is completely flawless, you won't see anything inside of it. A torch probably doesn't put out enough light to illuminate the far side of the sphere, so there simply won't be anything to see (except your reflection, of course). If there were something to see, it would be slightly distorted by the shape of the glass but, as RonJohn's answer points out, the curvature is so slight as to be negligible.
Now, in all likelihood a huge glass sphere isn't going to be completely flawless. If it is warped in places but not actually broken, you would be able to see distortions, a little bit like immobile heat haze. If it was cracked, you could see the cracks.
The takeaway here is that glass is sufficiently transparent that you don't really see glass - you see the discontinuities between glass and air, or between sections of glass with different properties. (In technical terms, you see the difference in the [refractive index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index) of the materials.) With only the one, highly regular surface, there won't be anything to see.
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Unless the glass is quite extraordinarily pure, it will look the same as a one-mile obsidian sphere. Jet black, with some reflection from the surface. Impurities in any ordinary glass will absorb all the light you might see before it reaches the far side of the sphere. If you look at the side of an ordinary pane of window glass, it is dark turquoise-green, and that's under two feet of glass.
But it is *possible* to make ultra-pure glass that will transmit light over tens to hundreds of kilometers. This is what long-distance fibre-optic cables contain. So if you want an "inexplicable" object, it can be transparent enough to see internal reflections of your torch without violating the laws of physics as we know them. It's just a technological issue.
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>
> What would the sphere look like to someone standing in this room holding a pitch torch?
>
>
>
A flat wall, because the deviation of the surface of a sphere that size is 1/1382nd of an inch per foot (the diameter of such a sphere being 1 mile x 5280 feet/mile x pi = 16588).
>
> Please feel free to assume whatever type of glass makes answering this question easiest.
>
>
>
The type of glass has nothing to do with the fact that it will look flat when looked at up close. (It's the same reason the Earth looks flat when you're in Kansas.)
[Answer]
>
> What would the sphere look like to someone standing in this room holding a pitch torch?
>
>
>
I'll go ahead as mentioned in the comments (and approved by the asker) and relax that "pitch torch" restriction. Also, this answer is based on your statement that the room *is built*, if the room is a natural occurrence, other workarounds must be found.
From your comments to Draconis' answer, I gather that you were hoping for a more "scenographic" result than a "simple" mirror.
There are ways in which (I think, but I am open to corrections) you could achieve that.
You say that
>
> one small room that is built adjacent to the sphere. One of the four walls of this room is the surface of the sphere.
>
>
>
you can position along the sides of this "glass wall" a series of strong LEDs, these will emit enough (exact quantity TBD) lumens so that:
* the inverse square law will bring the intensity of the light after a round trip to observable levels (we are speaking of a maximum distance of 2 miles, that's quite a lot for a pitch torch)
* will project enough light in all directions so that internal reflection will be affecting a noticeable fraction of the light
How to achieve this?
Between the LEDs and the sphere there must be as little space as possible, and possibly a material with the same refractive index of glass (so that all light from the LEDs ends up into the sphere)
What will a person in the room see?
Good question, this is the part I am least sure. I think it would be reasonable to say that they would perceive diffuse light from the far side of the sphere (coming from those internal reflections).
It is possible that they could also perceive the rocks behind the sphere (light leaving the sphere, reflected by the rocks, and re-entering the sphere), but I am not too confident about this.
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Glass is amorph, meaning it's configuration is chaotic, not cristaline like diamonds.
At a room size significantly smaller than the spherer, the surface can be approximated as even.
If the statistic distribution of the chaos is regular, the basic propertis of transmission and reflection can be approximated. For a reasonable coefficient of transmission, no light will escape the sphere. A bit of light will be reflected. It would be a kind of mirror. Abberation and refraction would not play a role. Given a torch, which is not very bright to begin with, the surface would appear almost black. Pretty much like a pupilla of the eye.
Sanded glass appears white, and quiet water appears equally blue, because the surface is fuzzy, quite the opposite of a perfect polish.
---
Given fancy configurations of quantum spin-glass however ... if you used the torch to heat the glass, it could well result in a laser beam shooting back, painting a hologram of whatever you wish directly into your eyes.
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I'm writing a soft scifi novel that has its fair share "fi" but every now and then I feel it important to acknowledge some "sci."
In this scenario, a spaceship is in orbit and about to land on Earth. It's also in communication with Earth, and under observation. But some characters want to "abandon ship" and land on Earth undetected -- or at least have a head start before they're detected.
I'd prefer not to use "cloaking" as an answer (though I'm not above that if it's the only option haha!). I was thinking they could board an escape pod and just "Indiana Jones" their way to Earth. But is this at all plausible in context of existing technology?
Edit: I was unclear about the nature of this spaceship. It's not alien tech; just super cutting edge (a cut above realistic, basically). There's wiggle room in its capabilities, but I'd like to keep it as believable as possible.
Another note: I decided not to choose a winning answer! All of these answers and comments are so helpful, I won't chose any as the best. But thanks to all of you for contributing!
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If I remember my sci-fi correctly, I think one of the more accepted methods of doing this is using the 'hide a tree in a forest method'. In other words, just hide the escape pod within a meteor shower, and use atypical methods, such as deploying the equivalent of a BASE parachute at the last possible moment, or something of that nature.
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Putting aside whether the "escape pod" has enough delta-V to break orbit, depending where they reenter it's very possible. I'd put the mother craft in a polar orbit, so they can reenter over the extreme southern Pacific, near the "pole of inaccessibility", and pass over Antarctica during the hottest part of the trip, then land in the extreme southern Atlantic near Elephant Island. With good timing (put the Pacific part during daylight, ideally near local noon), they might be visually seen by as few as several hundred people -- most of whom are in no position to immediately report the "bright meteor" passing near them.
No, not a convenient location, but one might be able to push it as far north as the Falklands (to have a nearby airport), since the last part of the landing isn't very visual -- land in the dark with a no-longer-meteoric spaceship, even large parachutes might go completely unnoticed.
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* **Is the ship under observation for routine traffic control or other purposes?**
If people on Earth are serious about watching, and if they are already observing the ship, breaking contact will be difficult. Aircraft like the [Cobra Ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_RC-135#RC-135S_Cobra_Ball) or [Cobra Eye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_RC-135#RC-135X_Cobra_Eye) might be deployed to fill gaps in the ground coverage.
If it is routine, Earth might rely on [secondary radar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_surveillance_radar) and transponder, and a non-transponding pod has much better chances.
* **Are Earth nations cooperating?**
Large parts of Earth are governed by nations without sophisticated air defenses.
* **Is the capsule stealthy or deliberately visible?**
An emergency escape capsule may be designed with colorful parachutes, automatic and redundant transponders, dye markers in case of water landing, etc.
* **Consider historical lost aircraft cases.**
[Steve Fossett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fossett#Disappearance_and_search) got lost in a small aircraft over the United States, a country with quite sophisticated air traffic control. [MH370](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370) was even larger, but over the ocean.
On the other hand, a reentry with aerobraking means a visible trail. North Korean [missile tests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwasong-12) were visible to civilians in Japan.
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It's going to be very difficult to remain undetected. In fact, it's possible to see the dragon space capsule, which a reasonable size for the escape capsule, [with naked eyes alone](https://www.universetoday.com/100281/spotting-the-dragon-how-to-see-spacex-on-approach-to-the-iss-this-weekend/). Amateur satellite trackers could very well see the separation or the fact that there are two objects where there is supposed to be one and report it on twitter. Military/traffic control space surveillance systems radars could also detect that there are two objects when there is supposed to be one and immediately call up the people aboard said spacecraft to ask them what's going on. A super cutting edge spacecraft or one with people on it is likely to be a prime target for space surveillance. Space surveillance is likely to become more important as space technology advances.
However, the US's current space surveillance network does not have extensive coverage though, there is [minimal coverage in the southern hemisphere.](https://swfound.org/media/205874/swf_ssa_fact_sheet.pdf) A hand wave for detection by large government space surveillance radars is that they may not wish to reveal how good their radar systems are, so they may delay reporting of the separation. A bigger problem is keeping the escape pod separation secret from those onboard. This will create lots of sound and change the mass of spacecraft. The change in mass will be immediately apparent as soon as the spacecraft maneuvers.
There are other ways for the characters to abandon ship discreetly even if the escape pod is detected. One is to make an unscheduled delivery to earth. We may have some refrigerator fail necessitating an experiment or extremely valuable medicine to be returned to earth before it gets too hot. One of the spacecraft's engine's could have an 'accident' meaning the escape pod has to be ejected so that the spacecraft can safely land. The spacecraft may dispose of some garbage before landing using a now unnecessary escape pod.
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In addition to the fact that it will almost certainly be seen in flight there's the fire of re-entry that you can't hope to conceal even if you put stealth systems on it--it's not the capsule that you're seeing, but the plasma it leaves behind. This will be obvious to the naked eye so the only way you can hope to get down unseen is to ensure there are no naked eyes--burn in over Antarctica. Unfortunately, unless your escape pod is also an aircraft (I would expect some glide capability but that's not enough) that means you're going to put down in a very unsafe place (either on the ice or on the seas around it.)
Note that if the craft they are departing from is military in nature (the presence of escape pods suggests this) getting from the ship to atmosphere undetected might very well be possible--such a craft very well might put some stealth features on an escape pod. Combine that with departing during darkness and they should be able to remain hidden until they hit atmosphere.
Your question doesn't make it clear exactly what their objective is, either--are they trying to conceal their existence, or avoid being located? Because in the latter case the answer might very well be to parachute from the pod at 40,000'. The escape pod continues it's journey and suffers a parachute "malfunction", the smashed bits sink to the ocean floor. Meanwhile the people are drifting down under chutes with a good glide ratio and could end up 30 miles from where they jumped. You'll need stealthy gear but that's not that hard--all the main components of a chute are already basically transparent to radar, it's the hardware you need to worry about, as well as the oxygen bottle (they can be made of fiberglass, metal is not essential there) needed for the jump. Doing this will **severely** limit what they can bring with them, though, due to the need to be stealthy. (The jump altitude is because even pure oxygen is useless above 44,000'--it's suits or die. Once they're below that they have to dump cabin pressure and get out and they'll be falling pretty fast so I'm giving them a few thousand feet to do it in. With a **fully** automatic system you could jump from a bit higher altitude but I have a hard time imagining why anyone would build such a system and nothing jury-rigged would be stealthy.)
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One thing about human space flight in the present day is that Mission Control monitors everything and I do mean that. If you ever watched the film "Apollo 13" you'll recall the scene where Mission Control reports about some minor spike in Jim Lovell's vital signs, which is the straw that breaks Lovell's cabin fever, and he rips of the signal monitors ("I don't need the entire western world to know that my god damn kidneys are functioning"). Space Craft are going to be monitored for all sorts of trouble and anything out of the ordinary will get noticed.
Another Problem is that, an escape pod is typically used as an abandoned ship device... the priorty of which isn't "Where to Land" but "Get away from the space ship". It's likely that the pod is alarmed so that if put into emergency seperation mode, it's going to start sending out "Houston, Problem!" signals to NASA. It's probably also going to start a broadcast Mayday signal which is the International Aviation code for priorty communications to anything watching air plane traffic and clearing runways and landing areas for emergency landings. Despite its airplane like shape, the shuttle orbiter (the plane looking part of the entire stack known as the Space Shuttle) never really flew... to quote one famous space man, the orbiter was more "Falling with Style". An escape pod will likely have batter power and rations to survive in the wilderness for some time, and broadcast a signal to the search teams. This would likely be an unencrypted signal as these emergencies aren't really concerned with which nation finds you, so long as someone does. Shuttle aborts include a number of abort to locations, based on position (Spain and Easter Island are two I recall immediately). As well as water ditch (attempted during The Challenger Disaster, but by the time the crew knew something was wrong, it was too late) and the only abort ever used, Abort to Orbit (essentially they cannot achieve the mission orbit but can enter a lower orbit just fine). The best way to ditch SAR teams would be to have the pod come down in a remote area with very little hope to find people and then hope the team in the pod can ellude SAR operations.
Your best bet is to determine where you want the ditch to be, and then get the team's math nut to calculate the window for pod jettison to make the landing. NASA is going to be aware that something is off (They may not know specifically that it's a secret mission but there will be a lot of noise). This may require the services of someone who knows which wires to cut to disable the alarms and tracking features as well as how to override the landing functions (most orbital landings are computer controlled as again, the Orbitor is falling with style.
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### Short answer
Your craft can't even land on Earth, and the defectors explode on re-entry, or they get stuck in space forever and starve to death.
If you suspend reality, the answer you're looking for is:
*Merely by initiating an unannounced landing you already have a headstart*. I tried like to hell to find astronaut recovery times, but I couldn't track any down; which to me implies that pre-planning reduces the time so low that it's not even worth talking about. Recovery teams have already been positioned near the estimated landing zone to shorten recovery time. [For the Apollo 11 mission, the recovery ship was only 7 miles away from splashdown](https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap11fj/26day9-reentry.html) (ctrl+f and type "7 miles"). If you land in a relatively remote region, it would probably take days to find you. If your team was comprised of experienced trackers, they could use their skills to avoid making tracks themselves, and possibly even avoid capture altogether.
EDIT: I just realized days later that I totally forgot to mention, de-orbiting only takes minutes, while it could take hours, even days, to reach your landing spot, depending on the pursuer's method of travel
### Long answer
If you are really serious in acknowledging the "sci" of sci-fi, then the real question you need to ask *yourself* is, can the escape pod even **land on Earth in the first place**. There some factors that need to be accounted for **before** you even worry about stealth (in order of appearance):
* Does the craft have enough fuel to de-orbit? An escape pod using "modern" technology, no matter how cutting-edge it is, would have **one** purpose, keeping the occupants alive as long as possible so they can be rescued. They would not waste space with engines, fuel storage, flight controls, and navigation. The ejection system might be able to de-orbit the craft, but what if it can't? You are either stuck in high orbit around Earth and will need rescue, or you are stuck in low earth orbit and need rescue, which, while the orbit does decay, it could take years and the occupants would be dead long before then
* Does the craft have systems to deal with re-entry heat? It's very easy to burn up when entering our atmosphere. Air resistance is not a joke, it will kill you **quickly** and **easily**
* Does the craft have lift surfaces to provide aerodynamic control, ie wings and ailerons? You might get away with having no propulsion, but unless you're really lucky, you will need these to land in a good place and **avoid hitting things**, which would kill you. Probably not, because "modern" early-tech escape pods would be little more than a pressurized can with a bunch of food in it, and a communications device, or perhaps even just a transponder
* Can the craft even survive crash landing
* Are the occupants skilled enough to disable the automatic SOS that is sure to activate immediately after the pod is engaged?
The operation you're describing would require a highly-specialized, purpose-built craft.
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One other way to get in undetected would be to shoot a great big empty escape pod slowly over an area that is heavily covered in radars, and then send a small pod down somewhere remote. The first escape pod would attract all the attention of the satellites and radars, and they might not notice a little tiny blip off in some dark corner.
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This is an interesting question that made me want to look into the B-2 stealth bomber, but then dicovering that the B-21 Stealth Bomber is coming and very top secret.
<https://youtu.be/Tokg7iIvfQk>
The above link talks about the B-21 Stealth bomber, and indicates that its own radar capabilities sort of "fill in the gaps" for ground based radar. It can only be detected by infrared sensors at extremly close proximity. The narrator describes it as basically having to search the entire sky looking through a straw. Could it be as simple as having a stealth escape pod which could spoof it's own visibility reporting? Such an elite ship that you descibe could potentially also be the best data collection asset that the ground has to fill in line of sight needed to even track it. Good old fashioned sabotage is always plausable if you were to be launchging from the only thing that could potentially detect the launch. Perhaps timed with a solar flare or some other kind of celestial phenomenon that may give a decent blackout period with an unsuspicious cause for a system black out, the escape pod launches. Introducing some sort of software virus to the motherships system to loop back applicable telemetry prior to the launch/and blackout can keep the launch indefinately indetectable. Sort of like playing a loop of routine security camera footage during the heist.
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Telescopes for observing the spacecraft typically have a narrow depth of focus as the magnification increases. If the escape pod can manage to be undetected when it detaches from the spaceship, the further it moves away from the plane of the spacecraft, the harder it is to recognize as an escape pod -- it gets all fuzzy and blurry.
So if the spaceship can rotate so the escape pod is occluded from view of the telescopes until it is out of the imaging plane it will be hard to see.
Also, any telescopes watching it will be tracking the spaceship, so if the escape slows or speeds up it will not be in the field of view of the telescopes watching the spaceship.
Lastly, radar. That's a hard one unless the escape pod is actually hard to detect naturally. As has been pointed out they are made to be found, but maybe that is by the radar reflectors and transponders that are installed in them. If that is the case, removing the reflectors and turning off the transponders can help get the escape pod through the radar net. Then, maybe, they time their departure to coincide with an increase in the space junk field.
From my research for a short story I wrote, the orbital debris is tracked and cataloged, and tied to the launch or vehicle that created it. The catalog is available at NASA if you wanted to pick and reference a specific glob of space metal that escapes pod uses to hide from radar.
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Depending on your level of technology, you might be able to drop vertically, rather than at an angle as re-entry currently does. By use of propulsion and suitable craft design you might be able to do this fairly stealthily.
The mother ship is in orbit (so travelling at, say 17,000 mph ground speed). In order to re-enter, todays craft end up hitting the upper atmosphere at something like that speed, the friction slows them down, and eventually parachutes (or I guess retro-rockets) slow down the decent enough for a touch down that doesn't kill the people inside. It's quite a spectacle to watch, and covers a relatively large amount of the globe.
However, if your escape pod were to use propulsion to reduce its ground speed to near zero, whilst maintaining altitude, then it "only" has about 100km to fall to land on the ground. That fall could further be managed by propulsion such that it caused no excessive heating in the craft (so no 'burning meteor' in the sky), and further more the view of it would be constrained to a relatively small amount of the surface of the earth. This does pre-suppose that you have a means of propulsion that uses a very compact source of fuel and doesn't create a visible 'jet' of propellant like chemical rockets do. You'd also probably want to coat your craft in stealth material and whatnot to thwart radar and other tracking systems.
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1) If the pod is small enough from the viewing perspective, it should escape most forms of detection meant for large ships. So you can try the idea of minimal radar cross-section, basically a needle shaped escape pod.
2) If there is some form of energy fluctuation detection, then you can use randomized impulse thrust to guide the pod. Or even better a one time thrust in the vicinity of the large ship to mask the energy fluctuation.
3) The large ship itself should create a blind spot depending on where the observers are positioned.
4) Disguise the pod as trash can ejected in space, but that depends on status of space garbage in your story. Cuz currently, there are lot of space debris surrounding earth.
5) How about having the people dive individually wrapped in some heat shielding material while carrying some small thrusters/jetpack ? A good way to build tension on who would survive, kill some people, set up some sacrifice scenes, etc. They should be able to land in the ocean undetected because of the tiny size.
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In the fantasy world I am writing, I have several species, including my [dozing bear farmers](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/189754/would-a-hibernating-bear-men-society-face-issues-from-unattended-farmlands-in-w) you may have already read of, but also much smaller, mouse-looking humanoids. These people are taller than real-world mouses, but are still struggling to reach an adult human's waist, especially younger ones who may only reach the knees.
I'm concerned that my little ones have some difficulty living among taller species, especially when wandering in cosmopolitan cities, where space may be lacking to store bulky, different pieces of furniture for them, and/or where wildly public differences in treatments between races is frowned upon. Mouse people can walk quite fast for their size, so they should have no issues regarding long distances. **But height is much more of an issue, especially in order to access and use furniture, such as the ones when resting in a tavern.**
Indeed, accessing chairs or tables is strenuous because you will need to climb up every time you want to sit, and climb down every time you finished what you wanted to do. I've got this part of the problem mostly sorted out, since mouse people are pretty adept at climbing (for most of them, at least), and I have devised several contraptions like chair's ladders to cheer a leader up to the top, and this while hiding it relatively well into a decoration style.
**What bothers me more is how they use it once they are in place.** Even though they have easy access to their seat, if they can only see the table's border when standing up, their happiness won't be standing really high, neither. Therefore, something must be made for these poor little ones!
## So what highest-quality objects would you, clever furniture designers, invent for two species of different size?
**Namely, pieces of furniture for a medieval-fantasy inn's dining room where you will have lunch and start your usual tavern brawls1**. Don't worry about bedrooms and bathrooms, I should be able to think something up once I have a nice and cozy approach. Usable technology can include most mechanical / physic components you can think of, excluding electricity and other (post-)industrial age energies as well as magic since that's a little overkill for this issue.
Here are some specific goals that must be achieved :
* **It should be comfortable enough for the two sizes.**
* **People of different sizes should be able to stay together.** You can have lunch with your human buddy if you want to.
* **No one should need external help for most tasks**, aside from specific ones you do anyway like asking for that salt cellar at the other side of the table.
* **Proper hygiene prevents you from walking on where you eat**, however, you can put your feet on where you would normally sit, and you can bend over the table like a kid trying to reach a far-away cookie pot, too.
* **I'd rather have customers not be on the floor**. I have already thought of Japanese kotatsus and cushions in an oriental fashion, so I'd like to see other ideas instead. If you think this condition cannot be fulfilled, well... Tell why and your idea then. It would be sad but I can understand!
And a little bonus is given if you can keep it relatively hidden, like for instance as decoration! You're not forced to hide it, but as I said, ostentatious differences in treatment would not be really well perceived by other races, so it would be nice if you could.
*1 : If you dare to make your pieces of furniture help in brawls, the innkeeper will be very sad, but it will be really fun.*
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Don't build up, build down.
The mouse people can use mouse sized chairs which are placed next to large but low tables. The Bears don't sit on the ground, instead you have in ground chairs / sofas.
Admittedly, this may be more expensive to set up and does not provide you with good tools for a brawl. But you may get mouse people thrown down the Bear Chairs.
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### Convertible furniture
Here are the seats that are spread around the table:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PLpSS.png)
That's sized for the large animal to sit on comfortably. The base of the seat is low enough that the big animals thighs can fit comfortably under the table.
Back view:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cqqmT.png)
If the small animal wishes to use the seat, they can climb the ladder.
The back of the seat rotates around the pictured dowel. It's back heavy (so doesn't fall and hit the big animals back), but when given a little push on the thing I painted purple (within the strength of a typical little animal):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PSCC1.png)
The centre of balance crosses the centre of rotation and the chair back comes down. The small animal pushes from the centre, with the convenience hole to ensure they don't ruin their hairstyle. They climb up and take a seat:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6CMz7.png)
A smaller animal can now sit with waist at table height, and because they have thinner bodies - much closer to the table.
The design actually has two small animal back rests - this is so that 2 small animals fill the space of one large one - so the a table of small animals don't have to sit so far away from each other.
The chair is now stable in the small animal configuration. Should a large animal later which to use the chair, they just need to lift the back up.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1a4bJ.png)
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**Use the walls.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kq1U7.jpg)
<https://www.catastrophicreations.com/getting-started-guide/designing-cat-wall/>
Your mouse people face many of the same tribulations as cats. Cats live with large, uncautious humans and rambunctious dogs and kids. That is fine in small doses but not when it is time to eat, or sleep, or socialize in the cat manner with friend cats. Cats need a refuge and they can find it in the underused high spaces on walls.
So too your mice. Common rooms in the world have high ceilings because that helps with ventilation. The consequent high walls are underused by the large bear people for whom ladders seem risky; stairs are bad enough. The walls are the province of the mouse people. They will not be trodden upon or worse, fallen on by inebriated bear people. Everything is sized appropriately for them up there. Vertical transitions are fine and so the entire vertical space can be used as depicted in this cat wall. The bears trundle by beneath, mostly unnoticed.
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# Multi-Purpose furniture
You need furniture to handle customers of all sort of sizes and shapes.
So you build it strong enough for the heaviest customer,
and include features that allow it to be used by the smaller ones, to.
Example: A Tavern table with chairs for your Inn.
Chair: The big guy sits on the lower shelf, the midget sits on top. And has steps to make getting there easy! Feel free to include more than just the 2 levels.
(Also note the convenient tail-hole, for customers with rearward appendages)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FZXJfm.jpg)or [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WtTmRm.jpg)
For the table itself, a simple, ***low*** sturdy wooden table.
Low, so that small and medium-sized individuals can reach it comfortably.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2qbEK.jpg)
"But that is **too low** for us BIG FOLK!", the Bear complains.
Well *of course* it is.
That is why you serve the Big Folk's food and drink on a Bear-sized serving tray, which you put on top of the table in front of them.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UwHr8.png)
You could of course makes separate, designated areas for each of the sizes. But that is uneconomical, and just downright RUDE. This is a Happy Place, where Big and Small (and medium) are all welcome to mingle!
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**Very high chairs**
For humans, the problem of adults and children dining together is solved with high chairs and booster seats. In your case the sizes of dining guests are more diverse. The requirement that they should be able to sit together means that they have to share the same table, and we can play only with the seat height.
The tables in the tavern should accommodate the largest species. The seats would be adjustable. Medium sized guests would simply push their chair higher - but for the smallest guests extra large chairs would be too uncomfortable. They would need to put adequate sized boosters on top of big chairs. Several mouse-sized guests can sit side by side in their own boosters on top of one big chair.
Also, big chairs must be climbable for small guests.
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**Tables on tables.**
Tables and chairs are human-sized. Bears are large enough to stand at the table at the same level as sitting humans. [Here we see a grizzly bear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiivKNVU8P4) beside a lawn chair. It's about the right height to have a conversation with a sitting human.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Vu1W.png)
Later on the bear sits down and the head doesn't change height. So sitting on cushions is also an option.
Bears take up more space behind the table. Just use moveable tables in case you have more/fewer bears on any given day.
Small humanoids sit on top of the table at a smaller table and chairs set.
Case study: The Bee Movie.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V7a2R.jpg)
Second Case study:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eG2Um.png)
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Make your human sized chairs with short arm rests that extend two thirds of the length of the seats and a back rest that has a hinge just above the arm rests ( with a locking pin on the side to keep the back rest upright when a human is sitting in it.
When a mouse person uses it, they pull up the pin and fold down the upper section so it rests on the arm rests forming a higher seat and can place their feet on the protruding last third of the human sized seat.
As for bar fights, if you leave an edge or handle to help flip the mouse seat back up to back rest position, an idiot trying to start a fight can slap a heavy hand down on this protrusion at the back of the mouse seat, flipping it up and launching the poor mouse into the air ...
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Leather (from local animal skins) inflated trapped air chairs around a table/bar. Using a sprawling web of compressed air filled pipes and contraptions to inflate and deflate the durable and flexible material chairs. A heavier bear farmer would be comfortable in a fairly deflated chair while still being hygienically off of the floor. Mouse people could be given the height,support and equal status at full inflation to sit eye to eye with their companions, given free movement and access to tables without obstruction. Everyone takes a moment to get settled in these types of chairs.
I would suggest a valve to let air out, allowing a mouse to climb on at their height, close the valve and wait a short while for it to inflate to the desired height of their companions. And open a valve again to descend.
They would be more likely to survive tavern brawls and once deflated easy to pack away if needed. Depending on the type of tavern and whether brawls are encouraged pipes can be hidden or on decorative show.
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Imagine a canvas director’s chair. A wooden X frame, two wooden armrests, and a canvas seat and back. Now, remove each wooden armrest and replace with a tiny director’s chair. Call this object a mouse-bear chair. A bear sits in the “director’s seat”, places their arms in the canvas “armrests”, and places their stuff on the floor. A mouse sits in the “armrests”, and places their stuff on the “director’s chair”. You have one object that either seats one bear or two mice (and their stuff). Let’s call this object a “mouse-bear chair”.
Now imagine a typical bar. A long slab of wood with a series of stools. But instead of stools, you have “mouse-bear chairs”. If you have a bar with three “mouse-bear chairs”, you can sit three bears, or six mice, or some combination (if the bears and mice are willing to share personal space).
Everyone eats off the same surface (the bar). Bears put their butts on the canvas “director’s seat”. Mice put their butts on the canvas “director’s armrests”. Anyone with a tail is free to wiggle that tail. Bears put their feet on the floor. Mice let their feet dangle, or might have special built-in footrests in posh places. Bears could use a “mouse-bear chair” like a fancy chair in a brawl. Mice would treat a “mouse-bear chair” as a huge heavy cafeteria bench in a brawl. Beware the mouse that could lift one of these things!
No feet touch the bar.
Noone has to sit on the floor.
Noone has to awkwardly ask for special help or equipment to eat their meal.
The only problem is if a bear doesn’t push their chair in after leaving the bar, and the next (mouse) customer has trouble either moving the mouse-bear chair or reaching the bar. This would be very poor form on the bear’s part. Rude!
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how about extra wide armrests for the bigger population, that can serve as seating for the smaller ones. you could quite easily imagine some sort of small-person-backrest that folds away into the armrest when used by a big guy.
The small guys are gonna have issues moving their chairs once seated, but I think that's hard to avoid. some sort of sliding mechanism on the armrest could mitigate this somewhat, possibly adding wheels to something similar what a modern day drawer would have, if you don't think that's too advanced for your medieval setting.
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So many answers! It was sooo hard to decide which one helped me the most. Still, thanks to all of them (thanks!), they oiled a few cogs in my brain and ideas started flowing in. So I thought people looking at this question behind me would like to see more concepts. Here are two more solutions with my drawings to show what it would look like, roughly.
## The sit-in table
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vSwbu.jpg)
This solution is a table extension, working as a seat instead. One has to pull it out using sliders -or rotating hinges- in order to sit on it. Any small one can then reach it with the existing seat.
The design limits the table's legs location, but otherwise it can be really well hidden under or inside the table (as most extensions do), and a lock can be added to prevent the seat to slide back, pinching the legs of the unfortunate ones sitting on it.
## The swing seat
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jO6VB.jpg)
This concept is based on swings like ones in gardens. Instead of having that annoying leg on the bottom, put a retractable one on the top! Then use a pulley system to rise or to lower the seat. Here, it is on the side for more clarity, but it could be incorporated on the chair with a wheel that could be turned, for instance.
The biggest issue is that it makes harder to move seats around, but on the positive side, it's easier to clean the floor. While it could seem so, climbing it isn't that hard if you put small holes like I did on the seat's front and with proper weight balancing.
*Note from the bartender : Swinging chairs around the tavern can lead to injuries, and is therefore **strictly** forbidden. Also, you are **not** "the hero striking the evil lord" when you leap from a swinging chair and on other customers while in an inebriated state.*
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[Question]
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**Dateline**: 2067
**Setting**: A research base at the bottom of the [Marianas Trench](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench)
**Depth**: 10,000 meters.
**Mission Duration**: Thirty days
A research base lies at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, housing 10-12 scientists of both sexes and a cat.
The mission starts well, the team have trained together for months, and they're tight knit. At least they thought they were...
One by one, they start to die, and it becomes obvious that their deaths are not accidental.
**Question**:
What would be a reasonable prime purpose of this research mission? For what reason would a dozen scientists be sent to the bottom of the ocean for a month where a robot/scans would not be appropriate?
[Answer]
**Mars practice.**
I hope someone remembers Pauly Shore and Biodome, and thinks about that movie often. In any case, a reasonable premise for this deep sea mission could be practice for a prolonged space mission on the moon, Mars or elsewhere. This was the original goal behind [Biosphere 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2): a contained environment where teams could practice for long extraterrestrial assignments.
One could make a case that the ISS could better serve in this role but there are any number of reasons why a practice run like this might not be doable in the ISS. Maybe ISS is reserved for months in advance, or the microgravity means it is a poor simulation, or it does not allow cats.
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> What would be a reasonable prime purpose of this research mission? For what reason would a dozen scientists be sent to the bottom of the ocean for a month?
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Study of the Xenophyophores down there - we don't know very much about them and a study of how they are able to survive such immense pressures would be of plausible scientific value. Some of the ones identified as living down there are as big as 10cm across! That's pretty noteworthy.
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Claustrophobia, particularly the Cabin fever/stir crazy form - it's a an oldy-but-a-goody. Wiki describes the symptoms of being "stir crazy" as including "elevated and often increasing levels of anxiety, frustration, agitation, fidgeting, manic depressive type mood swings, and accessory episodes of acting out impulsively or otherwise antisocially on those feelings," combined with the description on the Cabin Fever article of "a distrust of anyone they are with" and that sounds like a recipe for a bit of good old fashioned homicide amongst "friends". Not everyone is affected by these things and if a member of the team were prone to such effects and it were missed during the pre-mission pysch screenings (maybe they even lied a little to get on the mission?) it could easily only affect one or two people sufficiently to cause them to go homicidal.
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> What would be a reasonable prime purpose of this research mission?
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# Science. Pick your poison:
1. Marine Biology
2. Geology
3. Deep See Ecology
4. Habitation
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> For what reason would a dozen scientists be sent to the bottom of the ocean for a month where a robot/scans would not be appropriate?
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# For the same reasons why human exploration of space usually trumps robotic exploration.
First of all, the belief or presumption that unmanned robotics are, and will always be, more efficient explorers of [place we wish to explore] is **intrinsically flawed**. This topic has been covered in academia [[1](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1203/1203.6250.pdf)], media [[2](https://astrobites.org/2012/03/29/dispelling-the-myth-of-robotic-efficiency-why-astronomers-should-support-human-exploration-of-the-solar-system/), [3](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/robots-vs-humans-who-should-explore/)] with respect to Space, and many of the same reasons apply here. I grant that in many cases, robotic exploration is better; however, there are many reasons why human exploration may or will be preferred. Fundamentally it boils down to the long term goals and the available resources, and the long term ROI. For example, robotics is not always cheaper than human exploration. Here's quick list of broad (and paraphrased) reasons supporting human exploration over robotic exploration:
1. On-the-spot decision making.
2. Flexibility. Robots can't be redesigned to observe or respond unexpected phenomena.
3. Enhanced mobility and attendant opportunities (Something broke? Can't climb that [obstacle]? Remember when Spirit [got stuck](https://www.space.com/6740-spirit-stuck-insidious-invisible-rover-trap-mars.html)?).
4. Increased efficiency in sample collection and sample return capacity.
5. Increased potential for large-scale exploratory activities.
6. Increased potential and capacity for deployment and maintenance of complex equipment.
7. The development of a infrastructure capable of supporting further scientific applications.
[Answer]
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> What would be a reasonable prime purpose of this research mission? For what reason would a dozen scientists be sent to the bottom of the ocean for a month where a robot/scans would not be appropriate?
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It's not the easiest to do a scientific reason here as by 2067 there shouldn't be too much we can't do through robotics that a human could do easier. That being said, I'd shift the reason from pure science...ya science can be a secondary reason, but the primary reason is more like the reason we stepped on the moon. To prove to the rest of the world we could.
I'd go with PR. This is some nation setting out to prove they can, either to show up a competitor nation or simply bragging rights. "We have the technology to go anywhere, including the Mariana trench". There can be some 'tourism' reasons coming along as well, just as 'space tourism' will come about, proving the technology can allow millionaires to see whatever is in the trench could also be a reason. In the end, it's just about proving we can.
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> What physiological reason could there be for one (or two) members of the research team to kill others, but for that same cause not to affect any other member of the team?
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The fun part of using a PR reason is you've now introduced the 'sabotage' motive...a well hidden spy sabotaging the mission. Someone intentionally planted in the group with the idea of making the entire 'prove we can' fail.
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You could take inspiration from the game *Subnautica*. In the game, the player crash lands on an alien planet which is covered with water. While trying to survive, he learns that the aliens that used to live on the planet had been wiped out by a virulent disease. They had been researching various lifeforms on the planet in the hopes of finding one that was resistant to the disease, so that they could extract that resistance and save their species. Most of their research was done thousands of meters underwater, because that's where the most promising creatures lived.
In your situation, the scientists could be researching anything about the local fauna, as long as they need physical samples for their tests - anything from blood work to actual live specimens. Robots and scans might be able to determine general information about the creatures, but they would probably not be able to retrieve these samples without damaging them (after all, removing the samples from their natural high-pressure environment could cause some crucial piece of info being lost somehow), so the only logical conclusion is that research has to be done manually and on-site.
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We would like to build underwater buildings with internal pressures of 100 atmospheres or more, which reduces the strength needed by the outer hull to keep the water out. A hydrogen-oxygen-helium mixture works, but hydrogen is a narcotic at those pressures. A special narcotics-blocking agent will supposedly allow people to function normally, but must pass Phase II trials to assess its effectiveness and side effects.
The scientists will use an abandoned military facility at the bottom of the Marianas Trench to save on costs, and because it happens to have built-in mechanisms capable of supporting 100 atmospheres of pressure.
Bummer - it turns out that long term side-effects of the drug include paranoid delusions. Bonus: the scientists would like to discontinue its use, but they have found cracks in the facility's hull and must keep the air pressure high to avoid collapse. It's going to be a long month.
<https://www.divecompare.com/blog/different-gases-used-for-diving/>
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Trying to find a different rational, this is a military experiment to create ultra deep diving submarines and UUV's.
While current submarines are technologically very advanced, they are generally limited as to how deep they can dive. This essentially limits their ability to hide from detection to a limited "slice" of the ocean, perhaps akin to being limited to being able to hide on the skin of an apple.
With various rumoured developments in submarine detection being touted, it seems clear that some advance or combination of advances will eventually make the idea of hiding just under the surface of the water untenable. However, since the ocean is many kilometres deep, being able to operate in the entire 3 dimensional universe of the oceans means the volume which needs to be searched increases immensely, and probably beyond the ability of even the latest technologic to reliable track and locate enemy submarines.
The test, then is to put proposed systems for new generations of military submarines to the test, and the researchers are under contract to the Navy in order to test out this equipment under the sorts of conditions submariners may encounter. To this end, the sea lab is not just a scale model, but the researchers need to test equipment under simulated battle drills (i.e. could the crew work this under stressful conditions), ramping up the pressure to perform, but also to validate the technologies that some of these researchers have developed.
Failure means the end of lucrative research grants and possible contracts with General-Raytheon-Lockheed-Boeing-Colt-Oshkosh Co Ltd., so the stress is enough to push people hard, and inevitably some of them may be pushed the wrong way......
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**Politics & International Law**
Currently, a nation's [Exclusive Economic Zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone) is defined to extend out 200 nautical miles from a nation's coast. This already leads to all sorts of hijinks--see [China's island building](https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/2/17/14642818/china-south-china-sea-us-islands)/claiming in the Pacific ocean or [Russia's settlement on Svalbard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx_2SVm9Jgo) in order to legitmize claims. The Russian settlement on Svalbard is particularly *apropos*: a country propping up a mine and tourism industry with failing revenue in order to legitimize a claim to opening shipping and mining regions within the arctic.
Perhaps in the future, as the viability of undersea settlements becomes feasible, it behooves nations to maintain ocean-floor settlements as the definition was expanded by a UN Charter in 2059 to redefine a nation's exclusive economic zone. Concurrently with advances in deep sea living have come advances in mineral extraction / deep sea delicacies / ocean-floor agriculture. As such, nations must maintain *and prove* that their ocean floor settlements are continuously inhabited and thus part of the nation---just leaving robots or flags in an area is insufficient to meet the requirements of the new UN charter. After the signing of the new treaty, there was a gold rush of nations rushing to establish "[homesteads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts)" on the ocean floor. Even though the pay is reasonable, the concept of living in an ocean-floor settlement for the sole purpose of geopolitical claims appeals to only a certain psychological profile. Perhaps some nations are having a hard time recruiting and resort to commuting prison sentences in exchange for inhabiting such colonies (or even establishing prison colonies on the ocean floor...).
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I'm not curious about what the 12 scientists are doing there, I'm curious about the cat. The "cat" could actually be a prototype of an artificial lifeform designed to survive that intense pressure. Now you've got yourself a plot...
How you design an artificial lifeform to survive that pressure - you're going to have to think hard about the physics of that, because it's likely to be non-trivial.
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If you want a reason both why they are down there and why it is not widely known (and perhaps why there are hidden psychological pressures, c.f. HAL's breakdown in 2001), then try this.
Somebody was doing marine biology down there, and hooked something which does not appear to be terrestrial life as we know it. Just a nearly mindless worm, but its biochemistry is really interesting. Different amino acids, or different DNA encoding, or something like that.
Evidence of visiting aliens?! Or just something left over from before LUCA, separated from surface life by a need for extreme pressure? Anyway, the powers that be really do not want the public getting to know about this, before they understand it and its implications.
Choose harmless two-point-five-billion-year old living fossil, if you *just* want an excuse.
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Of course no humans would be sent, but a robot. Because, as you state correctly, a robot can work much better in that environment.
The first robot they sent didn't come back.
The second robot they sent to search for the first floated to the surface a week later. It was not damaged, and had been switched off.
This is a first contact mission.
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> What would be a reasonable prime purpose of this research mission? For what reason would a dozen scientists be sent to the bottom of the ocean for a month where a robot/scans would not be appropriate?
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**There is none,** robots are more effective at scientific data collection down there than humans so there is no value at sending humans.
The premise of this plot is flawed conceptually. 30 days is way to short to acclimate to the pressure differences. Deep sea divers on oil rigs spend months in pressure chambers before and after their operational stint. It is also extremely risky where an accident can result in fatality or long term injury. Sending scientists is infeasible when scientists are better used analyzing data instead of doing dangerous hands on work.
What would more likely be the case is you have a dozen technicians sent down there to maintain equipment and do detail work machines cant yet do. However, at these pressures the human body cannot be acclimated to survive without an external vehicle (like a futuristic mech dive suit).
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> What physiological reason could there be for one (or two) members of the research team to kill others, but for that same cause not to affect any other member of the team?
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In these situations the common conditional occurrence is called "Cabin Fever". Essentially when a human trapped in a confined space with limited social exposure for long periods, certain predisposed minds can snap in violent and/or psychotic ways. This rarely happens in deep sea or space missions anymore as candidates usually undergo psych evaluations to prevent exactly this scenario.
So you would have to go with the cop out solution which is Person A suddenly decides he hates everyone because they small funny (or whatever) and does something about it.
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The scientists are in an underwater prison. They have all committed crimes that would normally have sent them to a maximum security prison, but instead, they had the option of spending 6 months of every year in a facility from which there is really no escape.
The scientists may be studying deep-sea oil extraction, or new organisms that were found, or even the effects of extreme claustrophobia on extremely intelligent people.
It could even be something totally unrelated to the ocean, like figuring out how to weaponize some particular toxins or diseases. If the experiments go wrong, the lab is already sealed off as far as possible, at least according to the government official who authorized this secret base. All the staff are expendable prisoners, so there is no down side. Until you contaminate the entire ocean.
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Could be an effort to battle [terror from the deep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM:_Terror_from_the_Deep).
**In short:** Aliens have come to earth, and they are hiding out building bases on the ocean beds, sometimes striking out attacking human cities, abducting people et.c. We simply have to hunt them down in the deep to protect ourselves (or we die later anyway when they attack us on land).
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[Question]
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Water does not exist. The two main liquids are lava, and some kind of "life essence" (let's call it mana).
One random day, a rock solidified with the ability to produce mana through photosynthesis, and life appeared (only mineral lifeforms, nothing organic). Every living thing pretty much looks like a rock patchwork, glued and animated by mana.
Life evolved, humanoids appear, and reach an age where they are able to produce, extract, and use mana as energy through industrialization.
However, since nothing is organic, there's no wool or anything to produce fabric.
What would be an easy, cheap way to produce a fabric-like material ?
I'm fine with magic, but it needs to be plausible.
[Answer]
## Asbestos
Sure, we're familiar with asbestos for its carcinogenic tendencies, but that's only the case in organic life forms; your silicon-based ones probably wouldn't have a problem with it.
[Asbestos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos) is a set of naturally occurring minerals that produce long, flexible fibres. These fibres can be spun or woven into fabric with relative easy (easier with some forms than with others).
## Glass fibre
Much like asbestos, [glass fibre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_fiber) consists of long, thin, flexible strands. It too can be woven into a fabric or wool - indeed, if you've ever looked at the insulation in your walls or your attic, you've probably got plenty of glass fibre right there. It's flexible and very practical, and it can either occur naturally or be manufactured.
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# Basalt fiber
It is a [common material](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber), found anywhere there are volcanoes on Earth. It is stronger than fiberglass, requires only melting and extruding as preparation (no chemical processes), and has a filament size 2-3 times that of asbestos so it doesn't cause cancer (may or may not be problem as Werrf said).
Plus it makes everyone on your world look like they are wire shielded against EMP.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CDAjZ.jpg)
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**Metal fibres**
A fabric is something woven or knitted out of fibres. We as humans prefer fibres from animal or vegetal sources for various reasons, but mineral (like Werff proposed) or metal fibers can be made into a fabric just as easily.
To some degree, you could say that chainmail is already a fabric made of metal.
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They are living rocks. What use would they have for a fabric?
If they they want to make themselves look pretty, maybe use paint. Heck, if they have some electrical knowledge, they could use electroplating to cover part or all of themselves with gold or some other metal.
If you absolutely need a fabric, asbestos wouldn't work well. The fibers would break pretty quickly. I would go with glass fibers (they can take a bit of bending) or, better yet, metal fibers. I'd use gold or steel since they can both take a lot of repeated bending.
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The animals themselves have some kind of flexible outer skin, right? To suppliment their own skin, intelligent beings will first turn to animal skins and leather.
What kind of chemistry+magic allows this skin to exist? Living animals and plants might serve as feedstock, e.g. primitive humans learned to extract collogen and produce geleton from it. They made ropes from animal tendons, and other internal parts.
More advanced cultures will take advantage of the same stuff (whatever chemistry+magic forms permit the existence of these materials) to refine and eventually synthesize their own with desired properties.
So, the details depend on the rules of that universe. But consider an analogy of boiling bones or connective tissues between the hard plates of killed animals, to get the fiberous component out.
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Maybe there could be asteroids made out of wool or cotton, and the rock people have to launch rockets to do space mining so that they can wear clothes. As an added bonus, this would enable you to add a cool subplot about space mining.
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Light-weight carbon fiber acts like cloth.
Kevlar or similar materials might also be possible.
See also:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fiber>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiberglass>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_fiber>
for more potential ideas.
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If the issue is about garments; for status, affiliations, and the like, then why not simply state so? In the pulps, Burroughs' Barsoom had people going about completely naked save for jewelry and weapons, which served as symbols of power and status; no mention of clothing to cover the body, just accessories for social purposes...
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[Question]
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The setting I'm working on is in terms of tech levels and society best comparable to early 20th century Earth. But with several big differences. One being the existence necromancy and mad science that is used to turn human corpses into undead laborers.
It generally speaking isn't in dispute that the Undead are just biological automata.
Once they're out of the morgue they can more or less work a plantation or assembly line all day, and stop only to rest and eat nutrient slop without ever so much as a grunt of discontent.
They're also fairly invaluable as a result. As the undead automate a lot of menial and tedious labor that most people don't want to deal with, while also allowing for a level of extra wealth to be passed around.
However their existence does raise certain dilemmas.
In real life a high mortality rate is a drain on the economy. People can't be workers if they're dead
But here, a higher death toll in this world means more compliant and obedient undead laborers and their economic benefits.
For example I can easily see nations not seeing a higher mortality rate as a bad thing since that creates a surplus of menial labor for their economy. I can also see governments being more liberal with their use of the death penalty for such purposes.
Or scandals like hospitals getting paid under the table to set up a corpse to workforce pipeline.
What kind of policies and reforms could be advocated for that would allow for an ethical use of undead labor without the perverse incentives that would demand the creation of more dead human bodies?
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**Legislation mandating the undead opt-in before death.**
It's like an organ donor card on steroids. Make it illegal to use the bodies unless people signed legal documentation allowing their bodies to be used prior to their deaths. Require employers keep this documentation on hand for tax purposes. It should provide traceability back to the living person with a notorized signature attesting to sound mind and lack of coercion.
Balance this by requiring relatives or close friends to also sign documents, and give copies to everyone. Supplement with severe enough punishments to deter all but the most unsavory characters.
Of course you don't want a bureaucracy to hold up employment of the undead, so don't make it too complicated for your story. Just put in enough believable documentation. Model it after organ donation, so this whole process is easier to believe being based on something real.
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## The Labor of the Dead is the Inheritance of the Living
The profit (or at least the majority of it) from the bodies goes to the surviving relatives. This of course leads to a certain amount of inimical nepotism (my brother is worth more to me dead) but at least the extra deaths happen on much smaller scales than if the governing body was primarily responsible for welfare...
[Answer]
## The Zombies degrade over time
Making zombies capable of performing complex set of movement is not only just tedious and complicated, it also carries a set of drawbacks. First, each zombie consumes some sort of energy for its mere existence, and while its supply is vast, it can be drained out, making zombies either slower or malfunctioning if not supplied with "necromantic power". Second, a zombie is a dead thing, or "once dead", and whatever decay processes a dead body undegoes normally are only slowed in a dead body and not completely stopped. Or stopped, but since a dead body is not repairing itself (otherwise it'll be a *living* body!), a zombie gets damaged over its afterlife by normal wear and tear, eventually becoming damaged beyond use.
Next, the ability to herd zombies might also be limited, both by abundance of living zombie controllers and by the zombies' stubbornness that grows over time as they lose bits of their brains to various sources of damage. Say you can tell a zombie to "dig", and it will dig, but should the zombie's shovel break, it would swing its arms in a digging manner not noticing it had lost its instrument. Or worse, it would start digging with its arms, damaging them in the process. Should the overseer not notice a problem with one of his zombies in time, that zombie's usefulness would be permanently lowered.
In short, you need to limit your zombies' afterlife-time or functionality to create the need to replace them over time faster than the living people could repopulate. This would naturally limit their availability and usefulness, preventing abuse of your "perverse incentives", they would not launch en masse, or the government that would first attempt to convert their populace to zombies would fall apart to labor crisis after a while.
PS: your zombies as you depict them are *better* than living people, they look like they can perform decently complex daily motion set, they can *control themselves* which "normal" fantasy zombies cannot, they know what to eat and not go at people roaring "brainnnns", and they don't object to what they are ordered to do. This is your main problem, your enterprise management would prefer dead over living. Since you can't make the living better, you need to make the dead worse.
[Answer]
You don't go into detail about it, but...
**Your culture embraces using their dead as ~~golems~~ ~~robots~~ ~~slaves~~ convenient inexpensive labor, so they won't complain when they're destroyed**
While it's always true that the law is slow to catch up to any (\*ahem\*) *innovation,* it will eventually. Legal disputes about unfair trade practices,1 untraceable murders,2 ownership,3 corporate accountability,4 and activism5 will lead to the inevitably complex set of regulations and rules that govern how zombies are used (from creation to disposal). I suggest using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a model for structure, regulation, policy, and implementation.
So, with death meaning so little to people, the law will focus on one thing: cremation manages the workforce.
* So-called "civil" violations (e.g., unfair trade practices) lead to the cremation of the zombies.
* So-called "criminal" violations (e.g., a warden padding his pockets by setting up a prisoner-to-zombie pipeline) lead to the cremation of the *perpetrator.* Which means that any contracts the perp may have made for "after-life services" are null-and-void. (If you're thinking, "wow, something like burning down my house would really screw up my [reverse mortgage](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-is-a-reverse-mortgage-en-224/)!" you're understanding the value of this threat.)
You don't just lose your life, you lose your future.
*And if you really want to take this to the next level, consider using the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank as a model for an organization that controls zombies to control the economy in the same way The Fed controls interest rates. In other words, nobody owns zombies... they rent them from the government. And when the economy gets too hot, the government cremates enough zombies to cool it off. If you're looking for Social Commentary to underscore your story, the use of zombies to express the ineffectiveness vs. the necessity of the Federal Reserve System would work really well... and it would be both horrifying and hilarious at the same time.*
---
1 *"You have more zombies than I do and that's unfair!"*
2 *"Chief, this dude's got no fingers... how do I check for prints?" ... "I dunno. This was all so much easier when I was your age. Back then we only had to deal with gangs and political assassinations. Committing a crime meant something back then! Yesiree! When you hauled a perp in and slammed him against a desk, he'd look you in the eye and you knew, you knew! that he was only angry 'cause he got caught! Not like these zombies nowadays. Don't care if they're caught or not. Just stand there in jail, doin' a whole lotta nothin' but decomposing."*
3 *"That's my grandma we're talkin' about! Why can that guy own her and not me! She's family! Was family... You know what I mean!"*
4 *"Sir, a crane fell yesterday and some seventy of our zombies were destroyed." ... "Hmmm? Wha'd you... oh... well, let accounting know and... what's this about a new government policy about hazmat cleanup and a tainting the aquifer! That's outrageous! How is a company supposed to make any money???"*
5 *"My old man! He got rights! 'cause he 'dead don't mean no slight! Pay his wage to me and mine or we'll show you a fine!"*
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You would not be able to avoid perverse incentives in this system, but **it would be self-limiting.** (Mind you, it would be self-limiting in a *terrible* way.)
The undead as you describe them are effectively machines running on nutrient slop, which is the crucial bit because its production requires nutritional inputs. It will therefore compete with food production and make food more expensive for humans. This makes them fundamentally different from real-world machines, which run on fossil fuels that humans don't eat. Since humans would give up most everything else before they give up food, the more undead you have, the worse is your economy doing: people spend ever more money on basic foodstuffs and as a result, ever less on *all other things*, including those produced in the undead-staffed factories.
In the realities of early 20th century, the European great powers would probably try to "solve" this problem by forcibly extracting food from their respective colonies, creating brutal famines in the process. But this would create its own problem: colonialism is all about getting cheap resources from faraway lands, processing them at home, and selling the resulting goods back to those faraway lands at a profit. Starving your customers collapses this economical model too, *but cannot be avoided* because, after all, undead labor is cheaper: if you don't do it, the other colonial powers will, and will outcompete your producers in the world market as a result, making things even worse for your own population.
Both of those mechanisms would, after a death toll likely running into the hundreds of millions in the colonies, eventually collapse *all* the imperial economies to the point of making factory production unprofitable, which in turn will reduce the demand for undead labor. I wouldn't expect industry to survive even in the imperial homelands; they will revert to subsistence agriculture like everyone else.
[Answer]
## You don't necessarily need to do much
There are three factors at play here :
First, markets are all about balance between consumers and producers. As you told, your zombies only need the basic needs, meaning they will consume less. You need living beings at one point to have enough consumers so that you can still earn from having more products to sell. In other words, no one will have the use of 5 or 10 cars1, even at the price of one, so here's a economical limit.
Then, it looks like your undead are only capable of basic work. This will severely limit their use to give more complex products and services. Yes, it's kinda nice to have a semi-conscious worker for pennies, but it makes them relatively similar to today's automated machines. Pardon me the use of these words, but they'll still need "maintenance" like machines, without the advantage of an actual worker who can think and adapt.
Speaking of being akin to a machine, unless your culture is widely different from 20th and 21th's century, toying with corpses is something few enjoy. Worse, it's very unlikely you'll easily agree your boyfriend, father or mother is used by someone till death. Why? Well, first, it's likely a cultural concept coming from before zombies were invented. Then and most importantly, it's tied deeply in our construction as social, living beings : relationships are forged slowly but last through time2. In our world, people come by their relative tombstones even years and years after, and would be horrified if they learned the corpse was removed even to be used as compost. This principle is really not easily destroyed. To sum up, it will be hard to convince the majority it's morally OK to give away their relatives, even when knowing the benefits.
## Ensuring it with laws
That being said, let's give people some tools to protect this cultural identity. After all, there are people who have little to no morale compass who need to be regulated. Like frauds, the solution will most likely come from laws and governemental services specialized in this topic.
First the law, give the right of the body to the family, exactly like property inheritance3. To give more control to the future zombie, you can also -and even- give the right to refuse any necromancy on your own body, exactly like you can allow or disallow the use of your corpse as a science subject, organ donor or any equivalent in most countries in the real world.
To ensure the law is followed, you'll need specific authorities. It's not technically possible to prevent any sort of corruption, but if you create complementary authorities, and prepare enough administrative laws this should limit the risk. It will be akin to occupational medicine nowadays, minus every zombie will have an appointed legal guardian to speak in their name.
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1 : Without needing much market knowledge, The Asterix & Obelix "*[Obelix and Co.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelix_and_Co.)*" comic book is a good -and parodic- showcase of why having too much products vs not enough consumers is bad economically. Read it if you can, it's quite fun :).
2 : An excellent example of lasting relationship lies in the [Hachikô](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachik%C5%8D) : Until the end of his life, this dog waited for his master at the railway station.
3 : Of course, don't give the body's rights to someone if they killed the recently deceased. You should not be rewarded for your crimes.
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# Have activist groups with lots of influence.
In real life, shooting people is much cheaper than life in prison, but executing people is often even more expensive than life in prison. This is because activists campaign against anyone being executed and extend the process a lot.
Have this be true in your world as well. The government sponsors and supports activist groups which have a lot of legal power to delay undead. If anyone makes a bunch of corpses in a suspicious way then those corpses will be kept in storage at public expense for a long time.
So, undead are only cheap when gained ethically. Unethically gained corpses may be a net loss as they sit in a storage locker waiting for the court battles to finish.
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**A death certificate is your work permit**
An undead zombie must present a valid death certificate in order to be legally used as labor. That certificate lists things like cause of death and whether that body is licensed for labor use. Using unlicensed undead labor is a serious offense that will result in you losing your business, plus ensures that *your* corpse will eventually spend eternity toiling away in the worst, most grueling jobs available. Bodies that are not licensed for work will have the major ligaments in their arms, hands, and legs severed so that even if someone tried to reanimate them, the body wouldn't be usable at the mechanical level.
Deaths resulting from criminal activity or suspicious circumstances are automatically refused work licenses, so no killing people to boost your workforce. The cause of death is documented in detail, so any potential employer (is that even the right word any more?) knows exactly what the limitations of the body are. Deaths caused by injury are likely to leave the body damaged and unable to work completely, so a shady employer can't skimp on the workplace safety practices to kill off employees and then work them for free after they're dead. The type of zombie valuable for work purposes is the kind that died naturally and peacefully. Killing people to expand your undead workforce ultimately isn't practical because the zombie doesn't have the same capabilities as the living worker. They're cheaper, but don't generate anywhere near the same economic output. The only way they make economic sense is if you're repurposing something that would normally go to waste (the natural dead).
Your fears about the benefits of a high mortality rate are mostly unfounded. Unlike living workers, the undead don't retire, relocate, or need replacement. They're mindless, so the types of work they can do is limited. Together this means that you'll relatively quickly reach a point where all the work that *could* be done by the undead *is* being done by the undead. The demand saturates and excess deaths at that point aren't worth very much. Not to mention, a job that can be done by the mindless undead is a prime candidate for being automated out of existence as technology advances. Even though the undead are almost free, large portions of them will end up destroyed and replaced with machines that are much faster and more capable, precise, and consistent. Anyone still relying on undead labor will lose out to those that have mechanized. Undead labor will grow obsolete even faster than regular manual labor.
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## **2 Reasons: It's dangerous and expensive.**
The first relates to the fact that necromancy is an unstable and potentially 'infectious' form of magic that unless 'bound' properly monitored lest it spontaneously expand outwards to engulf any life force it comes into contact with. So yes, you can revive the dead to perform tasks but having done so you' also have to check and monitor the undead closely because if the spell and those enchanted by it are not properly controlled over time it can start to leach the life essence out of any living being nearby and spread. So a bit like uranium while it has useful purposes necromancy is a form of magic that needs to be handled carefully as there can be serious risks if something goes wrong. And the potential threat of a Zombie apocalypse is not something even dictatorial governments take lightly.
The second issue (Cost) derives directly from the first. Yes, you can use undead labor for specific (highly dangerous but valuable ) purposes like working in toxic or dangerous environments that are too risky for humans beings but these tasks tend to be only niche industries because of the **expensive** magical and physical safeguards needed to enure your labor force doesn't contaminate the general population.
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**The limitations of their capabilities restrict their economic viability and therefore their abuse**
Let's first compare to the *other* famous example of 'free' labor that was historically used - Slavery. Slavery did generate a lot of Wealth, it is true - however you can make an argument that the super-power of the Era (England) did not get wealthy off the back of Slavery (Slavery wasn't practiced widespread within England well before the Atlantic Slave Trade).
Slavery - although predominantly used for hard/boring/dangerous labour, still had a thinking human who was capable of problem solving to a degree. This 'unskilled' element placed a cap on the types of jobs/roles that Slaves could do. Although I do believe that there were skilled Slaves who were able to 'negotiate' better working conditions for themselves on account of the additional value that their skills brought.
The point being - A Slave has more mental capability than a Zombie, but it was rare that a Slave would have a skilled profession. Skilled professions generally needing Education and high intelligence.
(Note - not trying to call Slaves idiots - just saying that in order to be say a Lawyer or Doctor, you need to be smarter than the average person - and that was rare among slaves.)
So, you have a Zombie that can do basic repetitive tasks, but not a whole lot else. They don't have anywhere near the same mental capabilities of even the most basic Slave.
This means that they are locked out of doing most work tasks, all except the most monotonous and simple of things (which generally don't generate a lot of profit)
Let's use an example of picking up litter from the Street. It has little to no Dollar value, it provides limited financial benefit and isn't worth paying someone to do it.
But, with an undead worker, shambling along picking up litter, it does make the place look a bit nicer and so it's a good task for a Zombie to do.
It's that limited financial benefit for all but the simplest of repetitive tasks that mean that there isn't a great fortune to be made in having a large Zombie workforce - this means there isn't a significant financial incentive to 'make' Zombies - the Society just uses them to fill those jobs that don't provide any monetary benefit, but would still be nice to do.
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**Memory Checks**
Zombies must have an intact enough brain to perform a necromantic memory check. Insert whatever magical means you see fit for preservation of the hippocampus. Government inspectors will occasionally perform unannounced inspections on a random sample of the zombie workforce. If any are found to have memories of ending up as an undead worker in an illegal fashion, the government imposes steep fines on the company. Perhaps some other process/fine is in place if their memories cannot be studied.
This works two fold. It forces the companies to self regulate their channels of zombie acquisition to avoid fines. Additionally individuals know they risk being caught if they're supplying bodies by unsavory means because there is now traceability.
It also opens up potential plot elements such as shady companies that don't comply or otherwise circumvent this process. I could even see something like a routine memory check revealing information important to the story or being the basis for some subplot. If nothing else you could appeal to the pathos of the reader by telling some backstory of a particular undead drudge.
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I don't often post more than one answer, but this idea might be worth it, and it is too different from my first answer.
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**You get a discount on the funeral if the body is sold as a zombie worker.**
These zombie workers become an alternate revenue source for funeral homes. Whether burying or cremating, we need to dispose of dead bodies. Even today, burial or cremation costs money. If the bodies are zombified, then you don't need to pay for the disposal. Better yet, the funeral home would sell the bodies for a reduced funeral rate.
This disincentivizes murder, because only funeral homes are allowed by law to do this. In order to sell a zombie worker, you need to lose a loved one and pay (a reduced rate) for a funeral.
Nobody but the funeral home has a positive financial incentive. Living relatives still pay money, just not as much. No sense in killing that annoying uncle, because it will still cost you money. It's cheaper to just not invite him to family gatherings.
Prison's won't make money either, because the family still pays for the funeral. The prison gets nothing (but an empty cell).
Criminal gangs won't go around killing people, because murder is still illegal, and they would need to be a registered funeral practitioner before they can sell bodies.
Documentation signed by living relatives at the funeral home would need to be sent to the government. Employers would need permits to use the undead, which could be tied back to the funeral home paperwork and death certificates. The government would need to audit employers periodically, of course. Punish those who do not abide by the law severely.
Nothing kills the incentive to murder like boring paperwork and discounts on things nobody really wants to buy. And nobody *really* wants to buy funeral ceremonies.
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## Cremation
It's a fundamental right in your society to be cremated, thus destroying your skeleton. If the government wants your skeleton, it can pay for it. Otherwise, it won't get it. If a family is brassed off at the king, they will cremate out of spite.
Your society has a *lot* of bakers, potters, brickmakers, smiths, etc - all trades with kilns, which have been well used in days gone by to defy greedy rulers.
There's also a large number of lightly used sledgehammers, picks, log splitting axes, etc.
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## Option 1: Don't bother, let Malthus deal with it.
Malthus was the famously gloomy Victorian economist who forecasted perpetual 'never hunger, never prosper'.
If Britain got wealthier, it'd have more children, and thus get poorer again. He got a bit unlucky; around the time he forecast it, it (arguably) ceased after 1300 years of being true, and failed badly for the next 200.
In Boneland, it's the reverse: Sooner hunger, sooner prosper. If a plague comes, or a genocide, the next generation will have loads of food and luxurious beds, and act accordingly. Soon, a new population, born of those who were good at not dying, will come about.
All that's required is that the government is somewhat limited so that the 10 year depression isn't worth the boom at the end. Term limits would do it. As would private ownership of corpses.
## Option 2: The only taxes are poll taxes and sales taxes
The government covers or subsidises the cost of skeletons, and its only tax is a per head poll tax. End result: they want to keep the living alive.
Reinforce by only allowing the living to do work at the palace / bureaus.
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**Then what are we fighting for?**
Sure, the dead are fantastic laborers. That means if everyone dies, you get more cheap/free labor. But if everyone is dead, who's left to avail of that labor? Who is left to consume the products of it? There are two facets to this: of course the entity controlling the labor needs living people to reap the benefits of the labor. But I think even the greediest, most corrupt (capitalist/government/whatever) understands at a base level that any given thing is only worth doing if there is an extant humanity. Incentivizing death is a logical fallacy.
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**Use it as punishment**
People don't want to see dear old grandma clearing out storm drains the day after her funeral, or ever, really. Make it so that the reanimation process is a "super death penalty", which would fall in line with the various methods of government sanctioned corpse desecration developed over the years: drawing and quartering, gibbeting, public dissection, etc. This of course brings up the incentive to falsely convict or over-sentence people to a new lifetime of servitude but that's a still-thorny-but-tractable criminal justice reform problem.
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Since your zombies need a functional body (as opposed to reanimated skeletons), and their immune systems and other life support fizzled out with death, they tend to rot away. Perhaps embalming, soaking with alcohol, etc. can slow down that process (and perhaps it would make them too stiff to actually move, like beef jerky, limiting the choices and/or useful timespan) - but sooner or later these walking machines just break down. Maybe some months, maybe more - but it is not like the planet is getting populated by the never-dying undead as more and more generations are added to the workforce.
They would also not be nice to be around as they rot, the smell and other sanitary considerations limiting what they can be used for, compared to healthy live workers - maybe initially, maybe eventually (do you want a house built with that smell? do you want apples picked with dilapidating goo hands?)
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Assume that roughly at 1200 AD, Europe discovers a new metal (or alloy). By terms of various strengths and hardness it's comparable to high grade steel, however instead of steel's density of ~8 g/cm³, this material has a density less than even aluminum at ~2 g/cm³. The ease/difficulty to work it is roughly comparable to steel. By terms of rarity it is comfortably more costly to acquire than steel is to create, but not nearly enough so to make it considered a precious metal.
While this is not the focus of the question, weapons would also have access to this metal.
This armor crafting techniques have the next couple hundred years or so to mature, and we reach roughly 1450 AD.
Would plate armor maintain the same form given this new material? Practically, what might this new armor change for the knight on the battlefield?
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I'm seeing other answers here which assume no change in armour design, I would argue that that is unlikely to be the case.
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in metal working or medieval armour, though I do have an interest in the area.
One answer argues that lighter metal does not help against blunt weaponry, but this is not necessarily the case. There are several ways armour designs can be changed to help absorb the impact of a heavy blow, but can only be implemented to a certain degree in traditional smithing because of the added weight. Areas of overlapping, but not touching, plates are one example. Each plate takes a certain amount of energy to move, and so consequently decelerates the incoming weapon.
If you're metal only weighs a quarter as much as steel, than you could have three layers of armour. These layers would be most effective if the hung slightly away from rather, or we interspersed with padding.
-The innermost is heavily fluted (the lines you see on Maximilian plate) holding the middle layer away from it (and strengthening the metal), and is the heaviest, this layer covers important areas such as the torso and head, as well as a fauld/tasset structure.
-The middle layer is lighter, a kind of maille with well placed scales or plates upon which small spokes are mounted, which sits on the fluting over the torso, but also covers the limbs.
-A third and outermost layer resembles the classic "knight in shining" armour, sitting atop fluting on the helm and the spokes on the middle layer elsewhere on the body.
There are a couple bonuses to this type of layered design. Assuming each of the three layers masses similar to traditional Maximilian style plate, it is lighter. Plate maille with padded armour underneath was very warm, but you could place staggered ventilation holes in each layer without compromising your protection. It would be considerably stronger than traditional armour, as it offers three times as much material between your meat and your opponents weapon.
It would not make the knight immune to blunt force trauma but it would certainly help, and other design choices could be made to improve the armour further. It would however be in essence three suites of armour, and made from a more expensive metal, so likely be very uncommon due to the price-tag.
As for any concerns of speed or agility, it likely wouldn't change an enormous amount, knights were trained to move in their armour and it's weight was not really much of a hinderence to them.
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You'd think that a lighter material just as strong as steel would make better armor, as there are two possible ways to go about it; the same design and thickness but lighter weight resulting in increased battle mobility, or a thicker design which keeps the total weight but has more material since it's so much lighter.
You thought wrong.
Knights in full plate armor typically had to worry about 3 things:
* Artillery (giant rocks from catapults, trebuchets and ballista ammunition, etc)
* Heavy weapons (Maces, war hammers, etc)
* Weapons slipping into the cracks of their armor (Rapiers, Daggers, possibly lucky arrows). Note that well developed steel plate (eg: french plate) was designed with various angles and slopes, rendering the user pretty much invulnerable to arrows in general. Also note that this can't really be defended against.
Two of the above kill the knight due to mostly concussive injury. Even if you go with the armor thickening route, you'll still die from the impact (or at least be seriously injured). Thickening the armor will also result in decreased mobility in terms of joint areas (or more exposed joint areas to allow the same mobility). This is bad.
In fact, you would fare worse off against heavier steel weapons in general if you went with the lighter weight route. Consider that if every knight had the same material type armor, each knight would get a similar speed increase; the knight can now hit harder with a heavier weapon compared to your lightweight thin armor - crushing your skull in the process.
Certain bladed weapons might be made lighter - allowing for faster manipulation, which also works against plate armor (see slipping into cracks point above).
**All in all - It would change nothing for the knights wearing the armor on the battlefield.**
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**Weight is not an issue**
The [Wikipedia page for Plate Armor says the following](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_armour#Late_Middle_Ages):
>
> A complete suit of plate armour made from well-tempered steel would weigh around 15–25 kg (33-55 pounds). The wearer remained highly agile and could jump, run and otherwise move freely as the weight of the armour was spread evenly throughout the body.
>
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**...until it is**
One of the reasons people stopped running around in plate armor was because it wasn't bulletproof. One of the reasons they didn't try to make bulletproof armor is that it'd be too heavy. I'd imagine that with superlight metal, armorers could make bulletproof (and crossbow-bolt-proof) cuirasses and helmets, which could keep the fully armored knight relevant for a few more centuries, if not all the way into modern times.
The main tradeoff I see, though, is that you're still going to need to increase the armor's volume; that's going to make it hard to increase armor to the limbs, especially near the joints.
**And if you have a few more centuries...**
With more time comes more available armor to buy/inherit, and thus more availability of hard-to-produce items. I'd think that aside from better personal armor, you'd start seeing things like bulletproof horse armor and bulletproof [Pavises](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavise). This should have drastic effects on how battles are fought in the gunpowder era. Cannons should still be effective, as will artillery, so the age of the knight should still end in the early 20th century, but until then I'd like to imagine a battlefield where a musket stands on equal ground with a warhammer.
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I don't think much would change. If I'm understanding this right, the volume of metal being used isn't changing, we're just saying that volume weighs less.
You need to look for places where less weight is better - and there weren't a whole lot of those in medieval warfare. I think the biggest candidate would be boots + legguards. Reducing their weight 75% (or even 25-50% if you use an alloy of this and steel) would make it much easier to march with said equipment on. Making all the armor out of this would make marching even easier, but it would have a lot less impact than the items on your feet/legs (consider how much easier it is to walk with a child on your back vs. clinging to your leg). This may also apply to gauntlets (at least the finger portions).
In terms of weapons, if your sword weighs 1/4 as much and moves 2x as fast, you've still only got 1/2 the momentum you used to (if my maths are right). This reduction makes it harder to injure your opponent and easier for him/her to deflect your blows. Probably not what you want (but may be worth the trade-off for a stiletto or rapier where you already can't compete).
For overall weapon+armor applications, you'd probably see people experiment and wind up wanting to make this into an alloy with steel. Probably something like 10-20% new metal. There would likely be a point where the speed/agility gains outweigh the resilience/impact losses
I would anticipate seeing this in auxiliary uses much more. Look for cases where weight might be an issue and more strength is desirable. This new material is only 3-5x as heavy as wood instead of 10-20x so you could see people replacing (or reinforcing) wooden products with this.
You could look at places we use aluminum and other light metals today as candidates for similar things in the past. Camping gear, cookware and storage vessels would be ones I'd pick in particular. Cookware would potentially be a big one, if you can cut down on 75% of the weight you can bring a bit more and increase the quality of food. A 55 gallon drum weighs around 20-25kg, with this metal that would drop to 5-8 kg making this a much more viable storage solution. This might make really good wire rope as well, or be used in place of chain where less weight is beneficial.
If you know one, I'd consult an engineer on the full ramifications of reducing mass while changing nothing else.
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@Aify has done a marvelous job of making salient points, for example that concussive force had an er...impact... but let me expand a little.
The biggest thing perhaps is this: better steel won't just go into your armor.
There's no way that they'd develop this and not incorporate it into weapons. What this means is if you are picturing bladed weapons simply snapping when coming in contact with your armor--it won't. Bodkin arrows, at close range, could already penetrate armor. Load it up with the new steel and see what happens. Possibly it would need to be weighted for extra force, but edge it with the the newer stuff.
And there's also no way that they wouldn't make use of weaponry with greater density, in order to bop the knight about. So the cheap steel might actually be BETTER against it BECAUSE of the weight. Or make bladed weapons more nimble using the lighter steel, to get in through the cracks.
The actual thickness and strength was secondary to good design as far as armor was concerned. For instance, designing a surface so that it was more likely to BOUNCE rather than take the full force of any given thing--or so that the kinetic energy is redistributed more fully.
There's also something else you might want to consider. It's hard to design armor for every situation. Some armors did better against arrows, but didn't fare as well against, say, a heavy mace. Even today, it's difficult to get armor that's proof against everything, and we do need joints to move, so that's always a weakness.
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Couple things you should consider.
1. Rarity: If your super metal is x percent more expensive it will have a corresponding reduction in commonality. Basically the concept here is that in the medieval era, armor was not issued to soldiers (nobles) they each purchased and maintained their own. If the armor is more expensive correspondingly fewer will have it.
2. Functional changes: Most importantly the armor will be thinner and lighter. The main goal of plate is obviously the protection of the wearer but the counter point to that is that they were slow and would tire easily.
The density difference between your material and steel (which lets be honest, medieval *steel* was not of comparable quality to what we have today) will allow for a whole range of changes to medieval war/combat.
* With lighter armor knights could function far better unmounted. While there was certainly a prestige aspect to riding into battle it was also practical, walking with plate armor on is exhausting.
* Speed. Faster troops give a commander many more options particularly in scenarios where mounts are not practical, sieges and forested areas as examples.
* Agility. Obviously related to speed, agility was severely limited when fully armored. This limited weapon/fighting style options, but with increased mobility you could do all sorts of fun things with staves, dual blades etc etc etc.
As far as appearance goes it probably would not change overly much. Plate armor's value is in the fact that it covers the body literally from head to toe. There are no unprotected body parts. I can see the armor changing in small ways though.
* More plates. More, smaller plates, particularly around the joints would allow the wearer to make use of the lightness and would be necessary for the increased agility mentioned above.
* Less padding. Lighter armor would require less padding underneath. This further improves agility and also keeps the wearer cooler meaning they wouldn't tire quite as fast.
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Let's say a group of people in the 1850's had access to all modern knowledge of nuclear physics, but nothing else from modern technology. They have at their disposal resources equivalent to those of one of the major governments of the world at the time (such as the British Empire) Would they be able to make and use nuclear weapons?
The key steps here are:
1. **Mine uranium.** This one seems pretty straight forward. There was plenty of mining technology for coal and various metals. The main challenge here is identifying uranium deposits.
2. **Enrich uranium.** This is big sticking point. Steam-powered centrifuges?
3. **Construct a bomb.** It's a little early for dynamite (that wasn't until 1867) to use to compact a sphere of uranium. Can gunpowder replace it? We had fused cannon balls at that point (the "Star Spangled Banner" references "bombs bursting in air" back in the war of 1812), but I don't know if those are enough.
4. **Launch the bomb.** No planes or missiles. Will a cannon work? [Little Boy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy) was 28 inches in diameter, which is small enough to fit in the [Tzar Cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Cannon) built in 1586, but I sincerely doubt it would get enough range. Also, how do you launch a nuke out of a cannon without detonating it?
Bonus criteria: how would you protect the people handling the materials and production from getting dangerous doses of radiation?
Bonus criteria: if 1850 is possible, how much earlier in time could this work?
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Lots of questions.
In order:
1. Mine Uranium Ore: trivial.
1b) Purify the ore to a usable product like Yellow Cake (Uranium oxide):
Mostly trivial. Assuming you have a nice supply of disposable workers, or you remembered how to make radiation detectors and PPE using 1850's tech
2. ~~Refine~~ Enrich the uranium. This is the **hard** point.
Uranium metal, or oxide, just does not want to separate. You need to turn your Uranium into a gas, and separate *that* by mass using highspeed centrifuges or gas diffusion techniques and a lot of patience. a *lot* of patience.
But how do you gasify Uranium? You react it with Flourine. Uranium Hexafluoride made from U238 is heavier than uranium hexafluoride made with U235. The difference is only 352 vs 349 g/mol. A difference of 0.85 percent. This allows you to sort them by mass, but the process is slow, inefficient, and only provides a tiny enrichment. You need to cycle the product through *hundreds* of cycles to get weaponsgrade enrichment. (dozens of cycles for centrifuges, but they are harder to build in the first place)
Which brings us back to the problem of how your scientists measure the enrichment level without access to modern tools?
P.S. Did we mention uranium hexafluoride? Working with Fluorine is not for the faint-hearted. That stuff eats *everything* organic, and even most things metal. Even steel gets eaten, it just leaves a (brittle) passive layer that protects. Making seals or valves or pumps that handle the stuff is an adventure. Again it would be handy to have an unlimited supply of disposable labor, to handle the spills, cleanup, dissolved janitors, etc.
Ok, now you have your enriched uranium hexafluoride. It is "easy" enough to extract the metal and shape it into solid shapes. As long as you are very,very careful about how much of the Uranium you concentrate in one spot, because by now you can cause a micro-fizzling-bomb just by stacking two cans of the stuff too close to each other.
3. Neither gunpowder nor dynamite come *close* to suiting your needs for an implosion device. You need very pure, tailored, shaped high explosive charges. Made of several different explosive types, and synchronized down to faster-than-microsecond timing. No, forget about making an implosion design bomb, it will be extremely far out of your technology's reach. Besides, you only have U235. MAking an implosion Uranium device is really, realy hard. The "normal" route is to use you U235 to breed some plutonium, refine *that*, and then implode the plutonium. That's a whole added onionshell of hightech needed, no thanks.
Fortunately, a simple barrel-type device, like Little Boy, will work quite well, if a bit inefficiently. For this device, a more conventional explosive propellant will suffice for the detonation trigger.
OK, you now have your (5-to-20 tonne weight) nuclear device.
4. Delivery
You will *not* be shooting your bomb at anyone. The device is too fragile, and too heavy.
You can *not* drop it from an airplane, the maximum airplane bomb capacity for that era is: zero.
You might even have difficulty loading it on a wagon, it's so dang heavy!
Only option: Load it on a steam train, or load it on a ship, and travel towards your target destination. Radio detonation is not an option, so you either need to use a timer or some hardy soul to manually trigger the device.
The earliest time conceivable for construction of an implosion-type device is roughly 16 july, 1945. And the US had to shovel a **lot** of money at the problem to get it that soon. a ***lot***! The more natural era for developing the bomb would have been late 1950's, early 1960's.
The earliest time conceivable for construction of a gun-type device?....
Possibly as early as 1700. (To start the work, it would be a 50-year++ project that would bankrupt several Empires working together)
The trigger tech is likely steam engines, and the metallurgy that enabled them, to manufacture your centrifuges and/or steamdriven pressure pumps for gas diffusion..
The difficulties would be indescribable, and tackling such a project so early would be more likely to cause the end of civilization(by financial exhaustion), than a working bomb.
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## Absolutely not!
* Sure, a gun-type weapon is easier than an implosion-type weapon, to the point that they worried about an accidental detonation in case of an aircraft crash, but either one is "high tech" by 1940s standards. You do not want to handle uranium in a smithy.
* Centrifuges use uranium in various chemical compounds. They're all **nasty**. Long before the centrifuges come apart, the uranium hexafluoride or chemicals like that eat through 1850s seals. Or any other enrichment technology without modern alloys.
*As you can see, there is a debate in the comments about what is and isn't possible with the specified level of technology. Let me point out that gaseous diffusion cascades are extremely power-hungry.*
* Firing a crude weapon with a giant cannon might twist it to the point where it might or might not malfunction. Besides, the early nuclear weapons were much heavier larger than period cannon shells.
[Answer]
There's one option available if the civilization in your story is at 1850s technology levels for a very, very long time.
The fundamental reason that it's difficult to produce a nuclear bomb is that uranium 235 is hard to make, but easy to use, while plutonium 239 is easy to make but hard to use.
The reason that plutonium bombs are so difficult is that plutonium production always contaminates it with a small quantity of plutonium 240, which has a high rate of spontaneuos fission, and so causes gun-type bombs to detonate as the masses approach each other, releasing enough energy to destroy the device but only a small fraction of the energy of a true nuclear bomb detonation.
However, there is actually an easy, low technology way to remove all the plutonium 240 from a sample of plutonium 239: just wait 10,000 years, as the 240 has a shorter half life.
This suggests a vision of an evil empire who has ruled the land for time immemorial with a nuclear fist, such that no rebellion is imaginable. Deep in the catacombs under their castle, the imperial mages harvest the weapons that were laid out to age by their long forgotten ancestors, and set out new weapons for the long sleep, so that their distant, distant descendents can continue the regime.
You know what they say: the best time to plant a nuke is 10,000 years ago, but the second best time is today!
[Answer]
I don't think it is possible.
Just to give you one reason: refining Uranium requires [centrifuges](https://science.howstuffworks.com/uranium-centrifuge.htm) to separate the right isotope:
>
> U-235 weighs slightly less than U-238. By exploiting this weight difference, you can separate the U-235 and the U-238. The first step is to react the uranium with hydrofluoric acid, an extremely powerful acid. After several steps, you create the gas uranium hexafluoride.
>
>
> Now that the uranium is in a gaseous form, it is easier to work with. You can put the gas into a centrifuge and spin it up. The centrifuge creates a force thousands of times more powerful than the force of gravity. Because the U-238 atoms are slightly heavier than the U-235 atoms, they tend to move out toward the walls of the centrifuge. The U-235 atoms tend to stay more toward the center of the centrifuge.
>
>
> Although it is only a slight difference in concentrations, when you extract the gas from the center of the centrifuge, it has slightly more U-235 than it did before. You place this slightly concentrated gas in another centrifuge and do the same thing. If you do this thousands of times, you can create a gas that is highly enriched in U-235. At a uranium enrichment plant, thousands of centrifuges are chained together in long cascades.
>
>
> At the end of a long chain of centrifuges, you have uranium hexafluoride gas containing a high concentration of U-235 atoms.
>
>
> The creation of the centrifuges is a huge technological challenge. The centrifuges must spin very quickly -- in the range of 100,000 rpm. To spin this fast, the centrifuges must have:
>
>
> * very light, yet strong, rotors
> * well-balanced rotors
> * high-speed bearings, usually magnetic to reduce friction
>
>
> Meeting all three of these requirements has been out of reach for most countries.
>
>
>
Serially manufacturing an object which can spin at 100000 rpm without shredding into pieces and projecting blades all around is not something one can do with 1850 technology.
You need the technology and the materials.
[Answer]
[Tac nukes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon#Examples) are a thing and 28inches is huge, try [200mm @ 90kg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W79_Artillery-Fired_Atomic_Projectile).
~~But I'm afraid you do need high explosive to reach the critical mass in the shortest time possible, otherwise you'll only get a [dirty bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bomb) - enough fission energy to vaporize the nuke but not enough to create a mushroom.~~
*Edit: as pointed out by Zeiss Ikon the the comments, low explosives can be used to accelerate the fragment that will bring the entire fissionable mass to criticality. In fact, the very tactical nukes that I linked up in my answer use this method.*
The biggest problem is uranium refining, tho'. ~~Centrifuges~~ *Technical means for enrichment* are possible within manufacturing precision available in 1850, but the UF6 may be a bit problematic to obtain and handle with the material of the time and in the amounts required for a nuke.
Assuming they have solved the problem of materials resistant to fluoride attack, the separation techniques available at that stage, used alone or in cascade:
* [thermal diffusion in liquid carriers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-50_(Manhattan_Project)) - may be used as a preenrichment stage.
* lower efficiency centrifuges - where the loss in efficiency can be replaced by a scale up in their number and/or longer time to achieve the purity
* [aerodynamic separation nozzles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium#/media/File:Aerodynamic_enrichment_nozzle.svg) - only requires pressure pumps, a thing they totally had in 1850 (steam pressure being what driven the industrial revolution). Easy to arrange in cascading stages and reuse by reinjection of later stages in earlier stages.
* [diffusion techniques](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion#Technology) using porous films from [alloys in which one constituent is chemically etched](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion#Technology)
---
As for the mechanical precision available of those times - it's a fascinating history how the humble screw that we take today for granted was one of the essential ingredients for the industrial revolution.
* [Vernier scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Vernier) - 1631, used in calipers, sextants, barometers or other graduated instruments
* [Modern screw-cutting lathes (late 18th to early 19th centuries)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw-cutting_lathe#Modern_screw-cutting_lathes_(late_18th_to_early_19th_centuries))
* [Henry Maudslay's Screw cutting lathe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay#Screw_cutting_lathe) - 1800
* [Henry Maudslay's bench micrometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay#Micrometer) - precision of 0.1-thou (≈ 3μm)
There's an YouTube channel, [Machine Thinking](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfsznjef2zGJnrCRQBXqo6Q), which has a respectable number of clips exploring the precision mechanics through its history; its no wonder for me that a good number of them are dedicated to screws.
[Answer]
Just a couple of small notes to round out your thinking to help you either drop the idea or to let you properly represent at least the not-the-fissile-material-itself aspects. Or to help you know what to obfuscate or have major hand waving written in for.
First, handling nuclear materials. As noted in one answer, the phrase `disposable workers` is a BIG BIG thing. Take 35 guesses at what killed Madame Curie, the person most associated with early investigations into radioactive materials. Ah, just need 1 guess? And bear in mind she only used small samples. She didn't process tons a day for a career. Since your workers would, without changes to "history" on a fairly large scale, so I'm guessing not part of your desired writing plan... since they would do that, they would maybe have very short careers, longer in the mines, yes, but shortening at each step along the way. Since the "along the way" steps get more and more skilled, you'd see the early/swift massive breakdown in health, and outright deaths, definitively affecting your manufacturing silo with the quickest and most debilitating occurring with precisely the hardest workers to replace. Not really a "sentence the thieves to machining materials to a one in one hundred thousandth of an inch tolerance" kind of proposition here, so you'd need to figure a way around that...
On the other hand, but related, we go on and on about the massive economic cost and how it could/WOULD beggar nations. This both is and is NOT a direct concern. First, in the US: the bomb was actually only the second costliest weapon program for us during WWII. Second, not first. And we did both, in spades.
Germany had a program that languished more due to leadership being of the "Keystone Cop" variety. (Like that or not "Nazis-were-gods" folks... not saying you admired them, not AT ALL, but there was and is, a perception that these stumblebums were somehow amazingly on their game when they were really sitting on top of a very competent society and squandered, utterly, most of the actual advantages that gave them rather than capitalizing on them... successes came in spite of them, not because of them.) Add to the stumblebum aspect the utter waste of millions of talented (and stupid, lazy, and very not talented) people, not just in the death camps, or as very low-level slaves before declining to uselessness (to the Nazis), but also tens of millions more, the Slavs in, say, Ukraine, who'd've done almost anything to see Papa Joe dead and gone. (*To get a scale of the waste, Alfried von Krupp und Etc. was the largest slaveholder in history owning/operating more than 10,000,000 slaves.* That's from his Nuremberg trial. And Germany had many more. But you don't build atomic bombs out of an economy that drove itself in that ruinous direction rather than maintaining itself. But to the Nazi leadership and its underlings fighting to rise, or just to stay alive another day, everything the sun touched was their "commons" to rape and ruin because none of them owned it.)
Even with all that against them, what actually made their bomb project not succeed, more than anything, was that since the leadership had no real concept of it becoming a real thing. (One bomb to kill 150,000 of Papa Joe's soldiers and a few thousand tanks with one blast??? How could that actually be a real thing? There weren't even Norse gods or witchcraft involved so...) Without constant demand from the top, the venal, "kill to gain position" government and army chain of command ensured it would always be something to fail in and end up on a meat hook next to sides of beef (Yes, that was a thing for the Nazis.) for days while someone still had an interest in torturing you. Not really a program with prospects. So, no Bomb.
The British could have run a successful program, and did make important/critical contributions to the American project, people-wise and tech-wise. Why duplicate efforts? Seriously. And with the American effort absolutely impossible for any Axis bombing attack, to say nothing of on the ground military attacks, to reach, it was better to do things in the US. (The Japanese balloon carrying bombs that travelled 7,000+ miles were NOT directed at anything more definable than "the west coast of America" so... not directed at Hanford.)
The USSR also could have, but had no real reason to as conventional efforts were working very nicely and the US was supplying an extraordinary amount of material so their factories could concentrate on the fun things, tanks and rifles and bullets. So not much impetus: NOT "not much ability"...
So, back to the US effort. I'll just bring up one thing to give you the scale of it. It is the SCALE OF IT that matters to your writing. The scale will play out upon whatever economy and population you have, and that will give you cost. Not that cost matters: it is the resources in people mostly, and their skill sets that matters here as neither they, nor their skills, would still be in your economy. If it takes every blacksmith in existence in the nation, then who makes the rifles and bullets and so on?
You have surely heard of Hanford, the eventual factory of the bomb? Quiet, unpopulated western area... In the middle of 1944, it had 45,000 construction workers alone. Not fissile material workers, CONSTRUCTION workers. Think of that. 0 population to 45,000 construction workers, perhaps a soldier or two, actual program workers, oh, and ALL the support people backing them up three meals a day and clothing and so on.
And Hanford was just Hanford. It did not include Oak Ridge or any place in Arizona and New Mexico. Just Hanford.
How would that massive scale work out in doability in your world? Farming done with horses and men, not tractors and combines. Every machinist and so on taken for this project alone. No rifles or bullets except those produced by people who were homeless before your wars. Those people and all their support NOT in your armies themselves, or in support of them. I've read that the US had 16,000,000 men in uniform at the end of WWII out of something like 170-190,000,000 total population, yet no more than something in the 500,000 man range in actual combat, or close to actual combat. Huge armies take even larger support efforts, and could your societies to that and STILL support such a massive drain of people and talent and all their support?
All that is admittedly not likely to be thought of by the average reader. So maybe not a practical problem for you, the author. But... maybe it is.
By the way, fuel oil air bombs, "thermobaric" bombs, could have existed in 1850 with the skills and tech they had. They could have been delivered via balloon, PERHAPS, if someone developed plastics, lightweight plastics that is, much earlier than we did. If oil and its related products (kerosene, plastics) had a one or so generation headstart, maybe two... To give you an idea about balloons, don't think those pretty, pretty fairgrounds things. Think Roswell, balloons launched to monitor the atmosphere for nuclear explosions on the other side of the world, balloons that were 1,000 feet tall once at sufficiently low atmospheric pressure and commensurately sized around, large cylindrical balloons. Possible perhaps in your world. Those would have perhaps been able to carry significant kerosene and some machinery to disperse (mist) it and let that mist fall toward earth, then be ignited by the balloon suddenly flaring bindings, dropping lit materials down into the mist falling above an army or city...
We apparently have achieved 15 kiloton explosions with thermobaric weapons. 75% of the Hiroshima bomb's usual stated blast strength. The Russians/Soviets made one that achieved 39.9 kilotons, or twice the Hiroshima bomb's blast strength, though to be sure, not out of 1850's available kerosene... Admittedly, both from a far more technically advanced economy, but... good chance that's just because that's just the economy in place when people got to thinking on the subject, right? So why not that thinking in 1850-ish?
I'd suggest you go that route. I myself think of it in a fantasy setting. A boy who one day rides a dragon in such a world's wars remembers a frontier barfight in which a lantern is shattered and the fuel spread out into the air in the bar tent as someone swings it at people as a weapon itself, then the mist portion reach a fireplace and the blast killing the "bad guys" but only throwing the good guys, including the young boy, a hundred feet, say, (or twenty, whatever feels decent at the time, eh?) ripping through the canvas, fortunately not splattering any of them on a tent pole or boulder (outside), then the slamming punches of flame following out through those rips in the tent before the general blast vaporizes the tent and all concerned still in its immediate area. That boy, now a man, leading the dragon arm of the army he is in, having large more or less waterproof sacks made sized to the dragons who'd carry them, lantern fuel collected from the besieged capital (large) city, then the force (oh, "wing"... why not, right?) taking flight one night and wax-covered holes in the sacks eaten away by the kerosene, the contents sieving out into the air, falling a thousand feet breaking into a mist to a reasonably large extent though maybe most lumping back together into more of a rain, the riders, task done, flying off wondering what it was all for, then some noticing this man directing his dragon into the falling rain of kerosene above the center of the enemy camp and having his dragon breath the best blast of flame he's ever breathed... Death on a scale no such medieval society would have spent much time imagining. And sacrifice at the very center.
(I picture it via a young magic user as well, either way, and I hate dragon stories, so I spend more time on that avenue, mentally.)
Did the little bit above seem reasonable? Not Hemingway brilliantly written there, just... reasonable? In a medieval tech-level society without examples like successful atomic and fusion bombs to inspire them to find other ways of achieving something massive?
If it did, then why not in your world of 1850's tech instead of nuclear weapons? It just needs someone to notice that a mist of kerosene is incredibly more explosive than one would think at first. And that's not too much of a stretch as powders would easily have been a very present thing in such a society. Grain dust in huge storage silos, gunpowder in its making and storage, even powdered metal could exist as a noticeable thing in your world, and any powder from flour to gunpowder and beyond either direction can explode. Coal dust in mines (Benxi, Liaoning: 1,500 dead). Look up grain explosions. Flour would definitely make a mist as it fell, and not gather into rain-like "droplets."
I'm saying there are alternatives that can still give you horrendous and massive explosions to work with. Beats hand waving any day!
But if you need it to be nuclear, not much help.
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I'm going to tentatively say that it is possible, but with a few caveats.
The 19th century was a time of rapid technological development. Even if someone magically went backwards in time to give someone the blueprints for a nuclear weapon, it would likely take decades to develop a weapon with the technology of the time (by which point technology would be noticeably post 1850s), and this process would require other technological innovation specifically to facilitate the project (just as the Manhattan project did in its time).
The notion that people could have a sophisticated enough understanding of nuclear physics that they could build a bomb with 1850s technology is very, very problematic. For instance, how was the neutron discovered? Do they have a quantum mechanical model of the atom? Do they have particle accelerators? And if you answered yes to any of those questions, why didn't they learn how to make other more useful things with that technology?
So, with those caveats out of the way, let's work through some scenarios:
**Time Travel**
Your people have been given detailed instructions that cover the theory and engineering requirements of a nuclear weapon, from the future, some advanced alien race, or divine revelation. Everyone *just knows* that it all works, and the government is very, very keen on seeing it built, no matter the cost. To me, your initial question seems to be hinting at a scenario such as this.
In this case, an 1850s nuke might be plausible. Development may need to begin a little earlier (say, 1830s). Uranium would be mined, but your chemists would know how to extract it from ore and enrich U-235. You will then need to enrich it, using gaseous diffusion. But your engineers will have been told how to do that too (including required enabling technologies), so they likely could. This would be the most expensive and time-consuming part of the operation.
To build the bomb you would want to use a U-235 gun-type configuration, where you propel two sub-critical uranium blobs into each-other. How difficult that is will depend on how much you enrich your uranium. This is mostly a matter of cost.
Building a delivery system is the tricky part. Your bomb will be big and cumbersome, so you'll probably just put it on an armoured ship, send it towards the enemy fleet and have some brave soul on board detonate it. In principle you could set up some timing device, but given how expensive these things will be I doubt whoever is paying for them will want to risk it. I don't think an aerial delivery system would be feasible. You could also use the bomb in traps or sieges, where it is simply moved into position and detonated at the appropriate time.
Then again, the first powered flight occurred in 1852 using a blimp-like airship, so you *might* consider allowing that technology develop further in your story and dropping it over the enemy. But your airship will still be vulnerable to enemy fire. Delivery of the weapon then comes down to protecting the airship until it arrives where you want it.
**Alternative history, with some geological modifications**
If you're happy to modify the natural world in some ways you can make the natural abundance of U-235 much higher. One way to do this is to make the Earth itself younger. U-235 has a half-like of 700 million years, so if you shift the entire evolutionary history of the earth back 700 M years you will have double the current natural abundance of U-235 (~1.4%). Going back 1.4 billion years gives you double that again (~2.8%), and 2.1 billion years gives another doubling (~5.6%). This still doesn't make it easy to build a bomb, but the uranium enrichment process will now be much simpler.
Explaining how your society came to realize building a nuclear bomb is feasible is still problematic, but you might be able to hand-wave that away by arguing that they built dirty bombs first and nuclear research was stimulated by that.
**Different physics**
If you allow for new fissile isotopes that exist only in your universe, things get much easier. Suppose U-238 is now weapons-grade fissile material. Problem solved. Building the bomb is now mostly about developing chemical extraction processes for uranium.
Since building the bomb is now *much* cheaper your people may be willing to take more risks with delivery systems. But I still don't think you'd want to risk launching a nuke from a 1850s cannon, so moving the bomb into close proximity with the target may still be the goal. Again, I see naval battles a major application of this technology.
**Strictly 1850s, as it was in our history**
Sorry, but no. It would require too many technological innovations in too many highly specialized places and too many accidental discoveries for something like that to make any sense at all.
**I don't care about feasibility, just make it happen**
In this case, we're back to the **Time Travel** scenario, except your bomb was developed via a string of extremely improbably chance discoveries.
[Answer]
**TL;DR**
Use elements that occur in strongly radioactive elements by default to avoid centrifuge requirements, build a breeder reactor using a neutron source.
If you drop the uranium use, you may have a better chance. Naturally occurring radioactive elements without need of isolating isotopes such as radium and thorium were already available in pure form around 1910 (not 1850, so you are still lacking 60 years of technological development). They were also available in your timeframe in their natural ore, but I'm not sure that is sufficient. Together with aluminium and beryllium, you can use them to construct a neutron source which you can use to enrich all kinds of radioactive materials (note that those metals were ridiculously expensive to refine back then). You can then try to make a bomb using the enriched radioactive materials.
You will likely lose a lot of workers to radiation poisoning.
You should probably check with a nuclear engineer or someone with a similar skillset. I (obviously) have not tested this approach.
Some references:
* [The nuclear boyscout that built a breeding reactor using materials available to a minor in 1994](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/eagle-scout-nuclear-reactor/)
* Wikipedia pages (check history section) on [radium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium), [thorium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium), [beryllium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryllium), [aluminium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium)
* [Slideshow on modern neutron sources](https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1122/ML11229A704.pdf)
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You don't use implosion devices but the simpler (less efficient) [gun design](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon).
Absolutely doable with an artillery, actually it's been done:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BbMAB.png)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goMNAxFqGbk>
One possible issue is refining, but steam power, the less efficient [gaseous diffusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_diffusion) enrichment method, and accepting a dirtier bomb w/ lower yield will probably get you there.
The only limitations really are in regards to the difficult mathematics required, but maybe you can spin up some babbage engines.
[Answer]
# The existing answers mostly overlook a real problem, although hinted at in some.
There are two big issues, not just one.
**First, you need enough enriched material that a bomb is possible**. The difficulties in producing this have been explored in detail in other answers.
**But the second problem is that you need to keep the impending explosion contained for the tiny interval of time required for a few percent of the material to fission**. That's a real challenge too.
A fission reaction in an above-critical amount of uranium/plutonium, occurs extremely quickly. The problem is that whether you use implosion (hollow sphere), or gun (rod entering sphere with a hole in it), you have to assemble that mass of material, and hold it together during the tiny amount of time it takes. Otherwise your material will melt, and blow itself apart and the main result will be dirty fuel spread out and a bunch of hard lethal radiation, but not the explosion you hope for.
This is why atomic bombs require such precision engineering. The imploded sphere needs the implosion shockwave to be almost exactly symmetrical, the gun method needs its precision hardened steel casing, but both need their shapes engineered and calculated to hold the material together during the intense conditions of that very initial stage, or it wont work.
And that kind of materials skill just didn't exist in 1850. There wasn't an obvious way available to them, to design a device that assembled subcritical mass into supercritical mass, and held it together afterwards, as needed, because precision engineering of that kind requires an entire industrial skills base that didnt really exist AFAIK.
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[Question]
[
In the not too distant future, technology is developed that allows human minds to be scanned by nanobots, uploaded to a server, and then downloaded into artificially produced organic bodies, essentially undoing death for anyone with:
1. The foresight to inject or ingest some nano bots.
2. A strong internet connection.
3. Sufficient funds to pay for a new body.
For people meeting these criteria, death becomes something to be played with and laughed at, and in some contexts becomes almost a recreational activity. The ultra-rich pay their underlings to jump off a bridge to demonstrate their authority; college frat boys prank their friends by spiking the punch with cyanide and downloading them into a female body; snuff films become a semi-legitimate genre; etc.
It's all good fun -- unless the manner of death is particularly drawn-out and painful. Specifically, imagine the following dilemma: Johnny is going to be **burned** to death. Maybe he's being paid to do it as part of a particularly elaborate pro wrestling introduction. Maybe he's going to pretend to sacrifice himself to the devil in order to infiltrate a cult. Maybe he's just a weird dude. In any case, he's not a masochist, and while he's definitely going to be burned to death he wants it to be *relatively* painless.
What can Johnny do to make being burned alive less excruciating? He can handle some moderate discomfort, but from the time he is set on fire to the time his mind is gone, he has to avoid experiencing pain serious enough to make him seriously reconsider his life choices.
Keep in mind he is literally going to be *burned to death*: his flesh is lit on fire, then the fire kills him, then the fire dies down and people gawk at his ashes. He won't be killed by suffocation. If he falls unconscious it's either due to tissue damage from the fire or some external measure he deliberately takes to shorten the experience. I don't know how long it takes a human to burn down, but for story purposes he needs to be on fire and conscious for around five to fifteen minutes. He can add gasoline or other accelerants if he wants to, but he shouldn't be immediately incinerated. That would be boring.
I imagine drugs will play a central role, but if so which ones, at what dosage? And besides the direct pain, what other factors will Johnny have to prepare for, and how?
Edit: Johnny has a moderate budget, but a very limited number of resuscitations, and only two days to prepare.
[Answer]
If you have read 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo', you may recall the henchman with Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP), which does exactly what it says on the label - the henchman is literally incapable of feeling pain.
According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pain), the mostly likely causes of this condition are 1) an increased production of endorphins in the brain, or 2) mutations in certain components of the nervous system which cut off the ability for pain signals to propagate and reach the brain (apologies; the descriptions are way too scientific for me to explain adequately).
Given that the technology exists in your universe for bodies to be artificially produced, I am going to go ahead and assume that such mutations can also be artificially coded for in the bodies. Go ahead and create such a body that comes with CIP built in (I suspect this will be very popular with your aforementioned rich death seekers), copy Johnny's mind over, burn him, then remind him to scream convincingly while he feels a warm and pleasant tickling sensation.
[Answer]
Morphine, a lot of morphine. I got hit by a car doing 80, and was pretty messed up and left altogether for a while. Once they got me to the hospital I was in a whole new world of pain. A shot of morphine in the thigh later I was quite possibly still in pain, but I didn't care.
No need to worry about him getting addicted, he's just about to die anyway. Just try not to overdose him. Perhaps some heroin as well. Might as well go out laughing.
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I have a very simple answer for you. A drug, or tech that works like a drug.
[Versed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midazolam). Pronounced Ver-said. Aka Midazolam. No matter how painful an experience is, if you can't remember it, isn't like it never happened?
I have seen this drug in action.
Although it is supposed to reduce pain, it also reduces inhibition. So the athlete stoically gritting their teeth through a shoulder dislocation--on versed, instead of on the other drugs, he yells and screams as they try and put it back in. But 20 minutes later, he'll ask you if the doctor has been by to try to put it back in. Because he doesn't remember. It's not so much that it reduces the pain, as it erases the ability to form short term memories.
So, in short, if your character knows they are going to die horribly within a short amount of time, release the chemical into the bloodstream. It will still be painful. The audience might like the screams and gore. But Johnny doesn't have to remember it.
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Johnny can just boot up a new body **now** and burn **that**.
He won't feel a thing.
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As an addition to the answer of Xenocacia, since I cannot comment yet.
There has been an interesting article on pain reduction research on wired.com:
<https://www.wired.com/2017/04/the-cure-for-pain/>
Basically, it comes down to that: there is one specific sodium channel, which is linked to experiencing (or not experiencing) pain. This channel is encoded by one single gene - if this gene is mutated in one "direction" or another, it can cause the affected person to either feel constant pain or none.
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> It was the breakthrough Waxman had spent his life working toward: “We now had a fully convincing link from Nav1.7 to pain.” This meant that if his team could somehow regulate or even turn off the Nav1.7 channel, they could regulate or even turn off how we experience certain kinds of pain.
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> By studying those 12 families’ genomes throughout 2001 and 2002, Xenon found a common trait among those with insensitivity to pain: mutations in a single gene, SCN9A, and the nonfunctioning sodium channel it encodes, Nav1.7.
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So right now there is already research into how to use this to help people with chronic pain, surely, this could be used in the "not so far future" to help with your kind of scenario.
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The nanobots, to be able to work, **must** be able to correctly decode memory and sensorial input. It stands to reason that once you can do *that*, it is relatively trivial to:
* inject stimuli that *aren't there* - virtual reality on steroids.
* censor stimuli which aren't wanted - this is what Johnny wants.
* rewrite stimuli as something different.
Basically, once you have the nanobots in your central nervous system, they need very little to perform like a **neural firewall** - the "nerve block" used by
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> the Lensman Kimball Kinnison when he's captured by the Eich and tortured *almost* to death by a Delgonian. He remains conscious and is relatively unperturbed by his body being hacked to pieces, to the extent that all the time he is free to concentrate on mentally hijacking a bug to have it lower his enemy's defensive shield.
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So, if Johnny wants to not feel pain, he just *wishes it so*. This is also useful because if he *can* feel pain, it means the nanobots are not working and he's going to get snuffed for real.
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### How much time does Johnny have to prepare, and exactly how big of a budget does he have?
If he has plenty of time and a big enough budget, he wouldn't need drugs at all. Instead, **he merely needs to [sever his spinal cord](http://www.spinalcord.com/blog/c1-and-c2-vertebrae-the-basics-behind-the-worst-spinal-cord-injuries) at the [C1 vertebra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(anatomy)).**
Ideally, what you're looking for is major damage to the spinal cord with tetraplegia (paralysis and loss of sensation) from the neck down. He'll need to be tied to something in order to stand and until the moment of his death he may need a ventilator, but except for his head, he won't be feeling pain at all when he's set ablaze.
Why does he need a budget? Can't he just slip in the shower or [annoy a Russian submarine captain](https://vimeo.com/161393081#t=155s)? Sure, but spinal cord injuries are unpredictable, and you need a specific effect. You'd be hard-pressed to get the results you want on the first try, but luckily, death isn't the end! With a large enough budget, Johnny can just keep breaking his neck over and over until he gets exactly the spinal cord injury he's looking for. To minimize his pain, a willing friend could be standing by with a pistol to execute the Johnnies whose injuries resulted in either too much or not enough paralysis (and if there were 4 failed attempts before a success, you would be able to make a terrific 80's joke)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A3CoOm.jpg)
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"for story purposes he needs to be on fire and conscious for around five to fifteen minutes."
I think this part may be problematic. Short of suffocating, your next leading cause of death will be shock. Being set on fire will likely put poor Jimmy into shock pretty quickly. He'll loose consciousness and likely go into cardiac arrest a good while before the 15 minute mark. 5 may be doable, but 15 seems like a stretch.
Which presents the next catch, anything Jimmy could do to reduce his suffering could possibly prolong his suffering. Any combination of drugs to reduce the pain would also either reduce his likelihood of going into shock and loosing consciousness, or suppress his breathing causing him to suffocate.
He'll also have to avoid breathing, to avoid suffocating. Sounds strange I know, but beyond suffocating from smoke inhalation, he'll also need to avoid breathing hot gasses that can effectively seer the lungs.
His best chance to avoid pain would probably be a series of local anesthetic injections, but he probably wouldn't be able to appear upright and mobile afterward.
Overall the best way to go would be quickly, but aparently that's boring...
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You really don't need an "extra": [During the Vietnam war 10 people, both American and Vietnamese self-immolated in protest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c#Precedents_and_influence). Encourage this Johnny that his sacrifice will help bring support to a cause he feels deeply for and his mind will do the rest.
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Forget spending the resources to give these people new bodies.
# Virtual Hells
Just run their minds in simulation and subject them to whatever cruel torture you can imagine. When their virtual body dies, reincarnate them again. And again. And again. Or maybe their virtual bodies don't die at all and they're subject to the excruciating pain of every virtual molecule of their battered, burned, torn, bleeding existence.
Way cheaper to run, way more capacity than prisons, and you could even offer tours to the living.
(And yes, I totally borrowed this from the Ian M. Banks novel *Surface Detail.*)
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For me, the crucial point is: When exactly is the copy of the mind created?
If it's done **just before/after he dies**... The clone will remember all the pain and maybe become crazy... So no one will ever accept that.
If it's done **before burning him**, the clone will never remember a thing.
So there is no problem and the wrestler (or whatever) can accept to endure anything knowing that this memory will be lost forever, he will just wake up in his new body with no memory of the show and a big pile of money (so... no problem ^^ ).
And I don't see the point in druging him... if such a society existed, this kind of cruelty will have no limits and will be done for fun.
There is no fun in burning someone who doesn't feel a thing, what people want to see (no matter how horrible it seems to us) is the pain and terror of the victim... not just a dummy like burning...
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Pain-inhibiting drugs have been mentioned earlier. You may want to **induce a coma** - this is one of the ways used on severely burned people to lessen the pain while their skin regenerates (no pain at all, but no conscience either).
There was an episode of *House, MD* (*[Distractions](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0606023/)*, S02E12) where House wakes up such a patient from an induced coma state to ask him some questions. The patient wakes up and slowly realizes that he is in pain (and is put back to coma).
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If you are looking for a premise to feign pain without feeling it you have a couple options:
**Surgical**
Pre-remove of implement a switch to suddenyl sever your brain's [pain-processing center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinothalamic_tract)
**Chemical**
Drug overdoses of many stimulants can induce a nonsensical seizure. So now he can overdose of painkillers & stimulants to be nonsensical, and still be able to writhe around in pain.
Assuming your state is too nonsensical to scream you may want to add psychedelics to induce some psychotic behaviour.
Otherwise you may have to pre-record the scream and playback on a small device.
**Sacrifice a Clone**
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHKan75x7GI>
Jimmy can hide in an empty clone box at the facility to be reincarnated at the "legal" time.
In all instances I would suggest regenerating from a point of time prior to the burning.
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In your scenario as described, the interests of the victim and the audience are at odds. The victim would like to be oblivious to what's going on, but burning someone who's indifference to the experience wouldn't be much more interesting than burning an inanimate body equipped with an artificial blood-circulating pump. While it would be easy to synthesize some drugs out of hand-wavium that would allow the victim to feel nothing but still be capable of acting as though he's in extreme pain, I don't think the fictional-world audiences nor the real-world readers would find that terribly satisfying.
I think you could make things more interesting if the audience didn't merely want to watch victims "die" in extreme pain, but rather rewarded victims for their ability (or their snapshot-clones' ability) to function in extremely painful situations. If, for example, a stage were built near the focal point of a solar collection array and the victim/clone were be tasked with moving as many objects around as possible before his body was burned so badly that it could no longer move, then both the audience and the victim would want to avoid having the experience be so painful as to cause premature immobilization.
I would suggest two possible variations on this concept:
1. If you want the victim to actually live through the experience, you might perhaps protect the victim's brain using a helmet and an insulated artificial circulation system along with a safety harness that would pull it out of harm's way before it got too hot; a new body could then be regrown around the victim's brain at that point, but the victim afterward would have actually gone through the experience.
2. A snapshot is made of the victim's mind and a clone with that snapshot is then given whatever drugs would best aid his functioning and put to the (fatal) test. In this scenario, the victim would never directly have to live through the experience, but the only way the clone-victim would be able to effectively perform the required task would be if the person to be cloned had undergone suitable mental preparation for the task, and knew what combination of drugs would be most effective. Achieving those things would require that the person undergo a lot of painful testing and experimentation. The non-clone person would not need to endure actually being burned to death, but the more pain the person was willing to endure during testing and preparation, the more effectively the clone would be able to perform its task.
Perhaps the two approaches could be combined. If the former style of test would be feasible, even if audiences would only be interested in watching clones compete in genuinely-fatal circumstances, the former, "protected" style might be the most effective way of ensuring that one's clones would have the mental preparation required to perform effectively.
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[Question]
[
*Ryan the privateer is tragically dying on the battlefield, bleeding wounds all over his body. As he sees the light fading away in the memories of his childhood, his faithful cabin boy Gumptree runs in the knit... nick of time to save him, holding a medical (not magical) spray can. Will the spray be enough to see his wife Marie Sue, who bears his child? Will Jack at the lantern be able to see their brother ag...* Uh, what? Less drama and more facts? Oh... Okay.
So... Quite a simple question!(?) **Are there known technics using sprays to close bleeding wounds as quickly as possible?** I don't mean disinfect it like sprays you have in your medical locket, but actually prevent bleeding and stabilize a patient? Here's the traditional conditions list that I'd like to see ticked and tocked :
* It should close up wounds before the patient bleeds out and die, obviously.
* It shall be able to get rid of quite severe cuts, more the ones you get from a knife fight with a dangerous robber than a rumble against the carrots and potatoes of your diner.
* It should help as much as possible in the process of healing. Disinfectant, regenerative layer... I don't know, your call!
* It goes in pair with the above, you should be able to remove the stitch (if there is one) one time or another.
* The spray should be as easy to use as almost any spray. Point at the wound, and press.
* It's not that important for me if that spray is less cost-efficient than bandages. Well, unless you need gold and diamond dust to make it work, in which case I may reconsider that.
* Bonus if the component closing the wound is flexible and allows some degrees of freedom after using it.
**Note that I wish some science-based answers**, ideally with some source to support it. No magic, and no far-away science-fiction, that's too easy otherwise :). **Also, if you think it is not possible, tell why!**
So, will Ryan see his child grows? Will he be able to tell Marie that he has developed feelings for Marty Stew the obviously beautiful cook? The answers are yours to say!
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# YES, of course, why would we stop doing so?
Since 1966, spray application of cynoacrylate (superglue) has been used for battlefield treatment of serious bleeding injuries. Yes, up to and including the "sucking chest wound" class of penetrative wounds.
It very rapidly seals wounds, binds on even actively bleeding surfaces, and is reasonably nontoxic.
The *main* impediment to the bulk use of superglue in emergency wound treatment is that [the setting process of the material is somewhat exothermic](https://www.woundsresearch.com/article/unusual-wounds-cyanoacrylate-burn-injuries-two-unusual-cases-and-review-literature), and in the quantities needed on a large wound this can lead to heat burns.
References: <https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/history-of-the-super-glue.html>
<https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a25067/the-surprising-military-history-of-superglue/>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanoacrylate>
Disadvantages:
* A spray application does *nothing* to cleanse a wound. Any dirt, contamination, even larger debris will not only remain in the wound, but become glue in as semi-permanent features!
* A spray can does nothing to diagnose the problem, it is only as medically trained as the person holding it.
* Once applied, it largely prevents further treatment until removed, which is not trivial.
* Because it is a SURFACE spray, it efficiently stops *surface* bleeding. Unless you really lever the stuff in, it will not help much for internal injuries and bleeding.
This will be true regardless of the healing abilities of the spray. Unless it becomes a true 100% cure-everything, it will be best used as emergency field treatment, only.
[Answer]
# Injectable sponges
Morgan has already mentioned [XStat](https://www.revmedx.com/xstat/) which was developed in collaboration with the US military for gunshot wounds. It's not a spray can but is a very easy to use syringe which fills the wound with sponges to keep the wounded person stable for up to 4 hours.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SS7EFm.png)
# Expanding Foam
Another US Military funded device (funded by DARPA)is [ResQFoam](https://arsenalmedical.com/products/resqfoam) which is designed to apply pressure to control severe haemorrhaging within the abdominal cavity by rapidly expanding. This treatment is currently being trialled. Again this is applied using a syringe rather than a spray can.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/icJcD.png)
[TRAUMAGEL](https://www.cresilon.com/traumagel/) under development by Cresilon is another expanding foam treatment but intended for smaller wounds. It rapidly adheres to the surface of the wound to stop bleeding and is derived from sugars in brown algae. They have some compelling videos showing blood flow from arteries being stopped when the gel is applied. Again this is applied to the wound using a basic syringe rather than a spray can.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8DBEam.png)
# Self-assembling barriers
[Arch Therapeutics](https://www.archtherapeutics.com/technology/platform) have developed a self-assembling peptide gel which rapidly forms a biocompatible barrier when exposed to a wound. The amino acids in the gel bond together to form an impermeable barrier which adheres to the surface of the wound and prevents bleeding. The barrier allows gas transfer so can be left on indefinitely during healing and is eventually broken down by the body although for severe trauma would likely still require surgery. Beneficially, the barrier is transparent so the status of the wound can be assessed. This is also applied using a syringe rather than a spray can and is intended for smaller wounds but maybe it could be useful for a gunshot wound.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I54Bim.png)
# What about spray cans?
All of the treatments I've come across use syringes and I suspect this is because they allow for controlled delivery of the wound closure treatment. In the case where the treatment is adhesive, the patient may not be able to be operated on as quickly and their condition may not be as apparent if the skin around the wound is also covered in the treatment. Additionally, most of these treatments are intended for internal bleeding where tourniquets or other forms of external pressure application aren't able to stop the bleeding. In these situations it's important that the treatment is administered into the site of the wound and a syringe is designed specifically for that purpose while a spray can is not. I suppose it may be feasible to use a spray can with a fine nozzle (image below) but you may then run the risk of injecting air into the wound, causing a [gas embolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_embolism).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GTqgD.png)
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It should be possible. So-called "[liquid bandages](https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000497.htm)" are already possible and available. Their use is limited to small wounds, but they are a thing that is used.
You could add some handwavium/technological advancements that make their use possible on larger wounds.
There are also [cyanoacrylates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanoacrylate#Medical_and_veterinary), which are used to mend deeper wounds, post-surgery or even to mend things like bones and turtle shells in veterinary. Cyanoacrylates were also used during Vietnam War for the exact function that you are describing, limiting bleeding in wounded soldiers so that they could be transported to hospitals.
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Oh boy are there a world of possibilities for you! So I’ll split this answer in two parts, one dealing with the exact word of your question, and another dealing with the spirit of the question. Here we go!
---
**Exactly what you asked for**
So the other answers are all good possibilities here, so I’ll try to add one of my own. Firstly, you will almost certainly need a three part system for this to work. Part one is a debriding spray, basically something that removes debris such as foreign objects or toxic substances from the wound. Saline works great. Next you will need a stronger disinfectant and you’ll probably want a painkiller mixed in with it, think military grade Neosporin spray. Finally, and what you are looking for, is a way to close the wound. So hold on, cause I’m about to blow your mind. Technically speaking, you can close a severe wound with super glue. It isn’t exactly ideal, but it does work. This is especially true if you need a quick fix and you can get your buddy to a medic later. So basically, an aerosol super glue will do it. You may also want to add an aerosol latex spray or some type of liquid bandage to cover the wound and keep it shut.
---
**The spirit of the question**
3D printing!
...
You probably want more than that.
Ok so there is a huge movement in medicine lately with using bio materials to print a 3D lattice that encourages human tissue growth. So you could literally print synthetic skin that encourages real skin and muscle to grow across it. Combine that with a bandage and you get a closed wound and a faster healing process! Yay! This technology is completely *possible* right now, though it isn’t fully realized yet. It’s not hard to imagine something like a M*A*S\*H clinic just off the front line being equipped with 3D printers for this exact reason.
---
As for economic feasibility, I don’t know what the exact costs would be but the spray method would be relatively cheap, and I don’t think it would be unreasonable at all to think that a clinic could be equipped with 3D printers for this purpose.
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It doesn't come in a spray I think, but this is just basically Celox, Quik Clot, or WoundSeal granduals. You can get stuff like that at your local Walmart sporting goods section.
<https://www.outdoorsafety.net/woundseal>
<https://www.celoxmedical.com/product-sector/global/emergency-medical-services-global/>
Then for penetrative wounds you have XStat, which injects the person with sponges.
<https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/how-simple-new-invention-seals-gunshot-wound-15-seconds/>
Also:
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihemorrhagic>
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Closing a bleeding wound is quite simple. Since our bodies lack any fancy regeneration capability, all they do is physically close the gap where the blood is trying to escape. If this spray is filled with some sort of substance that can adhere to the skin and dry fast in contact with air, as to create a barrier for the blood, it can "close" the wound. You can think of it as a second layer of skin.
But there are factors that make it a little harder: it can not be toxic, it has to dry **really** fast as to not let the blood dig his way out, it has to stick on the skin really hard and it has to be impermeable.
I don't think there is such material in the real world so far, but since you asked for a technic, that's it. It must be possible to be made with some synthetic material or maybe latex, so I wouldn't say is some far away sci-fi. I had a plastic glue sticked to my arm once and it seems pretty stucked and impermeable. But on the good side, if is toxic but just a little it may disinfect the wound
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I don't have enough reputation to comment (T^T) but adding to PcMan's comment: a newer emerging technology that adds to it is snake venom proteins intended to cause clotting in the blood. As because of the topical application, rather than travel in the blood stream it instead causes faster coagulation allowing blood loss to be stopped quickly until a more permanent solution is achieved.
] |
[Question]
[
I mean literally not sleeping for the rest of their life, not like giraffes that only require short rests, or dolphins that can sleep with half of their brain at a time, or like otters and sharks that sleep walk.
An external solution like drinking caffeine or using other drugs is out of the question.
I don't mind, however, if one of the creature's organs can produce caffeine or another chemical that allows the creature to never sleep, but please elaborate on how it would work instead of merely hand-waving it.
(I use science fiction tag because it may not possible for science-based answer, but much appreciate if it really possible in real science)
**what organs need or developed for a life biological creature to never need to sleep?**
[Answer]
[Polycephaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycephaly) is a medical condition, in which an animal has multiple heads. This is a special type of conjoined twin. 2 is the most common form, but there is at least 1 case of 3 heads documented ([a turtle](http://www.annexed.net/notes/acnanne10.html)).
In many cases, each head is capable of sleeping independently of the other, allowing your Biological Creature to function without turpor.
In some cases, each head controls a different part of the body (e.g. [Abby and Bittany Hensel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_and_Brittany_Hensel), born 1990, each control one hand and one leg. Interestingly, if one of them develops stomach ache, the *other* twin experiences the sensation instead).
In other cases, both heads are able to control all-or-most of the body - however, when they disagree on an action, this can cause the body to "lock up" and paralyse.
What you require is a situation where both heads can control the whole body, *and* sleep independently.
[Answer]
## Just use an alien.
If it has a large brain you can't get around sleep, every organism we know of with a brain that is enlarged (complex at all) sleeps and will die if denied it long enough. There is just no escaping sleep. As long as you use earth life you have no options. All life on earth with brains share a common ancestor, so sleep is likely due to something about how neurons are structured, whatever we get from sleep many be just a quirk of how neurons evolved. We know brains need sleep but we don't know why we need it, which leaves you an out.
If your lifeform evolved on a different planet they may not need sleep, you can literally just say it has drastically different neurochemistry/biochemistry and does not need sleep and no one can argue since we don't know why earth life needs it. It does sound like a handwave, but any answer will just be a handwave since we as t he scientific community don't know what is so vital about sleep.
[Answer]
While multi-brain and multi-hemisphere answers have been posed, they all result in some loose of function while one part of the cognitive system is down. This seems against what the OP is looking for since he does not want dolphin style torpor.
However, computer scientists have already devised a number of systems called RAID controllers to be used by servers to replicate data across multiple hard drives in case of a disk failure and to allow for scheduled maintenance without downtime. When you consider sleep as analogous to server maintenance, it becomes obvious that a brain could use a similar system to overcome the need for sleep with a somewhat larger brain that functions as 2 identical brains. By replicating functionality, when one brain is ready to sleep, it wakes up the other brain and duplicates it's memories of the day to it, and then goes to sleep. In this fashion, you would not notice a performance drop-off or change in personality because both brains are doing the same things with the same hardware and the same information, just at different times of day.
So what does this look like on a brain? During the day you are bombarded by more more information than could be stored in your entire brain, but we still have long term memories that go back for years because our hippocampus processes all of this information and reduces it to a few trivial bits of information that it writes to long-term memory. Now imagine two brains connected by a new organ at the hippocampus. Let's call this new organ your raid ganglion. Your raid ganglion will work like a cache, a small and efficient place designed to store the memories you've acquired in a day. Each time your hippocampus writes a long term memory to the active brain, it also writes the instructions for creating that memory to the inactive brain in the raid ganglion. The raid ganglion retains these instructions until the sleeping brain wakes up (so as not to disturb the sleeping operations), and then dumps all the memories all at once into the second brain. The the raid ganglion then goes through its own sort of sleep cycle to purge its memories while both brains are active recording things in stereo. Once the raid ganglion is purged, the first brain can go to sleep and the second brain can begin using it to store its memories of the day.
*As various comments and other answers have pointed out, there are several possible concerns here that require elaboration:*
**1. Sleep is poorly understood**
The nature of sleep is generally irrelevant for this answer. We do not need to understand much about how sleep works to understand that it is an "offline process" where the brain is doing something other than what it does while you are awake. Whether it is a time to sort memories, replenish neurotransmitters, repair damage, etc. is inconsequential. As long as it is an isolated enough system to do what the brain is designed to do while sleeping, it can do that while the second brain takes over.
**2. Consciousness is poorly understood**
This is a more existential question than anything. To the outside observer, two brains attached to the same body with all the same capabilities, memories, skills, endocrine system, etc. would be indistinguishably the same person. If you ask either brain the same question, they will generally come to the same answer as long as they are syncing up their memories every switch over, and neither of them is significantly damaged.
From the inside, you would technically only "be you" half of the time, but you would always receive all of the memories and experiences as the other you. When "you" are in control, you really would not be able to tell the difference between when were awake, and when you just remember being awake. You might experience something like deja vu twice a day for those moments when both minds are trading off, but the human mind is full of filters designed to merge multiple inputs into a single stream of consciousness; so, a species designed to function this way would likely have a mechanism for making the switch over feel seamless the same way we can have 1 eye open, then open our 2nd eye, then close our first eye and feel like we are experiencing a continuous view of what we are looking at.
**3. Removing sleep makes our bodies less optimised**
This becomes a matter of perspective that we can again reference how RAID servers work to gain more insight. RAID servers always need more hardware than an equally powerful desktop computer. It needs more disk space, more wiring, more data processing, etc. A RAID server can cost several times as much as an equivalently powerful PC, so why do we use them at all? The answer is because they are optimized for something other than cost. A RAID server can maintain much better uptime and information preservation than a traditional computer. If part of a RAID brain gets damaged, it can potentially heal the damaged part of the brain using the duplicate structure to fully restore the lost memories. If the organism needs to think around the clock more than it needs to be able to be motile, then the bigger, heavier, brain would be more fit. We as humans use the same optimisations that were relevant to our ancestors, but after a few million years of civilization, or a few rounds of genetic engineering, humans could find RAID brains to be optimal in our environment where our greatest threats are the ravages of age and mental competition.
**4. RAID brains are just a less optimal version of having two independant brains**
It is true that you will need more neural structures operate a RAID brain than two independent brains, but this again comes down to what you are optimising for. The point here is not just no sleep, but no sleep without loss of function. The problem with two brains and one body is that both brains will have different experiences based when they have been awake. So, they develop different fears, values, skills, etc. If one decides to flee and one decides to fight, then neither strategy will work and your creature will die. If a RAID brained animal is threatened, during a time both brains are active, they will both generally react in unison instead of against each other because they have the same experiences.
As for what happens when only one brain is awake, both animals will be able to act in a single minded fashion, but the brain that does not share experiences will be unable to use what it's learned during one time of day to function at the other. This means the animal will often have to learn the same thing twice. Not only does this waste a lot of time much like sleeping does, but it exposes the organism to twice as much danger. If a one-brained or RAID brained animal does something stupid that almost kills it, then it learns from its near death experience and never does that again. If a 2 brained animal does something like that at night, then during the day it does the same thing, it has twice as many chances to die.
So, a 2 brained animal is in many ways less optimal than a 1 brained or RAID brained animal.
[Answer]
You don't need new organs you just need a few tweaks to the way the brain operates & Dolphins have already solved this one for you, obviously they sink if they stop swimming & if they sink they drown so they can't sleep, well they do, but they sleep one hemisphere of their brain at a time.
There's some evidence that dolphins can display slightly different personalities depending on which half (or none) of their brain is sleeping, which is interesting but perhaps not relevant :)
*Ah! but on a re-read I see you don't want that option.*
Well there's also a commercially available drug in the US that stops you needing any sleep, there was a documentary I saw on it a few years ago.
>
> I can't remember what either that drug or the documentary was called but you might find [***this***](https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/sleep-is-so-last-year.htm) article helpful.
>
>
>
Sleep is largely a function of biochemical process in the brain so simply manipulating the genes to adjust the Adenosine receptors to prevent uptake of this neurotransmitter or reduce or else prevent production of it might do the trick.
A downside is that sleep is an integral part of transferring short term memory to long term memory & as far as we know no organism that uses long term memory can do without it indefinitely.
I don't know 'why' the brain needs sleep to transfer short term memory to long term but as sleep is a such a vulnerable state to be in there must be strong evolutionary pressure against any alternative to the dolphins for it not to already have appeared.
***Long & the short is the dolphin answer seems the best option to get the 'appearance' of what you ask for despite the fact you remove that option in your question.***
*But there's no reason to stick to the two hemisphere plan of the the Dolphins (presumably shared by whales).*
*You could split the brain into four or more with overlapping sleep patterns such that each part (eventually) shares sleep time with each other part, you can use that to plausibly say long term memory is duplicated to all parts of the brain during this time to avoid any long term variation in memory & personality during different parts of their sleep pattern.*
[Answer]
**Brain with three hemispheres**
The state in dolphins and some birds that could keep some functions while sleeping is achieved by working with only one of the hemispheres of their brains while in "sleep state" the other part is resting.
If you add an extra hemisphere that would support the "awake" part with their normal functions you could cycle between them to achieve a "non-sleep state" during most part of the life of the creature that you are designing.
Edit: The correct definition would be a Trientsphere divided brain. @jdunlop
[Answer]
**First, you need to understand why we need to sleep. Sleep is to pay a debt with interests** Let's put it in this way: **Imagine** that exists a creature just like us, but **does not requires to sleep** (later we see this). The body and mind will have some features, like move X kg/hr, and to solve Y problems each hour. That will be limited by available energy, matter, and complexity (among other variables). It does not matter which value X and Y are, every individual will have some limit, and the species will have some median limit.
Now, imagine that her/his life (or perpetuate genes) requires, somedays, **to move twice the mass (2\*X kg/hr) in one hour, and to solve twice problems** just one hour a day, but the amount of matter, mass and biological complexity can't grow that much.
Which can be an evolutionary path? Sleep. **Sleep is the counterface of overpowering** (just like cooling could a requirement to use a machine over normal limits).
Examples (not exactly this way, just some simplifications):
* When you rest, your body accumulates creatine in your muscles. It's a
reserve of energy that does not requires oxygen to be consumed (so,
it's not directed limited by circulation or respiration frequency). If the body does not did this, you'll need to oversize everything (and the cost sometimes is exponential), to do the same (but you could do it all day long).
* When you think, every activated neuron in your brain drops neurotransmitters to next neurons in the "gap". The next neuron need to detect the change of neurotransmitter concentration. Until you eliminate the remaining neurotransmitter, the same neuron can't be activated and have effect (like pushing a button before releasing it, it's just one big push). The brain has mechanisms to allow "repush" but they generate more and more wastes. If you remove this, you think slower. Or maybe you'll need a really complex and big brain.
So, to not sleep, your creatures needs to don't have a big evolutionary pressure on be awake than "overpowering". It will be **slower both physicaly and mentally, or: bigger, with much hunger, a more complicated** "waste cleaning" system for the brain, a more complex circulatory system for the muscles, a more complex "cooling" system (more energy consumed, more heat), a more complex "memory system" for the brain, etc.
[Answer]
I've seen people saying that vertebrates need sleep. Well, not only them. Cephalopods also experience brain activity similar to REM sleep. Insects sleep also. For example, fruit flies have been found to take rests at certain periods in their circadian rhythms, staying still for 2 hours or something, exhibit very poor or near zero response to stimuli.
This suggests sleep or sleep-like states as part of an animal's circadian rhythm. The state leaves animals vulnerable, so there must be a very damned powerful evolutionary pressure for animals with significantly different nervous systems and family branch pedigrees to evolve such a trait (possibly convergent.)
Now, let us understand what sleep is.
Honestly we still do not know. All we know is that it is a regenerative process that requires the creature to go into a torpor-like state.
It also seems that the drive for this regeneration is not based on cognitive abilities. Fruit flies aren't necessarily the brainiest of creatures.
Heck, cnidarians sleep, and it appears the C. Elegans nematode with only 504 neurons also sleep (and can be induced to sleep or wake up by modulating oxygen levels.)
So it seems to be that sleep, where it occurs it is tied to a circadian rhythm. And it could be an evolutionary trait that allows animal to somehow control when to go into torpor/hibernation (as opposed to wait for external stimuli to do so.)
So, for an animal (or alien animal analog capable of locomotion and with a "nervous system" capable of acting, reacting and pro-acting to external stimuli) capable of going without sleep, it might have to have a sort of branched/parallel nervous system.
I'd say only one is active at any given time. That is, they are not "on" at the same time. These systems will need to be integrated with (also separate) endocrine systems that produce the necessary hormonal analogs to regulate organ activity and tissue recovery.
That is, the body can recover while it is "on" with at least one nervous system as a hot backup (and the other one in a cold backup state, sleep.)
I have a hard time imagining such a biological system not needing to be in a state of torpor, to recharge and accumulate energy stores or flush metabolic byproducts, for instance.
Now, if we relax the requirement and allow the creature to enter a state of near torpor or body relaxation, then it is easier to imagine a creature that can remain neurologically away (with parallel or hierarchical nervous systems where one system remains "on" and one or more remain "off".)
Other than that, I don't see how (not with Earth biology, no.)
[Answer]
I think there's a lot of wiggle room here, so you might need to clarify your question.
For example, what is "sleep"? Would it be ok to be responsive to stimuli, but incapable of conscious thought? That would require only a small amount of additional cells to handle not sleeping (or none at all, given that we will be awoken by a strong enough stimulus -- again, it depends on definitions), plus some changes to allow faster recovery from dormant mode.
You reject the dolphin solution, but it's not clear to me what aspect doesn't fit your criteria. Do you want identical behavior throughout the day? If each hemisphere had its own short-term memory, but a shared long-term memory that could only be properly consolidated and organized during low periods of mental activity, would that be adequate?
Identical behavior throughout the day is *very* different from any known organism with a nontrivial brain, by the way. We just don't notice the extreme differences from moment to moment. Try doing something intensely mental for a long period. We might have 8 hour work days, but *nobody* does a full 8 hours of intense mental work every day. Even consciousness is patchy; most of the time, we aren't truly consciously aware or making decisions. We don't need to be; there aren't that many decisions to be made. It's more like vision, where we think we can see a nearly 180° field of view, but in actuality our brain is stitching it together from small regions of high acuity surrounded by a huge region that is extremely low resolution. Your creature mostly just needs to fool *itself* into thinking it's awake all of the time.
If you really wanted to dig into it, you could come up with mechanisms for doing maintenance and consolidation that can operate during brief slices of downtime. Perhaps have a shadow network right alongside the main neural network that computes the "rested" state, and quickly swaps it in during periods of inactivity. (Activity would inhibit the modifications from the shadow network.)
But that requires a lot of speculation about mechanisms that we don't understand in the first place. How different from just waving your hands and saying, "It just works, m'kay?" do you need?
[Answer]
There is a huge difference between a brain that has evolved to depend on sleep and a brain with an evolutionary history that deals with the brain's needs in other ways.
During sleep the body goes into a different modus, and there are a lot of things happening in the glans, brain and biochemistry. Take clams for instance; there are some species that are often exposed to tidal waters, and are exposed to air for hours when the tide is low. They have practically no brain, but you could call this inactive time for sleeping, because they have become dependent on this daily rhythm, even if we should submerge them in water 24 hours a day.
Could a complex brain that don't need sleep evolve? Possibly:
<https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/animals/fishes/do-fishes-sleep/>
*"Many fishes, however, seem not to sleep. Pelagic species such as tunas and some sharks never stop swimming. One theory suggests that during sleep, sensory information (predominantly visual) gathered during the day is processed to form memories. Fishes that swim constantly in blue oceanic waters receive little 'unusual' visual input and require less 'memory-processing time' and thus need no sleep. This is supported by studies on several species of blind fishes that live in caves. These sightless fishes do not sleep."*
If this theory is correct, sleep is the brain's way of "digesting" information that have been accumulating during the waking hours. The brain of an intelligent species would therefore need a brain that is able to digest information fast enough for it not to build up. Other species are only active at certain times of day, and when they are first inactive, why not do something useful while you wait? So they evolve a sleeping pattern, even if they don't have to worry about that much visual inputs.
For a sleep dependent species, like a human, to be healthy and function optimally, they can't go too long without sleep. So no magic pills.
The only thing I can imagine would work in a science fiction setting, except from artificial selection over many, many generations to breed a new kind of human that don't need sleep, is a highly advanced gene therapy. If you could rewrite large portions of your DNA, which would modify your brain, glands, biochemistry and habits, I guess it could be done. (Alternatively you could also inject some serum from a sparkling vampire.)
[Answer]
Though we don't know exactly why we need sleep, we do know that there are **biological processes that occur during sleep** that aid in things like memory. And things like cleanup and maintenance, I want to say? So, theoretically, I suppose if there was a way to cause those biological processes to occur during wakefulness, that would do it. If those processes are only semi-compatible with wakefulness, maybe you get a half-sleep state. And maybe because of the brain's architecture, in real life it's not possible to run the wake and sleep processes simultaneously. But maybe off sci-fi land, someone can create a way for them to occur together. For example, **nanobots** that perform the sleep processes to keep your brain healthy but do it in such a way that they don't interfere with waking activity. Or maybe they do interfere in some interesting way that is a plot mechanic.
Another sci-fi option might be **neural implants** of some kind. Could you replace the part of your brain that needs sleep with a piece of hardware that did not? For example, if your brain needs sleep primarily to maintain memories, what if you replaced that biological memory storage with a man-made memory storage unit of some kind? Maybe you'd need less sleep then. But I'd guess your brain probably needs sleep for a host of things and that isolating them into replaceable components isn't so simple. But this is sci-fi land...
[EDIT]
Wanted to add that a single chemical is not going to do the trick, because at the most it can just prevent sleep. It can't replace the necessary biological processes that your brain needs and sleep provides. These processes are probably very complicated, so...nanobots?
[Answer]
[Fiction]
Sleep is a natural stress reliever. In humans, and even in animals, you can expect a lack of sleep to lead to a situation of Hypertension. So, any sentient animal species that doesn't sleep at all has to be really stressed, which means its lifespan will be short lived.
Next, not sleeping is akin to an extreme case of insomnia which is biologically evolved in your case.
Since insomnia is a common occurence in humans, you can look into conditions that can trigger it/ break the regular sleep cycle, and factors that can keep it broken.
For [example](https://www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/melatonin-and-sleep): In below, the bodily chemicals/ hormones work in tandem to affect the regular sleep in humans:
>
> Exposure to light stimulates a nerve pathway from the retina in the eye to an area in the brain called the hypothalamus. There, a special center called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) initiates signals to other parts of the brain that control hormones, body temperature and other functions that play a role in making us feel sleepy or wide awake.
>
>
> Melatonin is a natural hormone made by your body's pineal (pih-knee-uhl) gland. This is a pea-sized gland located just above the middle of the brain. During the day the pineal is inactive. When the sun goes down and darkness occurs, the pineal is "turned on" by the SCN and begins to actively produce melatonin, which is released into the blood. Usually, this occurs around 9 pm. As a result, melatonin levels in the blood rise sharply and you begin to feel less alert.
>
>
>
So, all you need to do is establish interference in a similar system/ remove the hormone, and your fictional species can go sleepless.
Next, give this species a short life, and an early reproductive age, where the stress they have on themselves doesn't affect their reproductive abilities by much yet.
[Answer]
REM sleep cycles in the human brain can last from about 10 minutes each to about an hour each.
A person is typically not using most of their brain at any given moment. Therefore its logical that most of the brain (the unused parts) could be asleep at any given time without loss of function.
Divide the brain into multple lobes (the more the better) that can each nap for 10 to 30 minutes at a time. Whenever some lobe is not being used it goes to sleep. It wakes up on-demand if some stimulus tells it to. This could be an external stimulus or an internal one generated by another lobe. This is not much different than the human brain waking up from sleep when you hear or feel something.
There would be multiple lobes that redundantly perform each function.
For example, memories are recorded redundantly in multiple lobes. There are enough memory lobes so that at least one copy of any memory is available at any given time.
The only part of the nervous-system that can't take a break is the brain stem which aggregates the signals from the active lobes. But this is already true in the human brain because we always need our heart and lungs to work anyways.
Other benefits to the organism would be that failure of any one section of the brain would not completely eliminate a function (only reduce the available processing power a bit).
If each lobe needs to rest at least 1/3 of the time (like a human brain sleeping 8 out of every 24 hours), then the overall size of the brain would likely be 1.5 times as large as a normal human to have the same number of neurons awake at the same time.
[Answer]
To solve sleep dependency You need a much larger brain with duplicated brain pathways as well as two separate hormonal balances.
You would achieve that by having two different hormonal responses depending on a neural pathway. One is active when hormones are "high", one is active when it's "low".The problem is in the "switching" when you could hallucinate which, while not a debiliating state, can be rather confusing and unpleasant, especially while driving.
Long term and short term memory would also need a phase-shift solution with the brain being able to communicate with a part of the concepts and memories and worked out patterns at one time. So you could be a good programmer for 12h and a good welder for another 12 (example).
Schizophrenia would also be a substantial issue, where basically everyone suffers from a mild version of it because the small differences of not-perfectly replicated pathways could lead to reality dissociation.
[Answer]
Because on Earth day and night are so very different, most creatures have evolved to be well-adapted to either daytime-living or nighttime-living. During the time a creature is not well adapted for it, seems to be advantageous that it conserve its energy and remain mostly inactive, and this seems to be the behavior that has evolved.
For complex life to evolve that does not go periodically inactive, you thus need to take away the regularly occurring sub-optimal time periods. A planet without a sun, but a more active internal heating system, could perhaps work. Or a planet that does not turn around its own axis and so has day and night determined geographically, that is, there are regions where it is always night and other regions where it is always day.
[Answer]
Sleep is mostly required for highly intelligent lifeforms or lifeforms with complex memory functions as far as I know (bacteria don't sleep). This is different from physical rest, which is for conserving energy.
As such, a life form with two independent brains, that take turns, would probably not need to sleep, since each brain sleeps half the time in turn, despite the creature itself being awake. Both brains need to have identical functions, and the only problem is sharing/syncing of memories between the two. Otherwise you will end up with a race with dissociative personality disorder.
As for chemicals to prevent sleeping, that's just overdrafting. The brain will eventually shutdown, maybe even permanently.
] |
[Question]
[
## Premise
This is a world in which humans are blissfully unaware of their own vulnerability. Needless to say, there are many vulnerabilities to address, however, this question deals *only* with the vulnerability of cosmic objects impacting Earth causing mass extinction events. The people of this world are clever and have and have the scientific process. They have just discovered the KT boundary:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ACXIf.jpg)
As a quick reminder, the KT boundary is often referred to as "the smoking gun" of the meteor impact theory that caused the [Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event) that took out the dinosaurs and other fauna. Above it no dinosaur fossils are found (save for descendants like birds), and below it there are dinosaur fossils. Another component is the tell-tale signature of iridium in the KT boundary; this element is virtually non-existent on Earth. For these reasons, it is very logical to associate the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction to a meteor impact. Granted, no one has a crystal ball and scientists can't be 100% certain of such a distant event in the past, but it is nonetheless one of the most evidence-backed theories to date.
In my world there are a handful of scientists who are already making these connections and writing papers to advance this very notion. However for this world to remain unaware of cosmic impact vulnerabilities there must be a counter argument, and a strong one at that. The easy fix-all is just to make everyone ignorant and uneducated, but I feel this would make for a much too boring of a world. Instead, let's not forget these world-dwellers have the scientific method and we won't be able to pull the cotton over their eyes with just any trivial counter argument.
## Question
We are trying to give this science-literate world a convincing alternate theory, albeit a likely incorrect one (hence malign science):
Imagine you are a very adept and qualified scientist, and I'm sure a lot here already fit the bill. Next, force yourself to play devil's advocate: what is the most compelling scientific argument that can be made to explain the KT Boundary that refutes meteor impact or implies a different narrative?
**Quality Metric:** Evidence is preferred, but solutions must at least remain scientifically plausible, so as to not become the laughing stock of the scientific community.
**Further Clarifications:**
* other impact evidence is out of scope; we don't have to concern ourselves with such evidence...yet (i.e. craters on the moon, Chicxulub, or elsewhere)
* the only things your answer should explain is the implications of the KT boundary as we currently understand them. For simplicity's sake, assume: 1. fossil evidence disparity 2. iridium signature
Imagine trying to finish this sentence:
>
> "What we are seeing here in the KT boundary is not evidence of a
> massive meteor impact, but rather \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_"
>
>
>
[Answer]
It's evidence of the large-scale use of nuclear energy by an ancient, advanced civilisation. What people don't realise is what kind of iridium it is in the KT layer and how much mildly radioactive material is there with it, it's not discussed since the implications are so problematic.
Sounds far-fetched but bear with me. There is a reactor that proposes the use of liquid sodium as a coolant/containment system for a high activity uranium fuel. If we use liquid mercury in the same role and have reactors all over the world then when they breach there will be radioactive mercury, and uranium fuel pallets spread across a number of large areas. The uranium and it's byproducts are relatively water soluble so they disperse into the landscape as do most of the byproducts of decaying radioactive mercury. But the mercury takes longer to move as it's pretty insoluble and it's products even more so, said products are rather short-lived as well.
We're interested in one reaction chain in particular with a half-life chain of about three(3) days; Mercury-191 to Gold-191 to Platinum-191 to Iridium-191. Iridium-191 is [observationally stable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_nuclide) undergoing so little decay that the universe is not old enough for any of it to have had a half-life yet. Iridium is almost entirely chemically inert so it concentrates in the boundary layer that marks the death of the ancients there's a lot of longer-lived radio-isotopes in that layer too but the iridium stands out because there is so little of it around in the rest of the natural world.
As the KT boundary is not universally preserved we can conclude that where we do find it there was at least one, probably several, of these reactors in the immediate area. The locality will be radioactive enough to kill all the local flora and fauna very quickly, the animal fossils will be under the fallout layer but the trees take longer to fall and rot even though they die at the same time, that's why we see an organic-rich decay layer immediately above the KT boundary.
[Answer]
**Disclaimer** before anyone thinks I am a crackpot: I do not believe in the absurds I am posting below.
>
> "What we are seeing here in the KT boundary is not evidence of a massive meteor impact, but rather \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_"
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Evidence for a flat Earth.
You see, as the disc moves through the universe with a continuous acceleration of 1G (hence gravity), it collects dust from the ether (hence geological layers). It just turns out that a little after the water from the flood escaped through the borders a few millennia ago, Earth went through a nebula, which made a very definite layer above the remains of the creatures that didn't make it into the ark.
And this debunks evolution as well.
[Answer]
Rather than alternative science, I'm going to play with alternative scientific history: Your world's scientists just made one mistake in the opposite direction we did. Without the evidence from the Chicxulub crater itself (which you suggest we don't have to worry about), it's all highly plausible.
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First, the actual science: As of our current models, a the [Deccan Traps vulcanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps) events took about 800-900Ky, likely spanning the KT boundary, and it's still unclear whether those events could have been sufficient to trigger the mass extinctions.
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Now, the history.
In our world, early models mistakenly showed that the events would have taken at least 2My, and started at least 1My too early. This meant the Deccan Traps theory was tightly connected to the gradual extinction theory, and fell along with it.1 With all of the traditional explanations going by the wayside, people started paying serious attention to the impact theory, even before the discovery and dating of the Chicxulub crater.
In your world, early models instead mistakenly showed that the events took only 200Ky. This meant the Deccan Traps theory was tightly connected to the rapid extinction theory, and rose along with it. It soon became the mainstream consensus, and the impact theory, while not crank pseudoscience, was only explored by a small minority.2
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1. As it turns out, the rapid extinction theory was probably too far in the opposite direction. But not wrong enough to invalidate the impact theory, and almost certainly not wrong enough to invalidate your world's rapid vulcanism theory.
2. And most likely, like the Deccan backers in our world, the impact backers in your world are spending most of their time on hybrid theories—an asteroid impact triggered the Deccan traps, there were actually two extinction events less than 1My apart, etc.—with about the same effect on mainstream opinion.
[Answer]
One plausible explanation would be a series of major volcanic eruptions, such as the 2 million year long eruption period at the Permian–Triassic boundary (the Great Dying) 250 million years ago in what is now called the [Siberian Traps.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps)
The Iridium signature could be explained as a peculiarity of the mantle plume that created the long eruption period; evidence that something not "on" the world, but possibly from "in" is what caused the extinction event.
Of course, we have to wonder where the basalt field from the K–T boundary has gotten off to. Perhaps it happened on an oceanic plate and subducted under a continent.
[Answer]
My answer will be based on an assumption that your civilisation is super-optimistic and as a result the majority believes nothing really bad can happen. No wars, extensive volcanic activity or anything that could threaten dinosaurs or humans. Not to mention disastrous asteroids. After all asteroids are nice bits of space visiting us sometimes and bringing civilisation advancement, aren't they?
## So what really happened?
According to scientists the life on Earth is a chain of evolving civilisations that at some point decide to leave Earth. Every time the civilisation takes as much of the life as possible with them to bring them to some beter future across the skies. We call such events Mass Earth Leave (MEL) and count them from the last (so the newest one is the First MEL or FMEL, next one is the Second MEL or SMEL and so on; if a letter is already used you should use additional lowercase letter, so Fourth MEL will use acronym FoMEL). What are the exact reasons for that are unclear but there are few theories considered. Yet the evidence for MELs is strong, and especially the FMEL has enough traces to give us a rough understanding of the events in the past. It makes us thrive to see the Zero MEL or ZMEL, that is the Mass Earth Leave event of our own civilisation.
We also call the civilisation by the MEL they utilised (or will utilise) to leave Earth. So our civilisation is ZMEL, the one preceding us was FMEL civilisation, their predecessors were SMEL civilisation and so on.
Since the FMEL the nature needed 65 mln years for the next (our) civilisation to evolve. Note that only about 13% of that time is marked with the existence of the Hominini tribe, Homo Sapiens exists for only 350k years and the expansion of a traceable civilisation actually happened in less than 15k years. Also the civilisation really jumped forward in the last 150 years or so and you may assume that it will keep speeding up in a logarithmic scale.
We have traces showing that the SMEL, directly preceding FMEL happened 250 mln years ago so our predecessors had roughly 185 mln years to evolve. Of course the evolution doesn't always happen with the same speed, the SMEL civilisation needed only 54 mln years to get to the point where they were able to perform MEL but there are probably some random factors that expedite the growth of civilisation. Fall of a large meteor is supposed to be one of them as they might bring some materials unknown to those living on Earth at the specific time and that can trigger a search for a ways to create such materials artificially, leading to new discoveries that can be utilised in various ways. There are probably others that supports the evolution of sentience.
The most accepted theory these days says that after each MEL the majority of well developed life forms leave Earth leaving space for creatures that so far occupied niches. Once the great dinosaurs left the Earth at FMEL mammals finally were able to evolve to sentience. Similarly after SMEL there was now space for the reptiles to evolve. We are aware there were plenty bipedal dinosaurs which marks the group similar to Primate. Even though we don't have strong evidence except the apparent MEL it seems that at some point, probably 0,5-1 mln years before MEL the species started to evolve in the direction of sentience and somewhere within probably last 100k years, maybe more a huge civilisation evolved. 65 mln years is enough to wipe all traces of it but the MEL.
At some point two things had to happen.
1. The civilisation discovered something that made them want leave the Earth.
2. They discovered a way to lift entire groups of species into the stars.
With the technology in place and the desired they introduced the plan of leaving Earth, taking as much as possible with them.
Based on the traces found in the so called KT boundary that geologically indicates the time of MEL we can assume that the star travel technology produced as a waste plenty of the Iridium-191 as this is the particle found in plenty in the KT boundary. It can be though a leftover of Mercury-191, Gold-191 or Platinum-191 (\*) that were produced instead during lift-offs. There most probable initial launching platform was the Chicxulub crater, however potentially before all the ships launched there were other launchpads built as well, less recognisable at our current technology level for us since the technology also evolved making it possible for less prominent launchpads.
Obviously almost all large dinosaurs were taken with the civilisation as there are no traces of the dinosaurs after the FMEL. Some might argue that we don't have traces of the sentient dinosaurs but there are may be two main reasons for that, probably combined. One is that since the civilised form existed for a very short time we simply haven't found it yet. We do not find all traces, only those that were subject to fossilisation so it might also be that none of the graveyards happened to have the right conditions for it. Other reason is that we might simply not be able to recognise which dinosaurs were really the sapiens ones. All we find is bones, not brains.
There is a small possibility, that the effects of the MEL cause such changes to the climate that most of the remaining species on Earth went extinct. If that's the price we will have to cope with this cost. It can be also a reason why no great thinking dinosaurs decided to stay behind on their mother planet.
## So why perform MEL in first place?
As already mentioned - we don't know for sure. This discovery is still before us. There are at least two concurring theories now though worth considering:
### A better planet(s) for living had been found
We are only starting to discover planets outside of the Sun planetary system and we are not able yet to decide if a planet is worth getting there or not. But imagine there are multiple planets within pretty easy reach to each other (of course with the technology we do not posses yet as well), habitable for us but giving something extra - extra space, extra life support conditions etc. Alle the MEL civilisations could have found something like that. We might even find our ancestors out there in the deep space one day.
If the space travel technology was developed enough to enable all the habitats of Earth to safely travel to those planets, then why not?
### The zero-G conditions are required for further development
This is even more thrilling. We constantly look for ways to extend our lifespan. What if we still miss one factor that makes things harder - gravity? Of course with current technology and evolution stage lack of gravity works against us. But maybe once we really get to the space travels we can evolve even further into life forms that are almost indestructible?
## So now you know!
We found traces of 5 Mass Earth Leaves. We could have missed some. Maybe the details of them were different (especially technology invented). But at least we have an idea where to look for our future development and expansions. We can be sure of that - one day ZMEL will come and we will reach out to the stars!
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What I missed in the existing answers was that the OP's civilisation doesn't want to believe in anything bad. Most of the answers say "something bad happened, it just wasn't the meteor that caused it.
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(\*) I was partially inspired by Ash's answer and the chain of isotope by-products (included 1 to 1 in my answer).
Also comments by kingledion and Geronimo plus contradicting approaches of some others lead me to this approach. I want to thank all of you ;-)
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Don't blame me if now a new MEL-believers move similar to Flat-Earth believers rise in the near future ;-)
[Answer]
The easiest explanation would be a period of increased volcanism. Several volcanoes eject iridium-rich lavas and ashes. The Wikipedia entry for [Piton de la Fournaise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piton_de_la_Fournaise) states,
>
> Many craters and spatter cones can be found inside the caldera and on
> the higher flanks of the volcano. **Lavas with high concentrations of
> iridium** are routinely ejected through these vents
>
>
>
A series of mega-eruptions on the scale of the Toba event could well have coated the whole planet with iridium-rich ash, and the epicenter would not coincidentally appear to be in the same general area of the impactor. The signs of the impact itself could then be mistaken for signs of a Yellowstone-scale supervolcano eruption.
[Answer]
**The iridium layer is the product of gradual deposition and natural accumulation over millions of years.**
Yes, meteorites have iridium. Iridium dust rains down on us all the time! Little meteors are always hitting the atmosphere and ablating. And what happens to that iridium? It lands on the ground.
And then what? Iridium is heavy! So the fine dust migrates downwards - sinks if you will - into the soil. It will continue to sink until it meets a barrier to sinking any further and there it will accumulate.
Saying that the iridium layer is from one big meteor is like saying the Chilean guano deposits are evidence of monstrous birds that took giant football-field sized dumps. What you see at this KT boundary is millions of years of iridium dust, gradually deposited on the earth meteorite by meteorite and then arrested in its migration to the core by a layer of less permeable minerals.
Still doubtful? Then consider - would one giant clump of iridium impacting the earth produce an even deposition of iridium dust all over the world? Of course not. But a gradual salting of the earth with tiny pieces of iridium coming from every direction would produce exactly that even distribution that is seen at the KT boundary.
I understand it is more exciting and newsworthy to have world killing asteroids crushing T Rexes, and Bruce Willis, and atomic bombs and all that. But not every thing needs to be an summer blockbuster. Walk out of the theater on that summer night and if you are lucky, you will see a colorful shooting star bringing our planet its daily dusting of precious metal.
[Answer]
The creatures of that time where huge and monstrous and a danger to anything alive.
God saw that his creation was corrupted and sent the great Deluge to wipe out the monsters and let only the benevolent and even-tempered creatures live.
When the angels closed the flood gates of heaven to end the Deluge, the water flowed over their shimmering wings, dissolving the iridium out of them. The receding waters spread the iridium evenly over the lands as a blessing of God. This prevented the anew corruption of creatures for a very long time. Therefore the iridium is highly valuable for anyone trying to safe their soul and gain Gods blessing.
If you don't want to recreate Christian myths, God could have set the entire world on fire to wipe out the monsters. When the angels saw that even the "good" creatures burned, they dived down from Heaven to save them. The feathers they lost in the rescue were burned to fine, silvery ashes and spread as iridium over the world.
[Answer]
Okay, I don't answer your question, but I do show that an alternate history is required to keep the other evidence for catastrophic asteroid impacts from being uncovered regardless of what geologists in your society think about the KT boundary. And if your story happens in an alternate universe, perhaps geology develops at a lesser pace and has not yet become precise and sophisticated enough to realize what the KT boundary means.
If the story happens on Earth in an alternate universe, then the probability that the humans will ignore the possibility of asteroids causing extinction level events will be lower than the probability of that happening in some other solar system specially designed to make the danger higher but the natives less aware of it. But the probability of them being oblivious to the danger can be made much higher than it is in our alternate universe.
So I suggest several historical changes that should be necessary to make your alternate universe scoff at the idea of dangerous extraterrestrial bodies and their impacts on Earth.
I think that your premise that discovery of the KT boundary is what made humans aware of the dangers of asteroid collisions is an oversimplification.
The Alvarez impact theory was formed in 1980.
The article "Giant Meteor impact" by J. E. Enever was published in *Analog* March 1966 and reprinted in a couple of anthologies with six editions between 1968 and 1976.
<http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?115456>[1](http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?115456)
As i remember, the article started with a premise familiar to science fiction readers in 1966, that an asteroid or giant meteor was detected heading for Earth and the space force is scrambling to deflect or destroy it. Then it is calculated that the asteroid will land in an ocean and everyone relaxes, because there is no need to prevent the asteroid from landing harmlessly in the ocean, right?
And then the article says wrong, an asteroid landing in the oceans would be an even worse disaster than the same asteroid landing on land, and proceeds to calculate and demonstrate why.
I remember there was a list of suspected astroblemes, or "space scars" on Earth, some of impressively large size. I remember the name of Vredefort in South Africa, which is still listed as the largest diameter impact structure on Earth at 160 kilometers, larger than Chicxulub at 150 kilometers.
The possibility of an extraterrestrial object striking Earth with devastating impact has been the subject of a number of stories for a long time.
Examples include:
*The Year 4338; Petersburg Letters* (1835) by Vladimir Odoevsky is set a year before Biela's Comet is predicted to collide with Earth.
"The Star" (1897) by H.G. Wells in which a star collides with the Sun.
*When Worlds Collide* (1933) by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer. A rogue planet collides with and destroys Earth.
In the *Flash Gordon* (1934) comic strip the rogue planet Mongo is on a collision course with Earth, but Emperor Ming says he will change the course to avoid collision.
In the *Flash Gordon* (1936) movie serial the rogue planet Mongo is on a collision course with Earth, but Emperor Ming says he will change the course to avoid collision.
In the *When Worlds Collide* (1951) move, a rogue planet collides with and destroys Earth.
In E.E. Smith's *Lensman* series entire planets were moved as weapons and smashed into enemy planets beginning with *Grey Lensman* (1939).
Astronomers first discovered lunar craters over 400 years ago, in 1609. For centuries astronomers debated the origin of lunar craters. The main theories were volcanic action similar to the volcanoes on Earth and giant impacts. The impact theory was proposed by Gilbert in 1893, Baldwin in 1949, and Eugene Shoemaker about 1960. Lunar probes and expeditions in the era of Project Apollo proved the impact theory about 1970.
The Mariner 4 probe discovered craters on Mars in 1965, Mariner 10 discovered craters on Mercury in 1974 & 1975, and eventually craters were discovered on all solar system bodies that were examined, except for those with strong geological forces and erosion from gases and liquids resurfacing them.
Meteor Crater, or Barringer Crater, in Arizona has had its origin disputed between volcanic and impact since 1891 and until the meteor impact theory was finally proven by Eugene M. Shoemaker in 1960. And as "Giant Meteor impact" shows, by 1966 there was a list of possible impact structures on Earth.
Early in the 19th century, scientists accepted that rocks sometimes fall from outer space onto Earth. The Wold Cottage or Wold Newton meteorite of 13 December 1795, so famous in fiction, was one of the events that convinced scientists that meteorites are real. And then of course it would be obvious to wonder what damage a vast meteorite the size of an asteroid could do if it hit.
On 30 June 1908 there was a vast explosion - equal to about 3 to 5 megatons of TNT - in the Tunguska region in Siberia, little noted in the outside world. There were seismic and atmospheric effects around the world, and the skies glowed at night for several days. But there was little association with the few reports of an explosion in Siberia. The first suggestion that it was extraterrestrial was in 1921, and the first expedition to the site was in 1927. The asteroid/comet theory gained acceptance within a few decades.
On 12 February 1947 a spectacular meteorite fall was observed in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains in Russia. Many tons of fragments were recovered, and the largest crater was about 26 meters (85 feet) in diameter.
In the *Star Trek* episode "The Paradise Syndrome" 4 October 1968, an alien planet is threatened with collision with a giant asteroid.
In the *Star Trek* episode "That Which Survives", 24 January 1969, Sulu says:
>
> Once in Siberia there was a meteor so great that it flattened whole forests and was felt as far away as
>
>
>
<http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/69.htm>[2](http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/69.htm)
Which shows how famous the Tunguska Event had become by 1968. Of course by the future era of *Star Trek* there could easily have been one or more later massive impacts.
On August 10, 1972, the Great Daylight Fireball was seen over the western USA. An object about 3 to 14 meters, or 10 to 45 feet, in diameter passed through the Earth's atmosphere and then returned to space, reaching as low as 57 kilometers or 35 miles.
On 15 February 2013 the Chelyabinsk Meteor exploded over Russia at a height of 29.7 kilometers with a blast estimated to be equal to 400 to 500 kilotons of TNT, 26 to 33 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. The object was approximately 20 meters (65.6 feet) in diameter and weighed about 13,000-14,000 short tons.
So in order for your world's scientist to believe that the KT iridium layer was terrestrial in origin, a lot of things will have to go differently in your alternate universe.
Discovery of the reality of meteorites must happen as late as possible.
Either the Tunguska Event, the Sikhote-Alin event, the Great Daylight Fireball, and the Chelyabrinsk Meteor don't happen, or they happen, but the areas they happen in are totally uninhabited by civilized people so no reports of them reach the outside world of science, causing people to know that city devastating impacts are possible.
The Euro centric scientists of your world will discount rumors from people they consider too backward to report data accurately. This probably means that the Russian expansion into Siberia starting in the 16th century and the American expansion into the trans-Mississippi west in the 19th century never happen.
Such historical changes will probably also help delay the popular science fiction idea of cataclysmic interplanetary collisions for decades or centuries.
There must not be any space race or any space exploration, which means that history has to be changed starting in the 1950s or earlier, which is no problem since the lack of exploration of Siberia and the American west must begin much earlier anyway. Thus there will be no space probes that prove that most objects in the solar system have many craters. And no proof that the Lunar craters are impact structures. And no great flourishing of planetary sciences in the later 20th century.
And above all, there can be no career of Eugene M. Shoemaker (1928-1997), who proved that Meteor Crater is a meteor crater and identified other impact structures on Earth, who proposed that Lunar craters are impact structures, who started searches for Earth-crossing asteroids that might potentially impact on Earth, discovering many, and who co-discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1993, which was predicted to impact on Jupiter in July, 1994, an impact which demonstrated the almost unimaginable power of impacts and thus made a big impact on our way of thinking about impacts.
I suppose that those historical changes, plus some changes in geological theory, will be enough to keep the society in your alternate universes blissfully unaware of the dangers from cosmic rocks and their impacts until about AD 2018.
Sept. 6, 2018 I may add that in the *Young Sheldon* episode "Killer Asteroids, Oklahoma, and a Frizzy Hair Machine" March 29, 2018, 9-year-old genius Sheldon Cooper does a science fair project about detecting asteroids and avoid impacts, in the fictional year of 1989.
Of course that is fictional.
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It is evidence of alien space-faring life. When the dinosaurs became extinct, an alien mothership went to Earth and hunted the fauna that went extinct with weapons that were produced using iridium. The alien population was so large, they were "quickly" able to wipe out all the dinosaurs by for fun, just as the *[Sound of Thunder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sound_of_Thunder)* suggests that humans would want to do.
They would have wiped out more life on Earth, but they did not because they did not want the wrath of a potential space-faring civilization that discovers what they did and they wanted to be able to come back again sooner than later to have fun hunting on Earth again.
The aliens used iridium for weapon manufacturing. Some of the factories for the alien's ammunition were left behind on Earth, leaving iridium behind. The homeworld of the aliens had a lot of iridium and the near-light-speed travel of the aliens meant that the iridium would decay a minimal amount. The iridium was most likely stored so that the aliens could get a small amount of energy from the decaying iridium.
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Since your human are blissfully unaware of their own vulnerability, I suppose that a not too violent answer is preferable:
**"What we are seeing here in the KT boundary is not evidence of a massive meteor impact, but rather the proof of the existence of a super intelligent and curious alien race.**
Indeed my dear colleagues, these extraterrestrial people travel the Universe to find the rarest species created.
Due to the perfect climate conditions during the Cretaceous, Earth permits the creation of one of the most rarest species possible: the dinosaurs.
When they discovered the precious fauna in our planet, the aliens deploy a great fleet to collect the animals.
Due to the use of iridium as fuel, and the size of the fleet, we can still find some traces of their operation. But none of the dinosaurs after that, since they were practically all taken.
And that, my dear colleagues, is the proof that we are not alone in this Universe, and one day, soon, we will meet our intelligent friends."
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Your main problem is that there's much evidence that doesn't involve the K-Pg boundary or iridium about large-scale meteorite impacts on Earth and it's not going to take much of a leap to contemplate what the potential results of such an impact might be.
Lunar craters were theorized as being due to impacts as early as the Robert Hooke in 1665, given more detail in the late 19th century, was more firmly developed in the 1920s when people realized what Barringer (Meteor) Crater was and extrapolated from that. While there was still a loud group as late as the mid 1960s who argued for a volcanic origin of lunar craters, it was considered general knowledge they were probably due to impacts. And once people recognized them on the moon, and with Barringer proving they also existed on Earth, people really started looking. The Earth Impact Database, which lists all the known impact structures on the planet, was started in 1955. Charlevoix, as an example, was identified in 1965, and that same year a bunch of other likely impact craters were identified across the Canadian Shield. By 1970, the consensus was that the Sudbury Basin was the result of a massive impact.
Moreover, the idea of things crashing into the planet causing environmental issues already occurred to people long before the iridium anomaly was discovered and the Alvarez's published their theory in 1980. Kelly and Dachille published a paper in 1953 suggesting an impact was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, and there were others over the years that suggested an impact for a cause, but what they were lacking was evidence. That was what the Alvarez team provided with the discovery of the iridium anomaly.
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Consider an earth-like world without any flying species.
What could be the possible (I'm looking for a physics or chemistry/biology answer) cause of this?
Set aside trivial solutions as "random mass extinctions" and so on, I am willing to accept an answer that especially targets flying beings.
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The following stretch what you mean by "earth like" to the fringes of our world, but might be doable.
# Option 1: Penguin Planet
We know that some birds -- penguins -- went flightless in order to swim better and eat fish, near the Antarctic. It is plausible that an ice planet, with most of its behavior happening inside the oceans, penalizes flying beasts too much relative to the amount of additional food they can get. The only organisms that survive outside of the ocean are those which live in burrows in the ice and hunt in the ocean, making it terribly inefficient to fly.
# Option 2: Irradiated Desert Planet
The magnetic field is weaker, the planet is heavier and drier, and the sun is perhaps bigger and bluer and we are a bit further out to compensate. This is a very speculative possibility of tweaking a lot of different parameters a little bit to get a similar-but-very-different Earth.
The idea is that the candidate atmosphere has a much weaker ozone layer and is more transparent to carcinogenic light -- UV, X, and gamma rays all have photon energies which can break typical chemical bonds. However, there is a possibility that this is mediated near the planet's oceans and surface because the surface is heated a bit more than Earth's usually is (which requires a bit more gravity) , causing air currents to be much stronger and storms rage over the planet.
The idea is that the experience "on the ground" is one of a perpetual smoggy haze mixed between fogs and dust, somewhat obscuring direct sunlight; the hope is that this provides protection from the carcinogenic radiation close to the planet's surface. There would still be sheltered places -- caves, canyons -- which see the development of flight, but it would no longer be a worldwide phenomenon.
So this idea is to hit the birds and insects with a triple or quadruple whammy: yes you can hypothetically fly but (a) you'll be more likely to get cancer and (b) you'll not be able to see your prey and (c) you'll have to ground yourself for cover anyway when the daily hurricane blows through and (d) your bones have to be even lighter and more frail to resist the extra gravity.
In response to these, perhaps flying *per se* is no longer a common design goal, but perhaps gliding is more prevalent. One can imagine membranes like sugar gliders have, or one can imagine that lighter insects throw up a "kite" of spider-silk and "sail" to distant locations like spores and such do.
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The [first flying insects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyniognatha) appeared (as far as we know) in the [Devonian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devonian), some 400 million years ago. Before that there were no flying animals. So not only is a world without flying animals possible, our own Earth was such a world for more than 90% of its history.
The catch is that flight emerged as a life strategy almost as soon as there were animals living on land... And there are [flying fish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_fish) too. (Yes I know that flying fish glide.)
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Discounting the problematic flying fish, flight has evolved 4 separate times *that we know of*.
* Insects, 400 million years ago
* Pterosaurs, 230 million years ago
* Birds, 150 million years ago
* Bats, 50 million years ago.
**Given that we are considering "an earth-like world"** with similar gravity and atmospheric composition, there is one one common denominator to the 4 events, and that's evolutionary pressure/natural selection.
At some point it became advantageous for each species to develop flight, the ones who could glide and flap succeeded, the ones who could glide and flap and fly better than the others fared even better.
Other than evolutionary pressure there's no one thing you could remove that would stop flight evolving at some point, and if you remove that then evolution isn't going to happen.
You could say flight hasn't evolved *yet*, but consider the young spiders that spin strands of silk into the wind until the wind picks them up and moves them along like seeds, and [some plants figured out how to glide](https://asknature.org/strategy/seeds-with-efficiently-shaped-wings-glide-slowly-to-earth/#.Wc93u8iGOM8) a long time ago, "flight" is ubiquitous in nature. Given the number of things that *almost fly* (time to mention the flying fish here) true flight is only ever a couple of adaptations away.
[Evolution of flight](http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/flight/evolve.html) is an excellent source on the subject
Life will find a way . . .
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Sort-of very thin atmosphere is a possible background for this scenario.
Assume there is sufficient oxygen to support some life but it's too thin to support flight. Anyway, flight would demand much energy and a thin atmosphere makes it worse. Animal need a much greater lung capacity and that would make them heavier too. Don't make it too thin, though: Water's liquid state has a narrower range. At 100 mbar (1/10 sea-level pressure) water evaporates at 50c which is reasonable as most places on Earth are not as warm. Check water phase-diagram, in case your scenario involves water-based life breathing oxygen.
Wind-borne pollination is still possible, but flight is more difficult.
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As other answers say, flight emerges due to evolutionary pressure and advantage. Since you can't mechanically prevent flight being workable, you would need to remove its advantage or have a recent and somewhat selective mass extinction that affected fliers.
For example, suppose that the terrain was such that a flier wouldn't benefit at all from flying, for some reason, then we can expect flight not to arise. Or suppose all fliers became ground dwellers due to giantism, or only ground dwelling fliers survived due to volcanism in the very recent past that specifically affected fliers above non fliers (due to toxins in the air that due to climate didn't reach ground level)?
The problem is, it feels contrived right now. I can't think what would make ground travel so strongly preferred as to completely remove the odds of at least *some* flier benefiting, or radiative evolution explosively reoccupying the niche. And global atmospheric disruption would have much greater impact than it sounds like you want.
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Make flying so expensive that it's not worth the cost. For example, by very strong and unpredictable winds. But such conditions will significanlty affect all other life beings. Plants would be low and robust, animals either heavy or having always strong grip to surface or plants.
Higher gravitation would also make wonders. While it would not make flying impossible, it would reduce the size of the animal where flying is viable. I suppose you don't consider microorganism floating in air as 'flying animals'. Anything too small to see could be ignored in your storyline.
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Hmm.. some thoughts:
* a layered Athmosphere with a deadly layer in ca. meters high wich is poisonous or is not breathable. But this has other impacts.
* SciFi Solution: Space-based system which kills anything flying (to prevent anything to leave the planet?)
* Fantasy Solution: one flying Species (Dragons?) which kills any other flying creature.
* since you asked for a biological explanation: what if there is a special biologic difference which leads to creatures that cannot move their arms/wings very fast? As far as I rmember, flying Insects and Birds fly by moving their wings fast - if you make that impossible, you dont have flying Creatures anymore.
All Ideas have great Impacts on the World, but maybe there is one for you..
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**If you remove flying creatures you will affect your planet's plant ecosystem.**
Flying animals(insects) are very important for plant pollination and without it the plants couldn't reach the ecosystems outside their emerging points and as a result there wouldn't be a evolution of the plants by surviving in different environments and cross-mating with the adapted plant types. Every plant would be confined in a small area because of the lack of reliable seed transportation(insects) and a change in the environment would kill all this weak, non-evolved plants. ~~It wouldn't be possible to have a stable life on this planet.~~
Some resources:
[Bees Matter](http://www.beesmatter.ca/plant-reproduction-and-the-role-of-honey-bees/ "bees matter").
[The importance of Pollinators](http://www.contentextra.com/bacconline/bacContentFiles/essFiles/MonthlyUpdates/pdfs/March-2014.pdf).
[Role and Importance of Pollinators](https://www.nap.edu/read/11761/chapter/3).
[University of Minnesota Research](http://fruit.cfans.umn.edu/pollination/)
*Flying creatures have a great impact on the plant ecosystem and if you move them out of the equation through some scientific explanation, you should redesign the flora and the fauna of your entire planet from the beginning.*
[Answer]
I think it's possible that in a flat world (no trees, no mountains, no hills) there would not be the necessary environment pressure for the flight trait to appear.
Think about it, most flying animals start first as gliding animals, that trait permitted them to save dips (jump from one branch to another) and escape from a predator. If no dips exists, there's no use in gliding, and as I see it, gliding needs to come first so flying trait can develop on top of it.
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I saw a documentary, more or less realistic, where insects developed areas of the bodies with increased surface area to lose heat, then were able to jump further( proto-wings helping this) by "flapping" their proto wings, and a time went on, the wings were bigger and they learned how to fly. Perhaps your planet has no need for animals to lose heat?
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If you consider removing atmosphere to still be sufficiently earth-like, then wings would not have anything to grab onto, propellers would not work either as they work by grabbing hold of air to create a push forward. The animals would need something like jet-engines or rocket pads to fly.
---
Now maybe that would still not be impossible since in fantasy and science fiction you have things like dragons who breathe fire and stuff. Maybe an inverted dragon species which farts flames which create a jet propulsion could still fly in such a scenario.
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How many worlds do you have? If you have a large enough sample size, you'll see all sorts of worlds with individual anomalies. If this is intended to be one planet in galaxy-spanning science-fiction setting a la Star Trek, maybe it's the one and only world where no flying life forms are known to have evolved, just by the vagaries of natural selection not hitting on that particular strategy.
In a nutshell, the mechanism that targets flying creatures in this answer is "probability".
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It could be an moon orbiting a very large planet with an ice layer on the surface and a salty ocean underneath like [Europa](https://www.space.com/34172-europa-subsurface-ocean-what-we-know.html).
[Answer]
It’s difficult to have animals and yet prevent them from exploiting an ecological niche without making your planet too non-Earth-like.
The physics of flying make it much easier for smaller animals. In fact for anything smaller than roughly insect size it become more of a challenge to *not* fly by being blown away. If you can prevent animals from being too small (I know not how) it will stop them from flying.
The ease of flying also depends on the density of the atmosphere. If the air is too thin, flying becomes impractical.
Trivially, if life could not exist outside of the water (cosmic radiation maybe?) then there could be no flight.
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I have a race of lizard people who live in an arctic climate (tundra/taiga). I just realized that this might be a problem, assuming they're cold-blooded, and I refuse to change the fact that they're lizards, because the language I've designed for them is all about reptilian hissing.
I could rig up some kind of elemental magic thing, which wouldn't be going too much out of my way, but before I do: in a not-very-advanced (medieval-ish) fantasy world, are there any non-magical ways for them to survive?
[Answer]
There are a number of options.
Firstly, the distinction between 'cold-' or 'warm-blooded' is, primarily, a set of internal thermoregulatory differences that is a subset of normal homeostasis. An outsider wouldn't see them at face value. Thermoregulation isn't just two separate bins of either 'ectothermy' or 'endothermy'. A further distinction can be made between **homeotherms** which maintain a constant internal body temperature within a narrow range of temperatures, and **poikilotherms** whose internal temperatures vary significantly. Dinosaurs likely had a thermoregulatory strategy in between both extremes, called [mesothermy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesotherm#Dinosaur_thermoregulation). The primary evidence for which has been extrapolated from their intermediate growth rates.
Ectotherms use external sources to regulate their body temperatures and are colloquially referred to as "cold-blooded" *even though their body temperatures often stay within the same temperature ranges as warm-blooded animals*. Endotherms create most of their heat via metabolic processes, and many have a larger number of mitochondria per cell than ectotherms (which enables them to generate heat by increasing the rate at which they metabolize fats and sugars). However, endothermic animals must sustain their higher metabolism by eating more food more often. For example, an endothermic mouse must consume food every day to sustain high its metabolism, while an ectothermic snake may only eat once a month because its metabolism is much lower.
You could:
* Give them a [natural antifreeze glycoprotein](http://www.livescience.com/824-cold-hard-fact-fish-antifreeze-produced-pancreas.html) circulating in their bloodstream, like some fish.
* Channel your inner feathered dinosaur and give them all a thick coat of downy feathers.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yvuAE.jpg)
* Give them all a thick insulating layer of fat, and/or large brown fat deposits (a specialized type of adipose tissue that specializes in generating heat).
* Make them huge. Many animals found in colder environments are proportionally larger than their more temperate cousins ([Bergmann's rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergmann%27s_rule)), no doubt due to lessened heat dissipation due to the [Square-Cube law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law).
* They eat far more than you would think a reptile would, and their metabolisms are specialized for using this fuel (more mitochondria etc) to generate energy.
* Make them huddle together in huge packs
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rFyQC.jpg)
* Allow them to make clothes if they're intelligent and dextrous enough. Their ancestors would likely have been temperate animals that didn't 'need' clothes to survive.
[Answer]
**Fire**
Your Lizards could live/have settled in an area of naturally occurring methane seeps. There could be a large deposit that is slowly seeping out nad had been lit on fire like [Darvaza Crater](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darvaza_gas_crater). Also, Artic Climates are known to [contribute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions) to atmospheric methane so these seeps may be tapped as well.
Also equally viable is an area with volcanic activity like [Iceland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanology_of_Iceland), plenty of hot vents and hydrothermal springs.
[Answer]
**Have them originally evolve somewhere else and move there. After all humans evolved for the savannah and use technology to live in the arctic.**
If they are intelligent they should be using fire and clothing anyway, and tech can make up for a lot of shortcomings. maybe they live in the arctic NOW because other fast breeding races pushed them out of more hospitable areas, like how we used to think humans had done to Neanderthals.
There is also no reason your lizard people cannot be endothermic there are plenty of lizard looking things in history that were endothermic, archosaurs and early mammals are good examples.
If you need them to be ectotherms then you have some problems. They are going to be inactive most of the year and hibernate the rest, this is rather unlikely for an intelligent creature, brains eat a lot of calories (1/3 of all our calories) and need them all the time and an ectoderm may not be able to support this.
**Creatures with a slow metabolism are unlikely to evolve human like intelligence, they just can't spare the calories.**
[Answer]
There are a wide variety of cold-blooded creatures in Alaska. For one, there's [Wood Frogs](http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-alaskan-frozen-frogs-20140723-story.html) (though more associate with sub-arctic taiga aka forests), which hibernate all winter. There are also [insects](http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=279) that either use natural antifreeze, supercooling or else hibernate in a free-dried state.
Finally, you can just have them spend time in salt water or in the water that lies under ice layers, that's where the fish stay all winter.
[Answer]
## Exothermic bacteria
Perhaps your race isn't inherently endothermic, but they utilize a strain of bacteria that produce heat as a metabolic byproduct to survive in cold environments. These bacteria would be consumed and take up residence in the digestive systems of your lizard people, where they would draw energy from the food their hosts consumed and produce heat.
If they aren't self-sustaining in terms of their population inside of a lizard person, they'd have to be consumed on a regular basis. Your lizard people would culture them in some form of substrate, and then prepare them in some sort of food or potion for consumption. They'd remain warm and effectively endothermic so long as they had access to a steady supply of their bacterial warming potions.
[Answer]
**Hibernation and reproductive adaptations**
There are reptiles living in Arctic regions in reality. Check out the ranges of the [viviparous lizard](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Vivaprous_lizard_range.png) and [European adder](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Vipera_berus_distribution.svg), for example. They survive by simply hibernating through the winter. They have pretty good tolerance of cold temperatures (sometimes you might spot an adder in the snow in the spring) though they still have to wait until summer to really be active. Typically they give birth to live young since eggs might have trouble staying warm otherwise.
So, nothing beyond what already exists is strictly needed for survival. However, since these are intelligent beings, they might be capable of functioning in the cold much better - they can use insulation, artificial heat sources, etc. Hibernation would likely still be a big deal in their society, though its importance might wane as technology develops.
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# Enormous size
By the [square cube law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law) volume is going to increase faster than surface area. This means that heat capacity of a body increases by the cube of one dimension, while the surface area increases by the square. Once you scale this up large enough, a creature can shrug off the cold pretty well.
# Digging in and hibernation
Cold weather climates have a [permafrost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permafrost) layer in the soil which is, as you may guess, permanently frozen. The temperature down here never drops below around -5 C. If you creature is already enormous, when the darkest parts of winter arrive (maybe the sun goes away, as above the arctic circle), it could dig itself into the permafrost and hibernate to reduce heat loss until the spring arrives.
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Related to ckersch’s idea of bacteria that needs to be consumed, you could have a digestive process like that of the [Brontosaurus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brontosaurus): similar to a modern-day [Rumen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumen), a large fermentation vat generates a great deal of heat as it processes the rough wood that was swallowed.
Even if much smaller than the great sauropods, having this internal heat source means that **warm clothing** will now work.
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Does it have to be carbon based life? Borrowing from a fanfic/crossover as well as canon with a world that has trolls, a silica-based life form could/would be more efficient at colder temps.
Or just go all exo-lifeform - "it isn't what we'd call warm-blooded, and it ain't what we'd call cold-blooded... we don't know what to call it, and to the 'zards its just the way they are - they have no frame of reference"
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There are plenty of chemical reactions that give off heat:
Perhaps the lizard people inadvertently discovered some such process, even if the scientific explanation for what happens isn't understood. I imagine them bundling up and then grabbing some kind of water skin and the related reagents before heading outside. Similar to pepsi+mentos -- though hopefully less violent -- the reagents don't need to take up much space at all.
This also opens up other plot points, e.g., "but the reaction also produced a terrible smell" or maybe "but inhaling too many fumes caused you to become intoxicated" etc.
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So, I'm trying to forge a magic sword. Naturally, this requires magic metal.
Luckily, I have access to just such a thing: Spectral metal. Spectral metals are ordinary metals which have been infused with and transformed by otherworldly energy, and each different metal has a different effect; Spectral iron, for instance, burns fairies (and is exceptionally easy to enchant with other qualities), spectral silver is toxic (and particularly effective against lycanthropes), spectral copper will build up an electric charge over time, et cetera.
Spectral metal also has varying potency, depending on the spectrocity index (that is, the percentage of "spectral-ness" compared to the theoretical maximum). Higher spectrocity metal has greater effects: 0% spectrocity is mundane metal, while 100% is metal that is completely saturated with otherworldly power. Mixing spectral metal with mundane metal will lower the spectrocity index intuitively (that is, mixing 50% spectrocity metal with an equal mass of mundane metal will result in a 25% spectrocity metal, and so on).
The abilities and qualities of spectral metal vary wildly, and spectral alloys often have effects that aren't found in any of the component metals. I haven't even come close to discovering all the different effects of different metals and combinations. However, they all have one thing in common: Spectral metal is always physically weaker than its mundane counterpart. Specifically, spectral metal is more brittle than mundane metal and can withstand less stress of all types. The higher the spectrocity index, the more fragile the resulting metal. This can actually get pretty extreme; at around 70 to 90% spectrocity, most metals will start to sublimate (each spectral metal has a more specific sublimation point)
Naturally, this leaves me with a problem. I want my sword to have as much magical potency as I can muster, but I also don't want it to break easily. How can I overcome this dilemma?
My current idea is to make the sword mostly out of mundane metal, with only the edges being spectral; this way, the sword retains the structural strength of conventional steel, while retaining potent magical properties. However, I'm not super experienced with metallurgy, so I'm not sure how to do this without significantly mixing the two alloys. What forging techniques allow me to seamlessly mold two different alloys into a single form without mixing them too much, and what technology is prerequisite to achieve this?
Alternatively, what other viable methods are there to attach spectral blades to a mundane sword without making it more prone to failure, or dramatically increasing the required maintenance?
I tend to travel a lot, so I'm interested in hearing both primitive and high-tech solutions to the problem at hand.
Addendum:
For the most part, spectral metals are chemically identical to their mundane counterparts, aside form the aforementioned brittleness, until they become extremely saturated with spectral power, at which point there isn’t much point in using them in a practical weapon.
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You may wish to look at inlays. Instead of alloying the materials, merely have a pocket cut out where you put the spectral metals.
In the real world, we have variable tempered blades. These are blades which are tempered such that the edge of the blade is very hard (and brittle), while the body of the sword is more flexible. This allows a blade to flex while still holding a very sharp edge.
However, you specifically mention that these spectral metals can take less stress than their mundane equivalents in every way. In the above example of variable tempers, the edge is hard, capable of taking great stress before chipping away. If the edge crumbles at lower stresses, it will never be an effective sword. The first time you use the blade, you'll end up damaging it.
So as an alternative, consider inlaying a small section of the edge with the spectral metals of choice. When fighting normally, you simply avoid using that particular section of the blade. When you need its particular behaviors, *then* you use it.
Also consider that some of your spectral metals don't even need to be on the edge. While the edge does the cutting, the sides of the blade do touch the target. If you attacked a faerie with a sword which was all steel except for a thin ridge 1/4" from the edge made of inlaid spectral iron, you'd certainly set them on fire, but you wouldn't have to sacrifice the hardness of your edge to do so. Spectral copper might be inlaid in circles near the back side of the blade, generating electric charges from there which flow through the steel.
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# [Pattern welding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_welding)
You start with three (or more) rods of different metals. You lay them side by side, with the softest in the middle and the hardest, most brittle on the outside; then heat them, fold them into a spiral and beat them flat. Heat, fold, and beat again; repeat until the metals blend together.
This method was used by the Vikings (among others) to make swords with a hard, sharp (but brittle) edge and a soft, elastic core, with a gradual transition from hard to soft.
[Here is a tutorial](http://powning.com/jake/swords/composite-pattern-welded-viking-sword-tutorial/) about how to make a pattern welded sword.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7VA5G.jpg)
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It's actually remarkably simple to join two pieces of metal together for these purposes.
# You place the metal parts together and hit them with a hammer until they join.
**You're joking, it can't be that simple!**
These days we have fancy names like [cold pressure welding](https://www.coldpressurewelding.com/home/what-is-cold-pressure-welding), and use machines that do it more efficiently, but in practice it's what blacksmiths have been doing for centuries. You can heat it up first which makes it easier, certainly since you're dealing with iron you'll want to heat it first for [forge welding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_welding), but then you hit it with a hammer until it welds.
If you're wondering about availability of forge welding, any blacksmith would be able to do it. It's a fundamental aspect of their craft.
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The solution would appear to be [Electrolysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis).
Electrolysis is a common process for plating metal objects with a more valuable metal. For example, [Electroplating](https://science.jrank.org/pages/2354/Electrolysis-Electroplating.html) is a common way of putting gold, silver or nickel over the top of another metal. More recently, there appears to be a process which allows for this to be done with [Iron](https://www.iom3.org/news/2013/may/24/new-alloy-makes-it-possible-produce-iron-electrolysis).
If you use this process on your sword, there are two distinct advantages;
1) The bulk of your sword gets the benefit of mundane strength without reducing the efficacy of spectral contact on the blade
2) As the plate metal wears, you can always add more through a reapplication of the electroplating process.
You literally get the best of both worlds; you get a sword with all the strength of conventional metal but you also get all the spectral benefits that contact with the blade would imbue. And, you can always freshen up the blade between battles.
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## Differential Spectrality
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BBRzO.jpg)
In bladesmithing, there is a technique called [differential hardening](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_heat_treatment). This simply means that different parts of the blade are cooled at different rates. This creates different types of steel with different properties.
The Japanese achieved this by coating parts of their katana blades with clay before tempering them. This meant that the edge cooled slower, making it harder and more suitable for holding an edge, where as the back cooled quicker and was softer, meaning if the edge chipped (as the edge is very hard and prone to damage), a crack wouldn’t form across the whole blade and cause it to break in two. (As a side note, this is why the katana curves, the back cooling faster than the edge means the steel is pulled back. If you wanted your blade to be straight, you would make it curved forwards before tempering so, when it bent back, it would be straight.)
Applying this to your question, your swords may undergo ‘differential spectrality’ where the edge of the blade is made to be more spectral than the back of the blade. The entire blade might initially be made of the same metal, such as steel, but you coat the back of the blade in, lets say, clay. This mean when you make the metal spectral, only the edge is spectral, the back of it is still very mundane as the clay prevented the spectral energy infusing the metal underneath it. Once it has finished undergoing the process, you would have a blade with a mundane steel back with a spectral steel edge.
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One technique you could use is a bastardization of the San Mai technique.
Simply, San Mai is a technique that builds off forge welding - heat multiple pieces of metal up and apply pressure (hammer) until they become one solid piece. This is how one makes damascus or pattern-welded steel - Forge weld several layers of different steels together, cut in in half or fold it or twist it (whatever) and keep doing that a few times to get a really interesting pattern.
San Mai is a variation on that that's more simple to grasp - you effectively take one steel, fold it into a taco shape, and inset another steel as the "meat" of the taco. Then proceed to forge weld those two pieces together (but you don't add extra steps - no folding, twisting, etc). Typically that'd be used to have a hard steel edge and core, with a much softer steel case to better absorb the shocks (the softer steel is literally less harden-able, so you don't have to worry about differential heating as much, just get the whole piece to heat and quench the whole thing).
What I'd imagine as your "masterwork" case would be some variation on this. Where you first make a billet that has the spectral properties you want, and then do a San Mai on it to strengthen it. An example:
You want a sword to be good against both fairies and werewolves, so you want both spectral iron and silver; but it should still be effective against people so we still need a hard steel edge. We start with three mostly-flat billets (one of each). Stack them Spectral - Steel - Spectral; and forge weld that. So now we have a single sandwich billet where the core is hard steel and each side is the less-strong spectral metals. Flatten that enough to be the blade. Then we make our taco out of softer steel (to better absorb the blows), and inlay the other billet such that it still sticks out a fair amount. Forge weld that together, and grind down the blade and harden/temper the construction.
You now have a blade where the cutting edge is hard steel, and flanking that are your two varieties of spectral metals. On a solid chop or a stab, you'd get contact on all 3 metals; but most of initial impact shock should be absorbed by the hard steel and the soft shell. Super effective if you don't need the spectral metal to be the one material penetrating.
If you do need that, you could still use the san mai technique, but rather than forging one sandwich, you could instead use different metals at different chunks of the edge. I.e. forge weld a few billets end-to-end so you have a very long billet that's e.g. Spectral silver for the first 6 inches followed by 2 feet of steel. Put that right in the soft taco. Forge as needed, and you end up with a blade that has 6 inches (either at the tip or the base) that's less durable, but super-effective. May work especially well for forging axes - a few inches in the beard inset for werewolf-killing, but the main belly of the chopping edge in hardened steel.
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## Don't make a sword.
Make a bludgeoning weapon instead, like a mace or a banded wooden club. Brittleness will be less of an issue.
If you **really** want a sword, there are those whose blade are heavy and not really sharp at all. They're designed to break armor; I refer to them as "aerodynamic clubs." Again, brittleness isn't an issue.
If you want to get really fancy, make one edge sharp (for nonmagical opponents) and the other non-sharp (for fairy werewolves). You need special fighting techniques for this, or at least be able to flip your grip in a hurry.
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I'm trying to envision a creature that is highly dexterous, and adept at using tools, but every time I try to think of a possible grasping appendage, the only two I come up with are either tentacle like appendages (cephalopods) or jointed digits (humans).
I want to create a sentient life form with neither tentacles or digits, but the closest thing I could think of is an inflatable appendage that can envelop objects, and I don't think that would be good for tool usage.
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**Really small sticky hair with fine control**
Let's not think octopus. Let's think [Geckos](https://www.livescience.com/47307-how-geckos-stick-and-unstick-feet.html).
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> Geckos can stick to surfaces because their bulbous toes are covered in hundreds of tiny microscopic hairs called setae. Each seta splits off into hundreds of even smaller bristles called spatulae. Scientists already knew that the tufts of tiny hairs get so close to the contours in walls and ceilings that the van der Waals force kicks in. This type of physical bond happens when electrons from the gecko hair molecules and electrons from the wall molecules interact with each other and create an electromagnetic attraction.
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> Now researchers have discovered how a balance of forces acting on the gecko and the angle of its toe hairs contribute to the creature's sticking success. The system makes it possible for geckos to stick and unstick their feet so quickly that they can scurry across surfaces at 20 body lengths per second.
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Let's say your aliens are arachnids, and the spidery-like points of your legs have small, sticky hairs that have evolved over time to provide you with "fine hair control." You can roll a coin around the tip of your leg and even flip it into the air with the hair control. Your human friends watch in amazement as you manipulate delicate tools and parts with ease.
After which you can climb the wall to get to breakfast on the 2nd floor.
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**Beak.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CJ1ty.jpg)
<http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-crows-hooked-tools-20180122-story.html>
Corvids and especially New Caledonian crows can use tools. The New Caledonian crows actually make their curved stick tools, which they use to fish for grubs. The New Caledonian crow beaks are adapted for this.
<https://corvidresearch.blog/2016/03/17/why-the-crow-smiles/>
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> By using tomography scans, Hiroshi Matsui and his team were able to
> compare the shape and structure of the NC crow’s bill with that of its
> close relatives. Their conclusion, which they report in the March
> issue of Scientific Reports, is that this shape makes the handling and
> manufacturing of tools easier. Looking at photos of the birds in
> action, it feels intuitive that the more exaggerated curve of a raven
> or American crow bill would have a hard time achieving the dexterity
> that NC crows need to use their stick and hook tools.
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If birds don't do it for you, you could create a creature in which each pincher-like claw functioned the same way as a crow's beak. Some existing creatures have many claws.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YNo6F.jpg)
<https://ncfscience.org/2013/05/07/horseshoecrabs/>
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Tongue has no bones but is pretty dextrous, elephants trunk is even better since it can grasp objects.
So your creatures could have muscular appendages like those with apposing surfaces for fine grip.
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Larry Niven came up with something. The pearson's puppeteers use their mouths and knobby muscular lips. they can get extra strength from hte jaws or fine manipulation from the knobs, which are purely muscular. Here is just one of many sketches of how they work for Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9fXji.jpg)
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Here are some ideas:
**Magnetolike:**
The ability to create strong magnetic fields in order to suspend ferromagnetic and paramagnetic materials.
**Acoustic:**
Using varieties of sound waves to levitate objects (use tools with higher amounts of precision)
**Symbiotic creatures:**
A symbiotic nervous relationship with another organism that has grasping power (head crabs from halflife)
**Tails:**
I don't even need to tell you about monkeys and their fifth hand.
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An inflatable appendage is actually a bit more practical than you might think- the University of Chicago came up with something similar a few years ago as a 'universal gripper'. In essence it's a sandbag and a vacuum with the principle of operation being the flexible outer allows the particulate matter inside to flow around the object being picked up. It then sucks all the air out of the system while pushing down, pulling the particles rigidly together. It gives you a compliant grip on anything the membrane/particulates can flow into.
A similar mechanism could be evolved pretty easily- a membrane full of ingested sand that the being inhales against to pull it together.
There's a video of it in action below:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d4f8fEysf8>
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Although highly unlikely, perhaps your creatures can develop **tractor beams** controlled by an **eye-like laser organ**. This would make them telekinetic and depending on the size of the beam, this can far exceed the dexterity level provided by biomechanical manipulators like tentacles or jointed digits.
You can start by knowing that [biological lasers are already possible](http://www.robaid.com/bionics/single-gfp-expressing-cell-is-basis-of-a-living-biological-laser-device.htm).
This is how they worked from laboratories.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ofXbe.jpg)
**Figure a:** Reflective mirrors are arranged facing each other, sandwiching a cell between them. The cell acts as the *gain medium*, transferring some of its energy to the light shone on it from below. The two mirrors imprison light waves that are incoherent with the cell-amplified light, allowing only the coherent amplified light to get out of the mirror prison.
**Figure b:** Microscopic image of the cell.
**Figure c & d:** Image of the coherent light emitted by the cell.
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The reflective mirrors and the light source can be exchanged for biological counterparts as well. The reflective mirror can then envelope the entire cell, creating a spherical organic mirror shell. Portions of that shell can then be modified by adding lenses with controllable focal points and light sources with controllable frequencies.
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There are a lot of uses for lasers other than tractor beams, but hopefully your creatures do not evolve to figure them out. If your creatures somehow learned how to freeze objects by adiabatic laser cooling or simply burn them with sheer ionizing radiation, then I don't know how much more dexterous they can get.
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How about air or water jets? I think of a nose with many independently orientable openings, that can finely manipulate air streams.
For such a life form tool use would probably look very different from us. Rather than a knife, they might use a stream of sand for cutting. For more human like tools holding them might be more akin to juggling them between air streams.
This sort of alien could have evolved to handle very hot or poisonous objects, that it can't touch directly.
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I'm not sure if this would count under Willik's answer, but I am sitting next to my Labrador here and she is perfectly capable of moving things with her jaws. She has a bright mind, but really it's that feature - fine motor skills - that she lacks to manipulate things carefully.
Picture an animal with four separate rows of teeth - four "jaws." In it's natural environment, it straps itself to prey and must use fine motor skills to avoid something dangerous in the animals (quills, fangs, etcetera). Once it's muscles have the animal in control, it locks down with it's jaws and consumes it whole.
The animal I just described is almost real, like a boa constrictor, which is a snake. I've seen handlers with those guys a bunch when I was younger. But surely a snake with a full brain could learn to use its jaws for more than consumption - although I shudder at the thought.
An animal with a number of teeth like that would need a mammal brain, but that would be about learning, which is more crucial than appendage, and not what you asked.
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**Engulfing Hydrostatic Gel**
Your hypothetical creature can fill a compartment of its body (like a mouth or pocket) or just cover the object with a thick goop which is laced with muscular fibres. With concentration, the creature can manipulate the fibres to pull and push various parts of the goop in meaningful ways.
This would allow the creature to manipulate the inner workings of a mechanism without opening the case any more than necessary to unseal it
More can be achieved if the gel can be made sticky selectively to grip objects inside it.
I'm imagining an evolution of something similar to the dendrites of a sea-cucumber, shifting from being a mass of tendrils to a milky haze in the water wrapped in mucous.
Also compare and contrast Sea-Stars/Starfish and their strategy for eating oysters, they pry open the shell a crack and then force their own stomach physically out of their mouth into the oyster's shell to consume it from the inside out.
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**Flingable nets.**
Have multiple single-segment arms that each can fling a net at the object to be manipulated. When the object is caught by multiple nets, it will be possible to tilt or pull the object in various directions.
Spider-Man uses flingable nets that are sticky.
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In the Niven / Pournelle classic *Footfall*, they speculate regarding an alien species that is extremely reminiscent of Earth's elephants. This hypothetical species uses its trunk as a "hand".
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Would centaur cavalry be able to hold their own in an early 1800s setting? What kind of advantages and disadvantages would they have over the regular man-on-a-horse cavalry? What kind of niche would they fit in?
**Information on Centaurs**
Biologically, the centaurs have redundant vital organs in both the human and horse halves of the body, although the cardiovascular and respiratory organs in the human torso are really only meant for fine control rather than keeping the centaur alive. Centaurs are omnivorous, although their diet contains considerably more plant material.
Most centaurs live in the grasslands and steppes, and their primary economic income is animal husbandry, which is supplemented by hunting, both for hides and for food.
Many centaurs are taught archery as a part of their hunter tradition. While they had exposure to gunpowder weapons for a long time, most of them dislike the slow process of loading and the blinding smoke generated by firing, and instead prefer hunting with bows and cavalry lances.
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I do not dispute any of the disadvantages for centaurs that Pete lists in his excellent answer above. However I suggest that centaurs would have the following very large countervailing advantage:
**Intelligence**, which is closely linked to **instant manoeuvrability**.
For instance, a centaur seeing the enemy soldiers loading their weapons *knows* what that means. So does a man on a horse, but in his case any change of course he makes has to be transmitted to the horse, involving a slight but measurable delay.
Much of the skill of a human cavalryman is learning, with great effort, to get his horse to do highly unnatural things for a horse, like charge into a row of pikes pointed at them. If, then, the charge has to be broken off, it is even harder to get them to cease the stampede.
Due to their intelligence, centaurs can take *individual* action without delay.
Even more basically, centaurs **don't have to be taught to ride**, a time-consuming process.
For a human cavalryman to [fire a bow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mounted_archery) or rifle from a galloping horse takes very great skill and training, because he must let go of the reins with both hands. (In fact the difficulty of doing anything other than riding while riding ensured that most cavalry actually fought dismounted most of the time.) But a centaur firing his bow does not have to keep his balance and aim while allowing for the movement of the horse; it is his own body. [*Added later:* Prompted by Pete and Martijn's comments below, I must concede that the bow-firing centaur, unlike the horse carrying a human archer, will have the problem that he can't give his full attention to looking where he is going.]
In comparison with the advantage of intelligence and autonomy, the final advantage I would like to mention seems almost ludicrous but it isn't really: unlike human riders centaurs **don't fall off**! Accounts of cavalry actions, or any horseriding at speed, always involve plenty of instances of "he then fell from his horse."
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To my mind, centaurs would be at a disadvantage in comparison to human/horse pairings.
**Fatigue**
With human/horse cavalry, when the horse gets tired, the human can change to another one. A Centaur has to cope with the fatigue of it's own body
**Redundancy**
When a cavalry horse is injured or killed, the ride would (hopefully) be able to dismount and either fight on foot or find another horse. An injured Centaur would just be out of the fight altogether.
**Anatomy**
Centaurs have their brains (I assume the brain would be in the human end, where else would it be) right at the front of the animal, the human part being the first part that would be exposed to any possible danger. Humans on horse-back have at least a big proportion of horse head and neck to act as a partial shield.
Centaurs have strength, manoeuvrability, and an intimidating presence as well as their skills of archery.
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Light Hussars are a reasonable choice for this, heavy cavalry would be a problem.
Centaurs have a balance issues, they're much heavier on the forehand than they should be, this causes problems with speed, climbing hills and maneuverability when compared to a good horse. As heavy cavalry with additional armour, you're only going to make the balance problem worse. Hussars mostly dropped the heavy armour in the 17thC, however weight on the upper 'human' part remains a problem, no heavy armour.
Weapon choice has similar limitations. Archers are good, muskets rather redundant as you're losing the speed advantage with the much slower weapon. A light lance would work but not a heavy spear or polearm. You have the same situation if you want to use a sword, keep it light (however you get into the eternal argument about cavalry swords and whether you should make them for cut or thrust).
Possibly the biggest advantage that nobody has mentioned is the man on a centaur option and all the additional options you get when the two can work together or separately. The man in turn can carry much heavier weapons than the centaur himself as he won't upset the balance in the same way.
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### Both regular cavalry and centaurs would lose to mounted centaur cavalry
Centaurs retain many of the advantages of mounted cavalry, such as speed an maneuverability, while being smarter than a horse and capable of fighting far better than a horse would be capable of. However, mounted cavalry have the advantage of having two brains. The horse brain can take care of running around, while the human brain can do things like fire a bow. For regular cavalry, this requires a lot of training on behalf of both the human and the horse, since the horse brain is pretty dumb and still needs a lot of input from the human.
If you stuck your archers on the backs of centaurs, they'd maintain the advantages of mounted cavalry, while not needing any human control over the centaur, which could easily maneuver and fight on its own. The centaur could focus on battlefield maneuvering, while the rider could focus on combat, armed with either a bow or a gun. In close combat, an armored centaur would be more than a match for foot soldiers and could focus on keeping its rider safe, while the rider could continue picking off enemy soldiers at whatever range the centaur could give it to fight.
Lastly, if either the rider or the centaur were killed, the other could remain a potent battlefield force, capable of either fighting alone or seeking out an appropriate centaur or rider who's lost their companion.
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The fact that the man and horse part are linked thus exhaustion/injury affect both part are a disadvantage, but it's not too important since human army rarely have spare riders/horse to give during battle.
Moreover, the centaurs have a great advantage in term of intelligence because the horse part is directly linked to the driver's brain and cannot disobey. Even if regular horse can be trained, centaur still have an advantage in this field.
At last, in centaur society, everyone, regardless of his wealth/social class, is a equestrian. Consequently, the amount of skilled horseman within population is way higher than on a human population, which implies better army.
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A few points other answers have missed.
A standard cavalry troop has the human sitting back. This means the horses head and torso provides some degree of protection for the rider. A centaur is a stark difference to this...it's human body is right upfront and isn't well protected. This makes them far more vulnerable to archer fire, spearmen, and opposition cavalry (preferably with lance). This exposure of the vital organs (head included) makes them less ideal on the battlefield.
Terrain - Centaurs are horses...meaning harsh terrain such as wooded areas are impossible to cross, swampy regions can pose an outright hazard as the heavy beast can sink, walls or other enemy fortifications can interfere far more than with regular troops, and they would have extreme difficulties in a 'storm the castle' scenario. Oddly enough, a wall of wooden poles stuck in the ground where humans could squeeze through would completely block a centaurs movement (allows for 'porous' walls where your human troops can freely move through however centaurs could not).
Projectile vulnerability. Horses are big targets, and worse yet...the vital organs are sitting right upfront on the creature and are easy targets for arrows. In a medieval setting this isn't as much of a hindrance as anti-personnel artillery isn't very present until cannons start appearing on the field. If you go to roman times, a large number of anti-personnel artillery is possessed by a good number of the forces there and ballistas (cheiroballistra if late times), lithbolos, Orangers, and a whole host of other projectile throwing devices could become the bane of centaur troops.
Lack of defensive traits. Centaurs can't dig in, cannot man walls, nor can they form an effective pike wall. They are pretty specialized troops
Inflexible. Without other troops to support on features that the centaurs are poor at, centaurs are at a pretty large disadvantage. This means centaurs would have problems operating on their own and almost require the support of other troops to fulfill the roles they cannot. Forces them to be a part of anothers army and not one themselves.
However on the opposite side of inflexible is they are strong niche troops, especially if you consider them not cavalry replacements, but horse replacements. When mounted, a centaur and a companion become a much stronger force able to put their heads to two tasks at once. A mounted archer (assuming he is tied on) can focus on sustained arrow fire instead of movement and the centaur itself could add to the arrow fire. This puts them as what has to be the most effective mounted archers to reach a battlefield. These traits also make them extremely effective skirmish and raiding troops...a quick move in on an unsuspecting enemy formation, quick strike, and an equally quick withdraw. Some guerrilla tactics in striking at enemy supply lines would also be extremely effective.
Good niche troops yes, but quite a few drawbacks.
As a side note...I do not beleive centaurs would be effective with a lance. In regular cavalry terms, the lance is being held by the mounted person and the impact of the lance is felt further back and closer to the center of gravity of the horse. A centaur on the other hand would be holding the lance in it's front arms, meaning the force of the impact is felt at the shoulders of the centaur (top front). This might make for an extreme disadvantage when attempting a lance charge.
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(sorry for bad English)A comment from person who actually handled medieval weapons:
The centaur would not all be archers. They will have as many archers as any human army, no more. Wars were not won by archers. They were won by foot soldiers, occupying and holding territory.
The height of centaur is a negative factor in close combat too. Centaur is restricted to attacking human from above only, while human can raise his shield above the head and attack centaur legs. In melee, centaur would have to keep human at greater distance than between humans.
Finally, the 50% of the army that day were pikemen. And at a first attempt against centaurs, the commander, unless very wise, would take even more pikemen.
With this in mind I conclude: the weapon of choice for centaur is a **greatsword**. Even more specifically flamberge. With long handle and extended ricasso. Greatswords were made specifically to fight pikemen in large groups.
I imagine centaur warrior: The armor is uneven. The front legs and the front horse part is armored best of all. Cuirass, may be, or at least very thick chainmail. Everything other is a light chainmail at best, otherwise it will be too heavy. Even more likely, it is thick cotton underlay with leather top. Cotton armor is very effective, but humans don't use it because it is so bulky. Centaur can. Anyway, it will be as much armor as they can carry without slowing down. Because speed is their weapon while size is their flaw.
He carries greatsword, maybe two axes and a heavy shield. At the beginning of the battle, they charge selected enemy units, keeping shields up to protect themselves from enemy arrows and bullets. When they reach few meters from enemy, they drop shields and grab greatswords with two hands. The length of centaur allows the creation of an effective holster for greatsword. If not, they just carry it on shoulder, holding it in one hand and shield with the other hand.
Centaurs use greatswords to break pikemen order. Pikes are useless in close combat. pikemen will drop pikes and draw swords, axes and clubs. While they do this, centaurs attack them with greatswords. When pikemen become axemen, the greatswords may be a disadvantage.(may be not) Then centaurs drop them and draw their axes.
Why axes? Because of their height, centaurs are at a disadvantage when fencing. As I already said, they have less angles of attack. For this reason, sword and shield are not as useful for them as axe and mace. They need weapons designed to break enemy defence, not to bypass it.
When centaurs of the first line start to fall, the warriors of the second line step in to keep pressure at the enemy.
Bows will not be used against enemy archers too. Why exchange blows when you can charge and trample? Bows will not be used against human cavalry too, the greatsword is very effective against knights. Bows will be used during initial phase of battle, during sieges and occasionally.
I doubt that centaurs will use kicks. While some legs are in the air, he is very unstable. A slight punch in the knee will topple him, and that is death.
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If archery is their thing, let that light shine. As Separatrix noted, heavy armor would also be an issue. Imagine if you will a highly mobile archery unit. Each individual could carry more ammo and retreat or reposition much quicker.
The primary threat to archery at the time was being flanked by heavy calvary. A Centaur archery squad would remove that risk. It would even be a greater advantage if this unit, when needed, could quickly advance with lance when a line was breached or while firing arrows at a retreating enemy with movement speed faster than they can fall back. Enemy losses would be maximized.
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[
# Background
It is the near future. After a major world war and limited nuclear exchange, the nations of Earth have consolidated into a few blocs. The threat of further war and the cumulative damage to the planet spur enormous private investment in colonization of space. Floating colonies surround Earth and near-Earth orbits of Sol. The terraforming of Mars has begun. A great demand for resources off-Earth has spread asteroid mining operations throughout the solar system.
A great number of factions have developed in space. No one faction has enough resources to build a communications system spanning the entire inner solar system, especially considering that deployment cost of communications nodes is high (rockets are expensive). The competing factions settle on developing a collaborative communications system modeled on the Internet, where no one faction can be dominant.
# Problem
The [Internet Protocol Suite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite) (with [Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_layer), [Internet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_layer), and [Transport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_layer) layers) works well on Earth, where static computers are connected to each other by cables. The cables allow near-instantaneous communication, and the hardwired connections are rarely changed. On an interplanetary scale, two major problems arrive.
* **Sparse connections**: Cables on earth are cheap, but satellite dishes that work over AU distances cost a lot of money, so there are a limited number of connections each node can have. Also, connections can be blocked, based on position relative to planets and the sun. Two nodes may be unable to communicate for hours or days at a time. Importantly, much of the disruption is scheduled, due to easily predicted rotation and orbital characteristics. A good protocol suite will have a built in ability to optimize the physical transfer path from node to node to ensure data gets to where it is going as quickly as possible, and so that two way communications are not interrupted needlessly.
* **Latency** - Message travel time from one side of the asteroid belt to the other take about 45 minutes. From Earth to mars at closest approach is about 3 minutes. This is a significant when it comes to a TCP/IP or SSL handshake. Protocols should minimize the need for two way communications without sacrificing security. Also, if packets in the same TCP session took two different routes from point A to point B; on Earth this is negligible time difference, but in space they could arrive minutes, or even hours, apart.
# Statement of Work
**What is the smallest set of changes you can make to the TCP/IP protocol suite to optimize its performance over interplanetary networks?**
The goal is to optimize reliability, throughput, and to minimize unnecessary latency.
# Notes
* Currently, humanity is limited to the inner solar system (out to the Asteroid Belt). However, the developed protocol should be extensible at least to the Kuiper Belt, with latency times of up to 10 hours.
* This question is focused on the Data Link, IP, and Transport layers; assume the physical layer works just fine.
* Here is a report on [Space Communications Protocols](https://public.ccsds.org/Pubs/130x0g3.pdf), though this is for near-Earth space. Here is a [discussion of some problems](https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/research/research-topics-list/communications-computing-software/deep-space-communications) with interplanetary communications.
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The obvious answer to delay-tolerant networking is store-and-forward.
With TCP, when a router receives a packet, it immediately sends it on to the next hop—or, if it can't, rejects it and sends back an error.
With a store-and-forward protocol, when a router receives a packet, it looks up the next time it expects to be able to talk to the next hop (possibly choosing from among multiple possibilities based on how big the packet is, what its QoS tags say, etc.) and stores it until then.
Store-and-forward goes back to SMTP, NNTP, UUCP, and other protocols from before the public internet. Before 1994, if your company wanted to have external email, that usually meant your server connecting to your provider twice/day via UUCP and sending and receiving all the outgoing and incoming messages. But modern DTNs need something more granular than "send everything to one host twice/day". (Also, these protocols are designed for infrequently-connected but low-latency-while-connected networks, so they do a lot more noisy handshaking than your want for often-connected but high-latency.)
Meanwhile, store-and-forward on the level of tiny IP packets isn't all that useful, so you add a way for applications to define bundles of multiple packets. You can then route, and QoS, and congestion-manage, entire bundles (so ideally, when you accidentally send home a 4K video instead of an SD one, it times out on your local router instead of wasting all your bandwidth and half your ISP's before getting dropped). As a side benefit, bundles can be large enough that you can afford security features like identity-based routing, which might also be important for a DTN.
The obvious way to do this all is to define a routing overlay network on top of UDP, much like the way (post-BitTorrent) P2P meshes work as an overlay on top of UDP. (Except that, unlike a typical P2P mesh, you want some intelligence so you don’t just retry the UDP packets with exponential backoff and automatically mesh adjustment, but instead store programmable schedules in your routing table, because a lot of things will be predictable—don’t bounce off that lunar satellite for the next 3 hours because it’s blocked by the moon…)
Last I looked at this was about a decade ago, and the state of the art was the experimental protocol in [RFC 5050](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5050). There have probably been advances since then, and I may not be remembering everything perfectly.
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NASA as already put some thought into this and has developed a concept called ["DTN" or Delay-Tolerant-Networking](https://www.nasa.gov/content/dtn). Basically it checks if the connection is possible to the next "hop" or station, then sends the data. If it's not available it stores it in the local memory until the connection goes up again. This can operate together or separately from traditional TCP/IP
In terms of infrastructure, I'm imagining a large-scale solution involving a series of large dishes spaced around the planet so that at least one always has a connection to a given location or planet. These dishes act as bridges to the rest of the solar system, beaming out huge quantities of data to their recipients as the connections become available. By networking them together, they can automatically transfer it from one dish to the next as needed.
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You probably want to switch away from TCP/IP which is packet based to something that is content addressable. TCP/IP is built on the assumption you can signal congestion to the people using the network by dropping packets. If your round trip time is high that becomes a very expensive signaling method.
What you would like to do is telling the network you would like a certain piece of information and download it from the nearest node that has that information. That way you can get your information faster if someone else already used that information earlier. An example of a current implementation of this is [IPFS](https://ipfs.io/) (InterPlanetary File System).
It kind of functions like on gigantic bittorrent swarm in that it downloads the needed information from nearby peers that have the information. This reduces duplicate traffic over congested / expensive links and decreases the amount of time it takes to get the information you need.
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>
> What is the smallest set of changes you can make to the TCP/IP
> protocol suite to optimize its performance over interplanetary
> networks?
>
>
>
I'm a little surprised that no-one has said this yet, but you would use neither TCP nor UDP. It's not workable. The idea of any level of live connection beyond Earth orbit is not reasonable. Round trip to the Moon is 2.6s. We've got a hard-wired internet connection here that gets quite dodgy in severe weather so I've actually experienced internet speeds where ICMP packets have required over 2s for a round-trip and I can tell you that the internet is practically unusable under those conditions.
The *best* round-trip you can hope for between either Mars or Mercury 6m24s and 6m, respectively. The next most interesting place to be beyond Mars is Jupiter, and your best round-trip time there is well over an hour (69m47s).
The Disruption/Delay Tolerant Network was mentioned. DTN may be suitable for orbital or possibly even Earth-Lunar live network connections, but beyond that you'd use something else.
Interplanetary networking connections would not be live. In fact, you would not have a persistent connection, much less a direct connection to any planetary internet beyond your own. You would send a packet requesting very specific information, and you would receive your return transmission a few or more minutes later, within the limits of having to share the radio spectrum with everyone else in the Solar system. The transmission would be broken up into "packets", but not packets in the TCP sense -- more like packets in the old Fidonet sense. Rather than re-request data, you would simply repeat your request, specifying only those blocks of data which were lost or garbled; protocols would be designed in such as way as to have predictable framing of the data just so that you could request only the bad data.
Some data would be continuously transmitted, some would be available via transponder, and some would be transmitted on some kind of schedule.
There would be some localized synchronization, though not the entire internet. Wikipedia and other large databases, for example, would synchronize locally. Updates would be requested as of a specified timestamp so that only current sync data would be transmitted.
Communication on the interplanetary network would better resemble the old teletype system than it would the old BBS system.
I'm reminded by @Hobbamok that microwave transmission would be used for the point-to-point connections between settlements, outposts, and Earth. Quite possibly laser would also be used where appropriate. That would negate the problem of having to share bandwidth among the rest of the Solar system.
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The smallest set of changes you could do, would be to switch from TCP/IP to UDP/IP. The biggest issue with TCP is that it needs to check back with the sender to ensure the packet has arrived. If it takes 10 hours one way, then its going to take 20 hours to know that the message you sent has arrived and if you need to resend packets.
With UDP this verification step is ignored. If I want to send a message, I can sent it in a fraction of a second. If it doesn't make it, the person who requests the data will simply request for it again. I don't need to maintain a connection for 20 odd hours, just to make sure the message has arrived.
You would also need to authenticate and encrypt your data with a shared key that will need to be determined before hand, similar to a SSH key because it would be too inefficient to encrypt things dynamically.
Added -Edit:
The question asks for reliability, throughput and low latency. You simply can't have all of them. If you want reliability and high throughput, your not going to get low latency and if you want high throughput and low latency, its not going to be reliable. Its the triangle thingy where you can only really maximize two out of the three. If your physical layer is assumed to work just fine, then using UDP and pushing the rest of the logic into the application layer will provide you better results. The lack of handshaking and verification means your going to have the lowest latency possible, and throughput and reliability are going to end up being dependent on your hardware. An application designed to request for lost packets is still going to end up better than TCP because you only need to request for lost packets and skip the verification and initial handshake.
The Truth of the matter is no one protocol will be used. Protocols guarantee different things and serve different purposes. If you have a remote base/probe that takes 10 hours to communicate to, you don't want to wait 20+ hours to see the live video feed (Handshake, packet transfer and order guarantee will eat up all your time). Your going to use UDP to ensure that you have the video as quickly as possible (10 hours). Like wise, if your transmitting a file, you want reliability, and this can be added at the protocol level (There are many variations of UDP or just plain TCP) or application level. Finally if you want to transmit huge amounts of data, you want to deliver it physically, because you can almost always delivery huge amount of data faster if you physically move it (if you think data transfer over a line is faster your not thinking big enough).
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Caching
The first person download the new Game of Thrones takes 20 hours. After that a copy is stored on the caching server and it only takes seconds for the second person.
Caching keeps the results of requests locally so it's slow the first time while it gets the information but much faster as it already has it for further requests. The server only hold X amount of data so the oldest requests drop off the end of the queue as it fills up.
The end result is the most common requests are stored locally and are much quicker and data transmitted is much less.
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**You need to change the way your internet architecture is set up to have caching of entire websites**
There's no reason to bother with lengthy downtimes on the internet, except in the form of messages sent from planet to planet. If the internet has a downtime of 20 hours just to load a list of webpages and another 20 hours to load one page, people just won't do it.
If you want people to use the internet, each colony needs their own servers to hold the contents of the web that they want to be able to see. When a colonist goes online, they are only really communicating with the local server. Local servers communicate through the satellite network by PUSHing updates to other colonies who download the updates. This way, browsing the web takes seconds, even though the news might be a few hours old, which can't be helped anyway. This update pushing process means the network is decentralized, and because local computers don't communicate directly access the internet, traffic is significantly reduced. **If computers communicate directly with the internet, routers will not be able to handle all the traffic, especially if they are storing packets during downtime.**
When servers communicate, all of the packages are pushed at once, and the connection is not kept alive. This protocol works with the packet storage idea proposed by other answers.
If you have multiple routing paths that the messages can be sent through, each router on the path sends the packets through all of the pathways available and the receiving computer takes the first one it gets and ignores duplicates. If the package is corrupted, it waits for a duplicate to arrive. If after a couple hours it has only gotten corrupted packets or no packets have arrived, it requests the packets again.
Messages can use a different protocol. Messages are sent from one colony's server directly to the destination server, not to any other servers on the network. When the receiving server gets the message, they push the message to the computer that receives it.
With these methods, servers can't afford the luxury of opening and closing ports. They always have to be listening for updates so they don't miss anything.
Benefits of this design:
Less computers sending packets over the interplanetary routers, dramatically reduces round trips, server always receives the message as fast as possible, no handshake necessary, multiple routing paths means the network can stand the loss of a few satellites, almost instant communication with the local server, ability to push updates instead of client requesting them, separate messaging protocol (no other colonies see your message to a different colony).
[Answer]
**Bandwidth**
You haven't specified how much bandwidth you have.
You can broadcast absolutely tons of additional information if you have extra bandwidth. For example, interplanetary netflix you could broadcast 15 minutes of the 30 most similar films alongside the film you are watching when it comes to an end, so you can select another film to watch and begin watching it immediately. The same can apply to all kinds of data.
**Prediction**
You can add prediction to this, much like how Chrome works, to follow likely links to speed up loading should the user click on them. You'd have to add all of this data to the packet. Instead of loading wikipedia's home page, a request to wikipedia could predict what you're likely to look at and broadcast the entire site, or a summary of each page.
**Datablasting**
You could also do something akin to a *datablast* from the 90s, where information would be displayed at high speed and the public would videotape it and replay it in slow motion to read it. Constantly be broadcasting all kinds of information continously and caching it, in case it is needed. Even with low bandwidth, any spare 'cycles' could be used to cram in additional information.
**Remote Executability**
Remote executability would be the ability to send a small program that can be executed on earth.
For example, you want to play interstellar chess with someone on Jupiter's moon Io. Instead of sending a move, only to find out 45 minutes later it was an illegal move because you forgot you were in check, it would be faster if a small chess program was uploaded and executed on both earth and Io. Then when an illegal move is made it can be validated or modified without the need to send it on.
This is similar to client side validation in Javascript, whereby you try to submit a form to sign up to something and forget to fill in your e-mail address, it will ask you to complete it before sending the form instead of sending it and getting an error back.
Another example of this is if a client requests information about the position of earth on a certain date. Rather than them send the request and 45 minutes later receive a response, they could instead receive a small executable program that will calculate this for them.
**Caching**
Obviously, caching data for re-use locally but on a wider scale, putting servers onto various planets/satellites and caching it in each of them. For example, the big News sites would be popular daily so this would be distributed and cached between all of the locations. Other data would also be cached, and kept based on views. This is very similar to how Amazon's warehouse system operated - items people are likely to buy are automatically distributed to warehouses using algorithms that predict people will buy the items, thus saving on shipping time.
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I guess that one of the key things to note is the paradigm shift required in terms of developing the internet. It's not really a question of *How do we deliver web pages and the current internet experience*, it's more a question of *How would the world wide web look if latency was crazy high?*. You'd retrain your software engineers and rewrite all of your tools, and the internet would be mostly application based, you'd probably download the BBC News app and have it updated automatically every morning from a local cache, either downloading the *entire* site, or just browsing the entire site locally from a cache.
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# IPTP (Interplanetary Transmission Protocol)
IPTP is a bi-directional, point-to-point, store-and-forward protocol, designed to be highly fault-tolerant.
IPTP Links are defined between planets such that at any given time there is exactly one transmitter on or in orbit around one planet streaming data to any given array of receivers on the other. (The active transmitter will change as the planet rotates and satellites revolve about it.) This stream must be able to multiplex a large number of different sub-streams of data (coming from many different sources on the originating planetary internet), which will themselves be queued up in buffers for actual transmission.
The overall stream will be broken up into "blocks" of a size appropriate to the quality of the link that are each individually encoded using Reed-Solomon error-correction, and additional "parity" blocks will be transmitted periodically, allowing reconstruction of blocks that exceeded the error-correction threshold of the RS code in use for that block. (IPTP allows for this block size to be changed as conditions warrant) Each block must be retained on the sending end until a Block ACKnowledgement (BACK) is received from the receiver.
For additional robustness, after a series of "rows" (N data blocks plus an XOR parity block of those data blocks) are transmitted, a "parity row" (constructed by XORing together corresponding blocks in M consecutive rows) is then transmitted. At the end of a group (called a "chapter") of L pages of M rows and N columns is a "parity page" (constructed by XORing together the corresponding blocks in all the pages). The entire chapter of `(L+1)(M+1)(N+1)` blocks must use the same block size and R-S encoding, but subsequent chapters can change the block size, as well as the values of L, M, and N, as conditions warrant. In general, L, M, and N will be larger when fewer blocks need to be re-sent.
Within a chapter, the sub-streams should be assembled in priority order to minimize the number of blocks that carry data of two or more different priorities. A block's transmission priority is equal to the highest priority level sub-stream it contains.
Prior to each chapter is a header defining those parameters. [The InterPlanetary Transmission Task Force says that future versions of IPTP may extend the parity system to "books" of K such chapters, incorporating `(K+1)(L+1)(M+1)(N+1)` blocks each. IPTPv1 defines K=1 with no parity, so a book has only one chapter.]
"BACK" metadata must be sent back from receiver to transmitter to acknowledge entire chapters as well as ranges of blocks within a chapter. Any blocks not BACKed that fall before the last block BACKed will have to be re-transmitted. The determination to re-transmit must not be made until the entire "book" has been received and decoded, as the parity blocks, lines, pages (and chapters) to allow a BACK to be fully reconstructed will not have been processed yet. Because a BACK itself occupies one or more blocks to be BACKed, there will always be something to BACK, creating an implicit "keepalive" between the nodes.
Metadata (including but not limited to the above BACKs) is the highest priority level for substreams, and therefore should always be the first thing in a book/chapter after the protocol header. The details of other QoS considerations are still being defined by the IPTTF.
Once the data stream is reconstructed on the receiving end, it can be de-multiplexed into sub-streams, each sent to its desired destination on the planetary internet.
[Answer]
### A complete overhaul is the smallest *sane* change
* With a latency of 10 hours, you surely don't want to establish any *connection* as it alone needs three packets, which means *30 hours wasted*.
* TCP-like congestion control makes no sense. For maximum efficiency, you want to direct your dishes exactly to the party you communicate with. That's true for both the sender and the receiver (there'll be either a fixed setting like "this dish communicates with Pluto" or a pre-arranged schedule). This eliminates any congestion *on the link itself*. The link will always work with a fixed speed, unless broken.
* As the transmission cost is much higher than the storage cost, every sent packet will get also stored until acknowledged (many hours later).
I guess, [reliable UDP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliable_User_Datagram_Protocol) comes closer to what's needed. Anyway, you can forget about using the network for browsing or alike. It will look more like SMTP. You send a message and it'll get delivered, possibly delayed by many hours due to retransmissions. You can have some client-server communication, but it'll look more like requesting a book from a library than HTTP.
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**The bottomless pit**
A multi-billionaire has decided to build a dungeon for real as a commercial venture. This is not your reasonably-convincing or VR version. It is a full-blown, full-sized dungeon based on a typical RPG.
The instigator, whose name is Donald Munchausen (or DM for short), wants to make things as true to fantasy as possible but he lives in the real world so he cannot use magic. However he can use pretty much any current technology.
His aim is to provide as real and thrilling an experience as possible without actually seriously injuring his customers.
**Question**
How, using only modern technology and no magic, can he simulate a bottomless pit?
The requirements are that a participant who falls into it will feel as though they are falling forever. They will experience the terror and loneliness but, when the game ends, they can safely and quickly be recovered from the "pit" in good physical (if not mental) condition. They should be able to "fall" continuously for at least a day, although that would be rare as these pits usually occur near the final stages of the adventure.
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**Notes**
Before entering the dungeon, participants have psychological tests and are warned that the experience may be terrifying in the extreme but that they will ultimately be safe. They have to sign a waiver absolving the company from all responsibility - including accidental death or injury - and of course post-traumatic stress disorder.
Please ask for any necessary clarifications before answering.
[Answer]
**Indoor skydiving**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SnUon.jpg)
Indoor skydiving simulators are popular and not particularly difficult to build.
A person who falls into a "bottomless pit" would feel like they're falling faster and faster, reaching terminal velocity. In reality, the person would stay suspended in one place, with wind tunnel supporting their weight. If there's total darkness in the pit, there's no real way to tell if you are falling or not.
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I will go for a variation of the indoor skydiving which will spare DM from make an overly large tunnel: instead of making a tunnel so wide that it cannot be crossed in a day of maneuvering, you can equip its walls with high definition screens and display on the screens what would look like a rocky and sharp pointed wall moving really fast.
You can top that with IR sensors that show it only in the direction where the head of the adventurer is pointing, in case the subject is wearing a head-lamp. You will need the sensors anyway because, in case someone has the bright idea of falling with a vertical attitude rather than with a horizontal one, you need to adjust the air speed accordingly, else they will quickly call out the bluff.
Instead of being slammed on the rocky walls of the well, most of those falling in the pit would stay away from them. And for those who try to reach them, DM can add nozzle blowing them away from the edges as they get too close.
[Answer]
**Indoor Wind Tunnel.**
If you’re willing to go for a slightly less realistic, as in no feelings of zero gee, then a wind tunnel will let the person feel like they are falling until it is turned off. If the participants are the risk taking type, and some release forms have been signed, then it is conceivable the wind tunnels could have trapdoors on top of them.
[Video](https://youtube.com/watch?v=2VuXqMPNQRA) for reference.
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**Frame Challenge: Lucid Dreaming and VR**
You don't want VR, but VR is current technology, and since scientists have discovered a way of [brain-to-brain interface](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-demonstrate-direct-brain-to-brain-communication-in-humans/), it shouldn't be much of a stretch for DM and his team and researchers to find a way to send electrical impulses from a server to a brain and back.
After all, we *do* know what part of the brain is responsible for creative thinking and visual interpretation, so why can't we send electrical signals to those parts of the brain? All we'd need to do is translate those electrical signals from IBM to HBF (Human Brain Format) so the recipient's brain can interpret signals into visual and perhaps even sensory information.
This would, of course, work best if the brain of the "PC" was in
[lucid dream](https://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/lucid-dreams-overview) mode; hypnosis is a state of enhanced suggestion, so perhaps it could be used to help there, or perhaps some testing will need to be made on lucid dreaming technology.
The *genius* of this is that A) the user's brain and imagination will add in and flesh out the virtual information it's given,
B) the dungeon will *seem* incredibly real, but actually won't exist (cutting down on construction costs),
C) DM can use both skilled programmers and the power of lucid dreaming to create an immersive, realistic experience the likes of which will likely be *unparalleled* by the contrived methods that would need to be used to create an IRL-yet true to form-RPG dungeon
D) working off the above point, the dungeon (and the sequence of events) can change; just like in a dream, the unexpected can happen, and the strange and impossible can become reality.
In any case, I hope this helps. Oh, and one last thing: let imagination rule!
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You're not going to get a day of zero gee on Earth. You have to use a space station (a large one, rotating for "artificial gravity" by centrifugal force), in which case you simply package the poor victim in a membrane, jostling him against the sides of the 'pit' every now and then to cover any course corrections so you can avoid hitting any important spacecraft. (For the rest, you have a mounted snowplow and very good space debris insurance)
The only other way I can think to do it *(short of tapping into the nervous system neuron by neuron in which case reality is no longer relevant)* is you have to drop him into a trap that very rapidly tunes into the macula of the sacculus of the membranous labyrinth of his inner ear, which detects up/down acceleration, and manipulates the otoliths of its membrane so as to mimic the lack of force they would experience if there *were* zero gravity. We're talking about making a set of laser tweezers using terahertz or something that can penetrate the side of his head, and getting the force just right in an instant as the victim falls through a floor. This will take some practice runs - fortunately, your problem did not say he can't injure *test subjects* hired/captured on some pretense.
With amusement I notice the answer above is *also* valid. I assume zero gravity, and they assume Earth gravity would be fine. This gets to the philosophy of a bottomless pit. Being bottomless, it can't hold up air, so the air and all within it is constantly accelerating downward, right? New air must be sucked in constantly, unless the hole is plugged by a suspiciously lovely Persian rug. Or... is there an infinite amount of air all locked in frame with the surface of the Earth? Hmmm.
[Answer]
Invisible Electrostatic Wall
After they drop in to the pit a little you hold them in place with an electrostatic wall, it'll take some work to replicate what they accidentally did at the [3M plant](http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html) but you are working for a billionaire afterall, some fans can give passive wind resistance (presuming the field doesn't block wind too) to still feel like falling whilst being locked in position.
Just paint the walls with vantablack so they have no visual reference points in the dark pit.
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I had recently a silly idea when thinking about alternative ways of splitting property at a divorce time. Imagine a culture (thinking roughly renaissance setting, maybe late medieval, or later, but definitely pre-Victorian), where if you want a divorce, you have to fight your spouse to death in a public duel. It's a rather rare thing, maybe something that happens only once every few years even in a large city, so most people have never actually seen one. However, it's enough of a thing that everybody knows that it happens and it's at least tolerated and possibly regulated (e.g. compensation for missing limbs or women being in general physically weaker) by the authorities.
Now, is it possible? Of course, technically yes. But I don't recall ever hearing about anything even remotely similar from actual human history. Is it likely? Would such society likely follow a different cultural development? Or would they end up where our normal history ended up, with just one more to the *20 weird things you won't believe people used to consider normal* list? (and a bit more colourful history behind divorce lawyers)
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## It Happened Historically
... although it was not necessarily common for women to participate in duels, it did happen. In the medieval period before the advent of forensic science, the judicial duel was often used as a way to settle legal disputes where no compelling evidence of a crime could be produced one way or the other.
**The idea was dual purpose†**
1 - A person would generally retract their charges in a legal dispute unless both parties felt adamant enough in their claims to risk their life over it.
2 - Medieval Christian faith led them to believe that God, being just, would favor the righteous combatant over the skilled combatant; so, it was not necessarily seen as unfair for a woman to fight a man in a judicial duel (particularly in the high-medieval period) because if she were honest in her position then God would favor her. As you progress into the late medieval period, it became more common for a combatant to be given a handicap if the difference was seen as too great though. For example, one manuscript mentions a local law where a man would have to stand in a hole waist-high when dueling a woman to make it fair.
To apply this to your setting, in Catholic Europe, there was no such thing as a divorce, but a marriage could be annulled if you could prove that the marriage was made under false pretenses. So, if a man or a woman in your setting wanted a divorce they would have to press criminal charges against their spouse to prove that the marriage was illegally forced on them. In cases where coercion can not be proven, the accuser would be required to prove their point† in a judicial duel. Furthermore, many medieval jurisdictions would award the winner of a duel the loser's estate as compensation for the false accusation.
So, the judicial duel was a legally acceptable form of ending a marriage as you've described under medieval law in many places.
**Some Side Notes about Judicial Duels**
Judicial duels were often not to the death as opposed to many other solutions here. Yes, one or both combatants often did die, but this was not usually the point. It is hard to make absolute statements here since dueling was typically governed by local laws, but many areas in Europe did dueling to first blood, dueling to submission, shield breaking, etc. In some places, you could actually win the duel and then be executed for murder if you deliberately struck a fatal blow. The point of the judicial duel in most areas was to decide who would be punished/protected under the law, not to kill your opponent.
So, the battle would be over as soon as the local law was satisfied. If both combatants were still alive at that point, and if the person asking for the divorce won, then the opponent would be prosecuted for coercing the marriage and the winner could receive an annulment. The winner would likely earn the rights to the estate and the loser may be either fined, jailed, flogged, executed, etc. depending on the local laws regarding coercing marriage. If the defendant wins, then it is accepted as proof that the marriage was not coerced and they must remain married.
Also, as is pointed out in comments, the duel would not necessarily even be between the husband and wife. In the later medieval period, trials by combat more and more often became fought by proxies: hired mercenaries, next-of-kin, men-at-arms appointed by the local lord, etc.
*† Puns intended*
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In Medieval Germany there was a tradition of 'Marital Duels':
>
> Married couples could legally settle their disputes by fighting a
> Marital Duel. To even the field, the man had to fight from inside a
> hole with one arm tied behind his back. The woman was free to move and
> was armed with a sack filled with rocks. The man had three clubs at
> his disposal. If he touched the side of his hole during combat, he
> would forfeit one of his clubs. Whoever lost the battle would be put
> to death. -- Source: [Crazy Facts](https://crazyfacts.com/marital-duels/)
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... so this concept isn't unheard of. But as noted such duels (at least before the invention of firearms) were mismatches, strongly favoring the physical strength of males. I suppose one could make it more fair in a society where women were encouraged to train in light dueling weaponry (rapiers, epees, dueling pistols, etc), but no human society (fantasy fiction notwithstanding) has ever been that egalitarian about arming and training women.
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Divorce was heavily discouraged in this time period, so implementing a fight to the death between the two may help limit the number of divorces. Many societies in this period value marriage above life.
Beware of this being insensitive to domestic violence in this story. You're basically encouraging family violence here. This is an interesting story line and I believe it to be historically plausible, but care should be taken to avoid glamorising spousal abuse.
There will be a trauma exacted on the townspeople watching their neighbours mr. and mrs. Smith kill each other. This will give their children PTSD. Perhaps in a very large city where everyone doesn't know everyone this can work as entertainment, but in a small town this is going to be traumatic.
But the fight is not going to be fair anyway. Assuming these people were Christians; divorce is adultery for the woman:
Matthew 5:32
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> But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the
> marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery,
> and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
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... and adulterous women get put to death:
Leviticus 20:10
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> And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
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So the fight to the death may kill the woman, if she survives, she has committed the sin of divorce, she is killed by the state for adultery.
Were I a woman in this period I'd just put arsenic in his dinner. Much safer.
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**Possibly**
Culturally I can't think of any example where it happened. Still, I can imagine a world where marriage is much more respected or worshipped, while life is regarded lower than marriage.
In this world, to prove your marriage is really stranded, you must prove it with a duel to the death. If one of them is emotionally able to kill their partner, then it shows that the marriage was truly a mistake. Otherwise you'll be destined to continue living together.
With the public nature of many executions, like stoning, beheading or hanging, it will likely be a public event.
There are some examples , like from king Henry the 8th, of people killing their wives through official channels. "Until death do us part" can be taken very literal here. A culture wanting to do this officially and publicly according to some rules might not be a stretch.
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**Reverse Solomon** (Warning contains allusions to self-harm)
Here is a way to solve the strength disparity.
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I can suggest a rather macabre way that could work. It's sort of the opposite of when Solomon suggested cutting a disputed baby in half to see who the real mother was. [Judgment of Solomon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Solomon)
Instead of this you could find out who wants the divorce most as follows:
If you really want to divorce and get all the property, you have to prove your seriousness by cutting bits off yourself.
Let's say one spouse chops one of their own toes off. The other spouse must do something equivalent or they will lose.
They continue this way until someone refuses to cut any more bits off themself at which point they are declared the loser and the other spouse is entitled to the assets of the marriage.
**Notes**
1. Just as in Solomon's judgement, no-one actually has to die although if someone is willing to cut their own head off in order to dispossess their spouse, then they win and whoever is in their will gets the property.
2. If they both refuse to cut any bits off (or it ends in a draw) then they must continue with the marriage.
3. It could be that the combatants start small, e.g. by pulling out hairs one-by-one. There could even be a rule that the first one to be completely bald is the winner. However this could cause problems if one spouse is already bald or has a beard, so some handicap system would have to be imposed.
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**I HATE YOU *THIS* MUCH...**
As an alternative to duels, I am reminded of [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/180071/if-guns-had-a-50-chance-of-lethally-backfiring-what-would-they-be-used-for/180113#180113) question where every gun shot backwards equally often as they shot forwards. One of the uses for such a gun was to equal the playing field between men and women.
Rather than have a duel, have something like Solomon's solution for the women fighting over the child. Any spouse can take their wife or husband to court, and a coin toss settles who wins. The loser dies, OR they both die, if you prefer. If your conflict is SO overwhelming that you can't stand the other person and are willing to place you own life on the line to prove your point, make it clear that death is preferable to continuing the state of affairs as-is.
This would have several repercussions. People might think through if they really want to marry someone knowing they might face death as an alternative. People might reconsider arguments as their relationships began to deteriorate. A crazy enough spouse could keep threatening this as an option ("I won't live without you..."). Probably you want easier divorces before thing get this far. A waiting period where people settle up their estates would give people pause about how the world would look after such fights. But if your spouse is unpleasant enough, and your grievance great enough, then and unhappy marriage ends in a court-appointed death.
If you want real drama, have both spouses lay their heads on chopping blocks with death hoods. The loser never even knows they lost.
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In a sense, it happens all the time. A lot of cultures disaprove of divorces, ranging from stigmatizing divorced people up to outright banning divorces.
That's why we are used to the idea of the "divorce Italian style" type plots (I know of at least two movies with exactly this title).
Women being weaker at fight is compensated (at least in plots) by them being better at poisons and intrigues.
Making the whole thing public is a matter of local culture. At most.
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First reaction: "That just sounds like murder with extra steps."
>
> Imagine a culture [...] where if you want a divorce, you have to fight your spouse to [the] death in a public duel.
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First of all, you'll need some powerful third party (such as the Church) to say "We regulate who's allowed to get a divorce, and we say you can't get a divorce unless you kill your partner in a public duel." Historically of course there's no problem with this; the Church *did* (and in many cases still *does*) regulate divorces.
But wait, what does it even mean to "get a divorce" from a dead person? In our universe, AFAIK, the Church permits widow(er)s to remarry. If your universe is similar, then anyone wanting a divorce won't have to engage in a *public* duel if they don't want to: if they want to stop-being-married badly enough to actually kill their spouse in public, then certainly they want it badly enough to kill their spouse in private. Alice could fight Carol in a public duel to the death, *or* Alice could just put some strychnine in Carol's tea. The end result is the same, right?
...Unless of course your judicial system also imposes worse penalties for regular murder than for death-by-judicial-duel, which I'm sure it ought to. Then Alice might prefer to run the risk of a duel (where there's just a one-time risk of death-from-Carol), rather than attempt a murder (where the risk of detection and punishment never goes away, and has the manpower of the state behind it).
So that's the calculus from *Alice's* point of view.
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The main problem with this idea, to me, is that a "duel to the death" really only works if you have two parties who are *both* willing either to kill, or to die.
* Suppose Alice wants a divorce and Carol doesn't — Carol wants to stay married to Alice. In that case, Carol certainly doesn't want to *kill* Alice; she wants to keep Alice alive so they can stay married. (Maybe get some couples therapy or antidepressants, maybe just lock her in the basement, but *not kill her.*) If the duel's only possible outcomes are "Carol dies and the marriage is dissolved" or "Alice dies and the marriage is dissolved," then none of the outcomes are going to be satisfactory to Carol.
* Suppose Alice wants a divorce and Carol also wants a divorce. They have *already agreed* that a divorce is in their best interests, and want to part amicably. But the Church (or whoever your third-party power is) won't let them; it insists that they can't divorce until one or the other of them is dead. (Again, *this is the historical position of the Catholic Church on divorce,* so it's quite realistic even if it doesn't seem very sensible by modern standards.)
In the latter case, we simply have "the Church disallows divorce" with extra steps. In the former case, your Church will have to decide which party has more power here: Alice, who wants the divorce badly enough to duel for it? or Carol, who wants the status quo? Can Alice *force* Carol to duel? Or can Carol *force* Alice not to duel?
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In any case, if duel-to-the-death is the only way to get a divorce, I think the ramifications will be pretty much the same as the historical "no divorce ever" policy.
But there's plenty of room for legalistic loopholes here! Is there some way for Alice and/or Carol to exploit the public-duel law to get a divorce while both of them remain alive?
* Bribe the examining physician to declare Alice dead. The divorce is granted, and then when Alice mysteriously comes back to life a week or a minute later, some form of "double jeopardy" kicks in and the two remain divorced although alive.
* Have Alice and Carol both nominate champions to fight in their place. Whichever champion dies doesn't really matter; the divorce is granted either way. This reduces the law from its original moral purpose to what I would call a "circus tax" on divorce. Want a divorce? Okay, but you have to sponsor an expensive gladiator duel for the public benefit.
* Have Alice nominate a "champion" to fight in her place, but make it someone expendable, like a household slave. Carol kills the slave and the divorce is granted.
This third option actually seems the most dramatically interesting to me. (Recall that Alice is the one who wants the divorce; Carol is the one Alice is trying to escape from.) Alice must want out badly enough to send a slave to certain death. Carol is forced by Alice to commit what could feel subjectively like murder. Alternatively, Carol could display too much ruthlessness in the slaughter, thus (in the court of public opinion) proving that Alice was right to want to escape. Either way, stigma attaches to Carol... or to Alice? Both roles seem distasteful to the modern reader. So you, the writer, have the freedom to decide what your society thinks about this, and either way might end up surprising the reader with what happens.
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(*Assume a spherical marriage:* I used "Alice and Carol" throughout in order to sidestep the implication of one party being physically stronger than the other, and to simplify the case analysis. With a heterosexual marriage, you'd have to consider whether to apply the same legal rules for "Alice wants a divorce and Bob doesn't" as for "Bob wants a divorce and Alice doesn't.")
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I think the idea of divorce assumes the survival of both parties. If one dies, the other becomes a widow or widower instead of a divorcee. I can imagine a concept of a divorce fight that ends when either party surrenders. In this case, death of one or even both parties would be a possible outcome.
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**This question already has answers here**:
[Could a Dwarven Civilization Exist?](/questions/9947/could-a-dwarven-civilization-exist)
(11 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I've never ever seen even a suggestion of an idea of how dwarves actually can live how they are most often depicted - underground without handwaving or magic (which is just a fancy word for "handwaving").
In this question I will be focusing on the most popular idea for a fantasy dwarf - short, stout, bulky with muscles, is an exceptional blacksmith, stonemason, lives underground in mountains, etc.
Firstly, how would you even dig deep tunnels for living into a mountain in sort-of medieval times? Ventilation is nearly impossible so even if you somehow (and they don't have how) get rid of all the dust from digging you'd suffocate at some point.
Light is another problem with no magical mushrooms/crystals/thingamajigs to illuminate the halls you will spend your life in pitch darkness where no amount of darkvision will help you and I'm not sure if seeing infrared wouldn't introduce more unknowns or problems than it would solve.
Food being the last immediately visible problem - nothing that grows on rock or in complete darkness OR BOTH can sustain even a human child, not to mention an adult individual with a VERY active lifestyle.
Is there any way to, at least somewhat realistically, solve these problems or are my dwarves doomed to be sustained on handwavium?
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Dwarves might not need to dig tunnels and caves, but instead rely on natural ones that they modify, like the [Migovec](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migovec_System) and [Postojna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postojna_Cave) cave systems in Slovenia, which are 42 km and 24 km long, respectively, and have good natural ventilation. We must also remember that cave-dwelling humans [actually existed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Carmel#Paleolithic_history) in paleolithic times (though they were not as common as the 'caveman' stereotype suggests).
Light is certainly a problem, though with good enough ventilation and access to wood from the surface, torches could be used. The caves might also connect to coal mines, with easy access to coal for heating, smithing, and lighting. There might also be sources of methane, especially if there are [large underground lakes](https://www.futurity.org/methane-eating-organisms-1615742/).
Food is the biggest issue. Certainly, dwarves could grow mushrooms and eat fish from underground lake and river systems, but that would likely only feed rather small populations. Some amount of surface hunting and gathering and even farming would be necessary to sustain sizable populations.
A somewhat reasonable compromise would have dwarves mainly living in sheltered valleys surrounded by mountains and in cave systems in these mountains, where they mine coal, iron, precious metals, and precious stones. Natural chimneys in the mountains could allow high-temperature smithing. The only entrances to the valleys are through the caves, and this gives rise to the notion that dwarves live wholly underground; a notion that dwarves find it profitable to maintain. Visitors to the caves are never shown the valleys.
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It's totally possible.
## Light
* In some books there is mirror system that channels light from surface to underground halls.
* It's possible that some mushrooms with [luminescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence) would give enough light in tunnels.
* Fire would give bright light in mines and forges.
+ Torch is most obvious and cheap source of light. It has more disadvantages than advantages: produce smoke, need to be delivered from surface, vulnerable to wind etc.
+ Candles and [oil lamps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_lamp) are more advanced. They light longer, produce less smoke and take less space.
+ [Tilley lamp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilley_lamp) fueled by kerosene produce bright light and protected from wind. It's advanced source of light with regulation (and other many small improvements) so it's my choice.
+ [Gas lightnings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_lighting) are good for stationary and centralized system.
## Food
* In most stories dwarves are famous as great craftsman. They sell metals, swords etc and buy food.
* As Delioth mentioned in comments, some fungi could grow up without sunlight. Fungi could be eaten directly or could be start point for some food chain which would provide meat.
* In underground river fishing is possible: fish could travel from surface for some reason or somehow grow underground. Most likely it doesn't cover all needs but could provide 10%-40% of food in best case.
+ Hunting for some fantasy creatures is also possible but I suppose can't feed up even big village.
* With sunlight from mirror system it's possible to grow some plants (but not much due to limited space in caverns)
## Air
* With constant wind like sea breeze it's possible to channel it to mines.
* Water mill could spin fans big enough to deliver air like in metro.
* Hot air will go up on its own so you could need just air duct.
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I suppose dwarves are creatures that don't live underground without any connection with surface. They definitely trade with others, travel and have realty on surface. Sources from surface could provide most part of everyday goods.
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If you want your dwarves to be realistic, then, as you correctly point out, they cannot 100% rely on underground.
They might dig mines, extract and process ores (there were mines way before middle Age, they just weren't OSHA compliant...), maybe even use the abandoned mines for shelter, but then they rely on the surface for getting food and other resources.
Nothing too different than some mining cities still existing today: all the inhabitants work in the mine, and the earning from the sold mineral are used to pay for resources.
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### They don't need to
In our world we are used to having access to information about any place on the world. You want to learn something about, say, Eastern Europe? You can read Wikipedia, watch Geography Now on YouTube, you have access to a thousand of news channels, podcasts, books, and newspapers. You can also get on a plane and just go there. (We are of course also used to fake news, but that's another story).
It wasn't always like this. Only 200 years ago news about distant places were second-hand at best. People who migrated rarely came back home to tell the stories, and when they did, they exaggerated. First, because they wanted to say good stories which would make them look good, and second, because when they were in these exotic places, they hardly understood what they were looking at. They focused their attention on things which were different and outstanding and, they ignored similarities, and they misinterpreted quite a lot.
In novels and movies about fantasy worlds, we often look at the world from the point of view of one or a bunch of heroes who are similar to us. They're most often human, and if it's Western fantasy, they come from a region in the fantasy world which is a more-or-less equivalent of the medieval Europe. The heroes start their journey from there and only later see other, more exotic parts of the world.
So what if the hero, and the narrator which follows him or her, are unreliable? They don't even have to lie to us or actually make mistakes. It's enough if, looking through the hero's eyes, we see only a part of the life of people who live in these places. We look at a dwarf and see a sturdy, hairy man with an axe who is a warrior or a miner or at least a goldsmith. We don't see dwarves working in the fields, just as - in fact - we don't often see human peasants in such stories. Heroes are warriors. They buy their food with coins they looted. They don't care where the food is coming from.
In the same time we know for sure that every pre-modern civilization is based on agriculture. No exceptions. There might a merchant city here or there, but they are not civilizations by themselves - they are a part of it. In the same way a small dwarven kingdom built around mining precious metals and smithing weapons is possible, but by no means it represents what all dwarves do everywhere. It's just what our heroes see, and what we see, because we follow their story. It's no more real than Arabs always living on the desert or Mesoamerican people dwelling in Tenochtitlan and sacrificing slaves to the Sun God. They're only stereotypes.
So, if you want to to write a story about a dwarven civilization - yay! Please do. You have a great opportunity to deconstruct all these tropes about beardy miners who chew stones and apparently are all males.
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You might want to research actually underground habitations constructed by pre industrial civilizations, such as the underground cities of Cappadocia, Turkey. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city>[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city)
My answer to this question: [What food production methods would allow a metropolis like New York to become self sufficient](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/146670/what-food-production-methods-would-allow-a-metropolis-like-new-york-to-become-se/146675#146675)[2](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/146670/what-food-production-methods-would-allow-a-metropolis-like-new-york-to-become-se/146675#146675) has links to other questions and answers relevant to your question.
See my answers to these questions:
[Giving Tolkien Architecture a Reality Check: Dwarvish Kingdoms](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/100380/giving-tolkien-architecture-a-reality-check-dwarvish-kingdoms)[3](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/100380/giving-tolkien-architecture-a-reality-check-dwarvish-kingdoms)
[How can Dwarves produce honey underground?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/101553/how-can-dwarves-produce-honey-underground)[4](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/101553/how-can-dwarves-produce-honey-underground)
[How many people can you feed per square-kilometer of farmland?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9582/how-many-people-can-you-feed-per-square-kilometer-of-farmland)[5](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9582/how-many-people-can-you-feed-per-square-kilometer-of-farmland)
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>
> How would fantasy dwarves exist, realistically?
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Where there is a will there is a way.
They would engineer their tunnels and caverns to have water and airflow. Farm fish and trade their mining and metalwork for food and wood. Probably best if large sections of their caverns are low natural light rather than pitch dark, with openings for smoke and air/light to get in and out.
Stone age people had [extensive underground mines for flint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grime%27s_Graves), dug out without the aid of metal tools, so none of this is impossible.
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## Their residences line the walls of a ravine to the surface
A central feature of the mine is a long, deep ravine that is open to the sky at the top. In fact, this was how the mine was started. Dwarves don't randomly start digging in a mountain, hoping to find ore. They see a deposit on the surface, and start mining it down into the mountain, forming a ravine open to the sky.
The ravine is vertically divided into levels with walkways, connected by stairs. As the ravine deepens, they carve living and storage chambers into the walls of the ravine. Dwarves who aren't actively mining generally spend their time in this residential area.
**Ventilation:** One the ravine is deep enough, the dwarves start digging horizontal shafts from the ravine, to the side of the mountain. Cool air enters the horizontal shafts; moves by convection to the ravine where it is warmed by sunlight, cooking fires, and lanterns; and rises up the ravine as exhaust. Their is plenty of coal for cooking and ventilation, but burning it is strictly limited to the ravine to prevent asphyxiation.
**Light:** During the daytime, sunlight enters the ravine from above. There are only a few minutes each day when the angle of the sun directly shines into the ravine; the increase in brightness is a natural signal to the dwarves that it is time to break for the day's great feast. During the rest of the day, ambient light from the sky is sufficient illumination. Mineshafts are carved in straight lines using line-of-sight, and polished metal mirrors reflect sunlight or lamplight from the ravine. Night is a time for rest, and the dwarves retreat to their residences along the ravine, where they use coal lamps for illumination.
**Food:** There is a small amount of space along the edges of the ravine for cropland, which receives sunlight and rain from the open sky. It is enough to grow root vegetables and a few savory and medicinal herbs. However, their diet must be supplanted (especially for protein) by trapping, insects, underground fishing, and trading with other species.
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**They could realistically exist the way they existed IRL.**
Tolkien's fables didn't come out of nothing - the concept of these dwarves is based somewhat on a rather tragic reality.
***Noric Mithril***
It goes back as far as ancient Rome: They didn't say "Tough as Nails", they said "Tougher than Noric Steel". Noricum was a region and occasional Nation in the eastern Alpine foothills and the bordering plains settled by a primarily agricultural Celtic peoples dating back to 1200 BC. They had considerably advanced metalworking, probably partly due to the initial access to ore: lying right on an exposed part of the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt, surface mineral veins were especially abundant and accessible in that region.
***Commercial Success***
Tougher, sharper, more resilient blades were always in great demand, for obvious reasons. As Noricum joined the Roman Empire at around 10 BC, they became a primary weapons outfitter of the Roman Army. The trade bloomed, people specialized, and the mines grew deeper. Locally, populations moved away from the plains and closer to the mountains. Old timey Urbanization.
***Curse of the Mountains***
These urban centers, often directly at the foot of the mountains - as in directly built on the bottom of a mountainface, was consuming a lot of the local water. The water was exceptionally pure - fresh meltwater directly from the icecaps above - and possibly even prized for its purity - **started turning some of the locals into dwarves**.
Instead of collecting minerals from the ground as it snakes through a river, meltwater is completely, and ironically, completely devoid of minerals. Lacking Iodine, the human body is unable to form thyroxin, a hormone directly responsible for growth. Often feeble-minded, these *cretins*, as they were called, were consistently short in stature, with thick necks, arms and legs.
These dwarves can be born to healthy parents, and the dwarves, if they figured out how to procreate, could give birth to a healthy child.
It stands to reason that they would be employed in the mines.
So TL:DR; how did they exist? They were supported by "Normal Humans". They lived above ground in mining towns, probably focused on mining, while the healthy population managed the rest as humans normally do.
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Dwarves start out as "cavemen". (Note that they didn't live entirely in caves; it's just that artifacts &c in caves are better preserved than ones in the open.) Gradually, living underground becomes a status symbol: high-status dwarves spend most of their time underground doing the smithing & stonework, while low-status dwarves dwell on the surface, growing food and so on. Gradually they discover that they can trade their metal & stone work to humans for food & other above-ground products. (This rather parallels human urbanization: how often do you read of fantasy cities without the necessary agricultural lands to support the population?)
If we take Tolkien as the model, we see that dwarves don't actually spend all their time underground. Biblo's companions go on a long (mostly) aboveground journey from their homes (northwest of the Shire, IIRC) to enlist him, and then to Erebor. There's also mention of parties of travelling/trading dwarves passing through the Shire & Bree; the wealthy in the Shire have dwarf-made items like clocks and the toys given out at Bilbo's birthday party...
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I've actually looked into this before, and come up with some answers that aren't 100% scientifically rigorous, but they're close enough to make it plausible.
To address your issues in order:
## Tunnels
Tunnels can be dug quite deep with only basic technology. In the quasi-medieval-Europe setting that most of this kind of fantasy takes place in, you've scaffolding, pulleys and treadmills, and wagons - everything you need to haul large quantities of rock out of a mine, using cranes, lift shafts, and rope-drawn minecarts. You can prop the tunnels with wood (which works great; when the first mechanical props came in, some miners preferred the wood because it would crack and creak to warn you when it was overloaded and close to failure).
Medieval mines did exist, and sappers would tunnel beneath enemy castles to break sieges. Depths of a few hundred metres are probably plausible with a concerted effort. If there are natural caves, or your dwarves are digging in stronger rocks like granite (which doesn't require props, because its hardness means it won't collapse if dug properly) then you could get very deep indeed. Don't forget that after a few generations of determined digging, your dwarves will have a level of mining expertise beyond anything that existed in the medieval world.
## Air
Your mention of ventilation is a good one, but not insurmountable. For this, we look at termites. A termite colony has a large, wall-like part above ground that is always constructed on a north-south alignment so that the flat side catches the sunlight. This warms the air inside, and as the warm air rises, it creates a pressure differential. The colony makes sure that the tunnels that open to the outside go from ground level to the deepest parts of the burrowsand so, stale air in the nest is pulled up and out, and fresh air is drawn in to replace it.
Your dwarves can replicate this mechanism - all they need is a source of great heat... like a set of enormous forges. Place the forges at the heart of the dwarven city, and keep digging vent shafts from the outermost tunnels (and closing off vent shafts from tunnels that are no longer outermost), and as long as the forge fires are burning, the rising column of hot air will pull fresh air through the mines. Any dwarf will tell you: a burning forge is the heart that keeps a city alive.
## Dust
So the air is breathable, but it's also full of dust. Over time, as your dwarves differentiate from regular folk, they'll develop things like thicker mucous in their airways that will reduce the health impact of the dust, but in the meantime... why do you think dwarves have such thick beards? A good bushy beard and mustache is nature's dust mask. Just remember to wash your beard out periodically.
## Light
Mines used candles for light for centuries, but if your dwarves are spending a lot of time underground and have a knack for metalwork and engineering, chances are they'll come up with a few tricks a little earlier than their real-world analogues.
For a start, if they're mining coal and smelting steel, then they'll be producing coke. From that, they'll have coal tar, and if they have access to peat then they can start to produce naptha, which makes good lamp fuel. If the dwarves find the right metal salts while mining, they could start to produce mantles for these lamps, to make their light brighter and more white.
Of course, in some mines there's a risk of gas explosion when using a naked flame for light, but the key innovation of a Davy lamp is basically just a fine metal mesh, which shouldn't be a problem for a dwarf's metalworking skills. With this, you can safely use a flame lantern in a coal mine, and as a bonus, the colour and size of the flame can be used to judge the content and quality of the air in your mine. No more need for canaries!
## Food
Food is something of an issue, and it may be that your dwarves will have to maintain farms on the slopes around their mine entrance. However, there are alternatives.
There are varieties of algae and fungus that can live without sunlight; some of these were discovered in caves and underground rivers, so perhaps your dwarves found them while mining and domesticated them? These are often found around volcanic vents, using the heat as their source of energy, but your dwarves have those forges burning 24/7, so there should be somewhere close to the forges that would sustain some farms to grow algae or mushrooms. For fertiliser, well... you've got hundreds of dwarves living in a mine and it's a few centuries before anyone will invent the flushing toilet, so I'm confident you'll find something. You can supplement this with the soil you dig out from the surface whenever you put in a new vent shaft, because otherwise you risk slowly depleting some of the minerals in it, being a closed system and all.
There are fish that don't particularly need light, either because they live in dark caves anyway, or because they're used to very murky water. You could maintain a few underground lakes stocked with fish as a source of protein. The fish can eat the algae, which is good, because it's probably not very palatable to your dwarves as it is. A simple form of aquaponics might work nicely, using the algae vats to dispose of sewage, and using fish to dispose of excess algae.
Pigs probably don't enjoy living in the dark, but they don't need a great deal of space, don't mind a bit of muck, and will eat basically anything. A solid choice for underground livestock.
Fermentation works quite nicely in dark, warm environments, so your dwarves will almost certainly turn to brewing as a means to purify water. As far back as ancient Engypt and Mesopotamia, there have been beer-like drinks, some of which were quite thick, in some cases resembling a thin porridge; your dwarves could add some sort of grain or mushroom derivatives to the mix to create a strange dwarven ale that provides nourishment as well as hydration. It might be a bit of an acquired taste, but history teaches us that if it has alcohol in it, then people can learn to enjoy it.
## Dwarven development
As the years and generations go by, the folk living in the mines will naturally become shorter (to aid moving around in cramped tunnels) and stockier (to better cope with hard labour and heavy lifting). Their night vision may improve, and they'll develop an appreciation for bushy, well-maintained facial hair. They'll enjoy fish, ham, and their own variety of strong, strange-tasting beer. Their cities will be surrounded by mines, and they'll place great importance on keeping the forges burning.
Sounds just like a proper fantasy dwarf to me.
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I think the pillar spam commonly seen in dwarven architecture actually helps when it comes to the large scale excavations the dwarves under take. You'd have your colony start out as a mine and as veins dry up and dwarves dig deeper you use the already hollowed out tunnels (with pillar support since dwarves are mining long term) and refurbish and strengthen the tunnels for buildings and living spaces. How they actually mine they could simply chip away at stone for generations or maybe they could use a acidic substance to help soften stone.
To deal with lightning I propose two things: ventilation shafts that double as sky lights. The sky lights could also function as rain catchers with a intricate system of fans to move air, mirrors depending on the angle of the shaft, and buckets or pipes that lead to cisterns.
Another solution to lighting is coal furnaces/petroleum if the dwarves find a pocket (why not mine gold and black gold?). One other solution is slow burning candles. Maybe dwarves alchemists found a recipe for slow burning, but bright candles. Dwarves would naturally adapt to see better in dim lightning any how.
I've always been confused why fantasy dwarves don't have massive terrace farming on the mountain sides. Dwarves are known for their intricate architecture so why not have the dwarves have a complex farming system on the cliff side. With large amounts of piping connecting the fields and bringing water from the peak all the way to the floor. Inside the mountain as others have answered you have mushrooms, lichen, insects, and under ground fish. Or simply trade for your food.
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I'm going to hit your questions in reverse order...
Health-wise, your major problem with living out of significant sunlight is rickets. However your fantasy dwarfs will be no more or less at risk of this than modern humans who spend very little time in direct sunlight. Rickets was a major issue from the start of the industrial revolution, but was largely solved a century ago with vitamin-enriched food. For your dwarfs who presumably lack this, a diet rich in oily fish will fix it. There are cave-dwelling fish, so your dwarfs don't even have to leave their tunnels.
Food-wise, dwarfs don't have to live above ground to farm above ground, any more than fishermen have to live their entire lives at sea. Alpine transhumance involved herders moving their animals up into the hills in spring, but their families still stayed in the valleys. So there can easily be farmers amongst them, but they would still consider their home to be underground.
Light is straightforward. Torches, candles, oil lamps and rushlights are all available. And you're assuming that light and sight are necessary in order for carrying out all these activities. Plenty of blind people provide evidence to the contrary.
And finally, digging big holes in the ground. Never mind medieval mining - digging mineshafts was well established in Cornwall long before the Romans arrived. [The Romans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Roman_Britain) managed to get over 100m down. Of course the Romans used slaves, but even the free men before that had no problems tunnelling to follow the ore.
Dust remains a problem for miners, even today. Silicosis is not a happy fun experience. We might presuppose that dwarfs evolved some ability to deal with that though, along with their reduced height. Thicker mucus and stronger cilia in their airways might solve the problem. And as Pratchett has observed, whilst dwarfs may feel most at home in a mine, most of them may not actually be miners, any more than we need to be builders to live in a brick-built house.
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**It is completely possible**
first Many human civilizations build underground, some quite extensively for instance [Kaymakli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymakli_Underground_City) is massive and they started building it in hte 7th century BC. Ventilation is a matter of good design, natural winds and thermal gradients can be used to move air quite effectively, modern mines don't because fans are cheaper. Living underground has several advantages, stable temperatures, better food storage, ect.
Living underground is not the same as farming underground, the above humans farmed above ground. I always imagined dwarves building terraced farms in the mountains like the Inca and keeping a lot of livestock. Built correctly terraced farms would be completely inaccessible to outsiders but fairly productive. livestock are nice because you can just bring them underground with you at night or during attacks that is what the people of [Derinkuyu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_underground_city) did.
Seeing is very simple, castles had the same problem, they solved it with fire. braziers, torches, lamps, candles, ect.
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For a fantasy race, or for bio-augmented humans, how durable would they have to be to walk away from a 1000ft free fall unscathed? And how would this logically translate to other forms of durability?
Would it make gunfire from calibers like 9mm or .45 entirely ineffectual? What about more powerful rounds like .308 or even .50cal?
Would the force from a bullet that powerful be enough to crack the skull of someone able to survive landing on their head if pushed off a skyscraper?
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## Normal human durability, and a lot of luck
People *have* survived terminal velocity falls. In 1972, [Vesna Vulović](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87) fell over 33,330 ft without a parachute after the plane she was in exploded. She didn't exactly walk away from the fall, however. She spent days in a coma, and was hospitalized for months after that. But she did survive.
Vulović is not the only one to [survive a fall that should have killed them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall#Surviving_falls). They all had varying degrees of injury, so perhaps it's not quite accurate to say that normal human durability is all that's required if you want to walk away afterwards. But the point is that there are a great many factors involved in surviving a fall, and the height and the body's structure are only two of them.
That said, here are some other suggestions of the types of people who would fall well:
## Lighter people
From [On Being the Right Size](https://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html) by J. B. S. Haldane:
>
> To the mouse and any smaller animal [gravity] presents practically no dangers. You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. For the resistance presented to movement by the air is proportional to the surface of the moving object. Divide an animal’s length, breadth, and height each by ten; its weight is reduced to a thousandth, but its surface only to a hundredth. So the resistance to falling in the case of the small animal is relatively ten times greater than the driving force.
>
>
>
Terminal velocity is a function of (among other things) weight. The lighter you are, the lower the velocity at which you hit the ground, and the easier it is for you to survive.
## Wider people
[Wingsuit flying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingsuit_flying) is a reasonably popular sport where flyers skydive in a suit with "wings" between the arms and body, and between the legs. These jumps typically end with a parachute, but in 2012, [Gary Connery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Connery) landed a 2,400 ft jump without a parachute, landing on a "runway" of cardboard boxes.
Also, having wings gives you more ability to steer towards softer ground, which is always a plus.
## The best enhancements for falling durability are not going to make you bulletproof
Bullets kill by piercing - by applying a large amount of force in a small area, they are able to penetrate the protective layers of our bodies and apply that force to the vulnerable parts of our bodies. That's why bulletproof materials function by preventing the piercing effect and distributing the force over a larger area.
That sort of protection is not going to help against a fall, where the entire area of your body is experiencing the massive forces involved. Conversely, the cushioning and strengthening of the enhancements needed to protect against a fall are not going to do much to stop the piercing effects of a bullet.
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Bullet resistance and falling resistance are different from each other. A bullet that impacts some pierce-resistant skin will cause a shockwave to propogate through the body, which will bruise the flesh underneath and potentially cause bloodvessles to break and organs to be damage enough to die off. If you fall from a great height (or are in a carcrash, or have your body accelerated by a car/truck/whatever hitting you), all your organs will suddenly decellerate (or accelerate) and need to be slowed down over as long a distance as possible without ripping the nerves and bloodvessles.
Against bullet, extra fat would help as it would increase the distance the shockwave needs to propagate through before it reaches something vital. Against falling extra fat would mean more velocity for all your organs counteracting the extra distance the organs can now slow down over and increasing the chance the organs will rip out of their place, it's going to kill you faster!
One thing missing in @ArcanistLupus his answer about falling (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall#Surviving_falls>) is that almost all these falls had something break their fall slightly. They didn't really hit the ground with terminal velocity even though they reached terminal velocity at some point in their fall. It's like saying a parachutist survived a terminal velocity fall when he hit the ground.
This leaves 3 answers:
* Make the person lighter without making them smaller. How much I can't say, but this will reduce their terminal velocity and increase their chance of survival.
* Increase the person's surface area. This does mean he's going to need something along the lines of a parachute of surface area somewhere on his body to survive a fall.
* Redesign their internal organs to have more room for the nerves and bloodvessles to follow the organs during the crash. Additionally the organs would need to be suspended with ligaments to allow them to move more and slow down over a larger distance. Possibly the organs could be molded into a bunch of smaller pieces that will each individually be slowed down. This will likely not be enough alone to help you survive.
* as a last option: All of the above.
For a few other options check this similar question I made: [Creating a scientifically semi-valid super-soldier, part 3: Physical shock resistance](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/107635/creating-a-scientifically-semi-valid-super-soldier-part-3-physical-shock-resis)
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You d have to look like this
This is a simulation of how you would need to be to [resist 100mph car crashes](https://www.boredpanda.com/graham-body-survive-car-crash-road-safety-victorian-government-patricia-piccinini/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic). Free fall is essentially the same problem
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7vIJs.jpg)
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The simple answer is no - the ability to survive a fall in no way implies the ability to shrug off a bullet. The answer provided by Arcanist Lupus is correct, but I think it can be simplified considerably.
What you have to realize is twofold: bullets travel much faster than human terminal velocity, and they provide a much smaller impact area. The two combine to make an enormous difference.
Human terminal velocity is not a precise number, but for adults at sea level it runs from about 120 mph (with the body horizontal) to about 200 mph (with the body vertical), or something like 180 to 300 fps. In fact, the vertical position is more survivable than the horizontal, since the legs provide a shock absorber effect, as well as what is called in automobiles a "crumple zone".
Furthermore, all of the energy dissipated in the landing is done so over the entire cross-sectional area of the body, which for a vertical position will be on the order of one to two square feet.
Bullets, on the other hand, travel roughly 4 to 10 times faster than terminal velocity (1000 fps to 3000 fps, roughly), and have an impact absorption area on the order of 2000 times smaller.
So a bullet, on impacting a body, will simply punch through flesh, and while it will eventually be absorbed, this will not happen until it has done localized damage far in excess of the amount done by a fall.
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okay so terminal velocity and being bullet proof have nothing to do with each other. the denser you are the more you weigh which increases your inertia. higher density could theoretically make you bullet proof but would increase your inertia, therefore a fall would be likely to be more lethal. higher bone density might help but the impact on organs would be worse. the lighter an object is the less gravity attracts it so the two problems would compound each other. maybe make them bullet proof with technology that helps them fly, or put some really good parachutes on them. (side note most readers would simply accept the being able to fall from heights if they were bullet proof so I would just ignore the lack of explanation on the former)
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The first thing to know is that fall-proof and bulletproof are largely unrelated. Sure, if you put enough "durability" on anything, you'll get both, but if you want to optimize your modifications, I'd focus on one or the other.
**Optimizing for Bullets**
Bulletproofing is fairly straightforward, as it largely comes down to three basic ideas:
1. Distributing kinetic energy across a wider area
2. Absorbing kinetic energy (typically through plastic deformation)
3. Preventing penetration
The first and second are reasonably interchangeable, where more capacity to distribute force largely obviates absorption capacity, and vice versa. If you can distribute the force of a bullet from an area less than a square centimeter in size (bullet cross-sectional area) to around 2,000 square centimeters (approximate torso cross-sectional area), you've reduced the kinetic energy applied per unit area by 2,000. If instead, you put a wall of concrete in front of you, that doesn't do much as far as distributing force, but it does wonders at absorbing kinetic energy through plastic deformation.
Preventing penetration is largely about putting fibrous materials that will "catch" a bullet before they enter the body, and these same types of fibrous materials (Kevlar, for example) tend to do distribution fairly well.
So some fibers for distribution and prevention, and some ceramics or other plastically deformables for absorption is the typical solution. Note that out of the fibers and deformables, the deformables will help somewhat with fall resistance, but the fibers will not. Which brings us to...
**Optimizing for Falls**
The first question to ask is what it is specifically that typically kills people in high-altitude falls. I'd imagine it's breaking of the spine, and the bones of the ribs being pushed through the organs. What causes both of these problems is the same two issues: things bending like they aren't supposed to, and jerk being applied to the body.
To stop things from bending, you can include a frame of some sort, either directly to the spine or to a frame outside the body. To stop the jerk is trickier, and comes down to either reducing the force (either absorption like with the bullets or decreasing speed of fall) or slowing down the impact (think a giant pillow, gently bringing you to rest upon impact). Here you have a few options:
1. Add means of drag or decrease weight to decrease terminal velocity, for example, wings or a parachute
2. Add plastically deformables (see bullet section for more on this) to absorb the force of an impact
3. Add cushioning to slow an impact
Here your creativity is the limit. Plenty of real-life creatures can survive the force of an impact at terminal velocity. For example, most insects cannot be killed by falls from any height, because as you scale down objects, they tend to handle impacts far better. A human-sized ant would be only slightly more fall-proof than a human-sized human. So small size is your friend.
You can also add something like a biological parachute or wing, which can slow you down just before landing. Of course, this isn't as "cool" to a reader as an enhanced human who manages [superhero landings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwUilIo036g).
Another interesting option is [crumple zones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumple_zone), areas of your enhanced human specifically designed to smash, absorbing the force of the landing, perhaps quickly healing/regrowing after smashing. You can also try to capture the kinetic energy of the landing, with some electromagnetic damping or something similar ["capturing" the force](https://youtu.be/Dr1wAjuRQGc?t=145) and generating electricity, glucose, fuel, or something else that [can be used later](https://youtu.be/sgX_StgXGF0?t=26).
Finally, cushioning. This one is tricky, because generally you need a lot of it. Crash pads for bouldering (low-altitude rock climbing) are typically around 13cm (5in) thick, and that's just for heights below 6m (20ft). From that height, you'd only be able to reach around 33km/h (20mph) at maximum, disregarding air resistance, well below the estimated [195km/h (122mph) terminal velocity of a skydiver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall#Examples). Basic physics dictates that kinetic energy, the real problem with falling, grows with the square of velocity. This means that if a 13cm (5in) mat can handle a fall at 33km/h (20mph), a fall of 195km/h (122mph) will pack not 6 times the punch, but 36 times the punch. If required mat thickness scales linearly with velocity (which it doesn't, it's probably *even worse* than that, so this is probably a **best-case scenario**), that means you'd need 78cm (31in) of pad to take an impact at terminal velocity. Again, this is only a best-case scenario, so you'd likely need much more than that, and 78cm (31in) is already a fairly prohibitively large amount of padding to add to your enhanced humans.
**Conclusion**
If you want to stop bullets, add fibers and plastically deformables. If you want to stop falls, slow down the fall, add plastically deformables, or slow down the impact with biological padding. Let me know what you come up with! As far as creativity goes, the sky's the limit. Then again, that's sort of the point :)
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Cats frequently survives high falls. How durable are cats?
The cat example suggest it is not the durability (because I guess cats are quite similar to humans in this respect) but how you handle the fall. I would imagine an experienced parachute jumper that had trained on landing without parachute would have quite good chances of **surviving** (but seriously injured).
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I am writing a story where two countries decide to merge into one larger country, but I am having trouble figuring out what they would actually name the new country.
At first I though that they would stick their names together into one long name, which is what companies do when they [merge](https://www.investopedia.com/investing/biggest-mergers-in-history/). I abandoned this idea when I realized that I could not think of a historical example that did something similar.
The countries I can name that resulted from two or more smaller countries combining (i.e. Greece, Germany, Italy, China) seem to get their names from something else, but I don't know what.
Does anyone know where names for countries like these come from?
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1. Sometimes, they do merge their names; for example,
Tan-ganyika + Zan-zibar $\rightarrow$ [Tanzania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzania).
2. Italy [was a *place*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Peninsula) before it was a country. It is pretty natural for a country which occupies the Italian Peninsula to call itself Italy.
Two and a half millennia ago, it was the name of a small region at the southern end of the peninsula. The Greek colonists asked the locals what was the name of the country, and the locals answered *Witeliu*, Land of Young Bulls, which the Greek wrote *Ouitalia*, which later became simplified to *Italia*. In time, the name was extended to include the entire peninsula; already in the 1st century BCE Strabo uses the name to refer to the entire country south of the Alps.
The same consideration applies to India and to Spain; Hispania and India were geographical names looong before they became countries. (And India is only called India by westerners; the Indians themselves call it Bhārat. We call it India because the ancient Greeks called it India, from the name of the river Indus.)
3. Greece was a place and Greek was a language loooong before the Hellenic Kingdom was a thing; like two and a half millennia before. Ruling over Greece-the-place and Greeks-the-people was the entire purpose of the Hellenic Kingdom; this is why it was named the Hellenic Kingdom.
Note that in their own language the Greeks call themselves Hellenes, and their country Hellas. The name Hellas was used for the entire area inhabited by Greek speaking people since a very long time ago, at least since the 5th century BCE. We call them Greeks in English because the Romans called them Greeks; the Romans called all the Greeks, Greeks, because the first Greeks they met were from north-western Greece, and did call themselves Graikoi, which was naturally Latinized as Graeci.
4. German was a language, and Germans were a people long before His Majesty [William I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_I,_German_Emperor) was proclaimed emperor of the new German Empire. It was called the German Empire because its people were Germans, and it was the successor state of the North German Confederation. The North German Confederation was called the North German Confederation because it contained the states in the northern part of the area where the German language was spoken.
Before the North German Confederation there was the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, established a thousand years ago.
Note that in their own language the Germans call themselves Deutsche, and their country Deutschland. We call them Germans in English because the Romans call them Germans. Why the Romans called them Germans we have no clue.
5. I have no idea what you mean by giving the example of China. China is not called China in Chinese; *we* call it China. In Chinese it is called Zhōnghuá, "Central Essence" (or Central Nobility, or Central Eminence, etc., the second component of the compound name being quite polysemantic). Before the current People's Republic and the very much reduced Republic of China, there was the Chinese Empire, which called itself Zhōngguó, "Central Kingdom". Pretty neutral names, which don't give any preference to any of the components, which were anyway united a very long time ago.
We call China, China, from the name of the [Qin Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_(state)), which occupied the western half of what is now China when the ancient Greeks got to learn about it. (Qin is pronounced not very different from the English word *chin* in Modern Standard Mandarin, and was pronounced, probably, *dzin* two thousand years ago.)
6. To add to the list of examples, my own country is called Romania because most of the inhabitants speak Romanian. The local name of the language was similar to the modern one at least since 16th century, although other designations were used as well. When Wallachia (which we did not call Wallachia in our own language) and Moldavia [united in 1859](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Principalities_of_Moldavia_and_Wallachia) there became apparent a need for a name for the new united country; what was more natural than to name the country after the language of its people?
7. Another example is [Yugoslavia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavia), Land of Southern Slavs. All¹ the nationalities, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Slovenes, Macedonians, were indeed Slavic, and they spoken Southern Slavic languages; so, it was indeed a country of Southern Slavic peoples.
¹) All the nationalities except the Albanians, of course. But nobody cared about the Albanians until they absolutely had to care about the Albanians.
8. The final example is the Netherlands, literally the Low Countries. They are indeed very low, with one quarter of the territory below sea level and the tallest hill barely above 300 meters high. The name Netherlands for the region became current some five hundred years ago.
Note that originally the name Netherlands, or the Low Countries, included what is today Belgium. Belgium was [created² by the Great Powers in 1830](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Conference_of_1830); the new kingdom needed a name, and, since all the diplomats of that era had a thorough classical education, it was named after the [Belgae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgae), who inhabited sort-of that area in the 1st century BCE, as Caesar informs us.
²) The people of the southern half of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands started a little revolution. The king deployed a ridiculously small number of troops to quell the uprising; they utterly failed to do so, and the attempt inflamed the people, who elected a provisional government and declared independence. At the London Conference, France took a decisive stand in favor of making the Netherlands smaller, and the other Great Powers did not feel inclined to go to war over the matter.
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## It will depend on political facts
You have to ask yourself two questions:
1. Why are these countries merging?
2. How will the newly formed nation be organized politically?
The bottom line is that naming a country is not like naming a baby: people aren't going to simply sit around and toss out words and names they've "always liked," and then pick whatever seems like a "good fit."
### Why are these countries merging?
If they're doing it because they all belong to the same religious tradition, the new name is almost certainly going to reflect that fact, probably referencing by name the sect itself or some character from its mythology, or some aptly-chosen episode or principle from its traditions. For example, if both countries are filled with people who worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the new name is probably going to mention pastafarianism or noodles and appendages. ("Pastafaria" is a likely choice.)
If they're merging because the monarchical families of both nations have been intermarrying for generations and they've decided to simply pool their political power and resources, the new name is almost certainly going to be a nod to the personal histories or pedigrees of those royals, or to some symbol of their unity that they already cherish. That might be something as straightforward as the name of the estate that is traditionally inhabited by the most recently joined couple from both families.
If they're merging because they share some historical origin, the new name is probably going to be a reference to that shared history, very likely a riff on an already established demonym that applies to people of that origin. If they think their distant ancestors all originally came to this land from some specific place, the new name will be a reference to that place. If they all spoke a specific language, the new name will be a reference to that linguistic tradition.
### How will the newly formed nation be organized politically?
Consider the United States of America. "United States" is not a *sui generis* name, but a factual description of the high-level political structure of the nation: the U.S. is a collection of individual states that are still legally and politically distinct despite being close allies. When the South later seceded to form the Confederate States of America, they could have invented a completely unique name for themselves, but they didn't: they still styled themselves "States of America" because they intended to retain the large-scale political organization of the U.S. and they were obviously still on the American continent.
The same goes for the USSR: it wasn't some creative name like "Wendy," but a literal statement of the nation's political origin, organization, and philosophy.
In your case, you've got two separate countries, and each of them has its own political structure before the merger. Will the new country have the same organization, or is it changing (and, indeed, is the change the *reason* for the merger)?
Are they both monarchies? Will the new country also be a monarchy? Or will it have multiple co-rulers like the Roman Empire did during the [Tetrarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrarchy)? In that case, the new country name might make mention of the fact.
If the new country will be a direct democracy, the new name will probably reflect that fact. Very possibly, the name will be chosen democratically, which means the new nation might be named Boaty McBoatface as a deliberate flex.
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As I said at the outset, people will take the naming very seriously. That's because the name of this country is necessarily going to come up in all of the most serious contexts that are possible.
It will be printed on the letterhead of the most powerful and wealthy people who live there. It will be shouted loudly by those same people at official occasions of pomp and circumstance. It will appear in the names of countless items of national identity like flags, songs, seals, etc. It will have to be stated explicitly in every single declaration of war and peace it ever issues. People will die with this name on their lips, clutching its flag to their breast having given their life's full measure in its defense.
None of those people are going to like it if that name is some cringeworthy darling, a mashup of edgy memes, or obviously the product of lazy word association. They will want a name worthy of some dignity.
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There's a few options going for Historical precedents:
1: A Colonized country (e.g. taken over by force) - New *old country name* - see: New England, New York, New South Wales, New Zealand etc.
2: Assuming a mutual merger - United or Union *thing* - see: The United States, United Arab Emirates, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics etc.
3: Speaking of Republics: Czech Republic, Republic of Ireland, Peoples Republic of China etc.
4: A New name based on some shared feature - e.g. Scandinavia, Mediterranean, Himalayan etc.
Edit:
5: (thanks to JBH) - Commonwealths are also a good choice - whether it's the Commonwealth from the Ex-British Empire, the Commonwealth of Virginnia (yes, it's a state and not a country but I'm counting it)
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To add one more option to the already-impressive list: they could go with an acronym.
The name **Pakistan** was coined by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, a Pakistan Movement activist, who in January 1933 first published it in a pamphlet Now or Never, using it as an acronym. He explained: "It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our homelands: Panjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan."
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Apart from the valid other answers (yep, upvoted 'em all), another aspect to consider comes to my mine.
**How much do they merge?**
In some cases, the states go all-in, like the Federal Republic of Germany (formerly known as the "Tri-Zone") and the German Democratic Republic. Of course, that was a reunion after a split-up. In this case, the GDR was not officially considered a state by the FRG back in the days. Resulting name was Germany. But that's not my point.
The NATO (like the Warsaw Pact) combines countries (states) on the military level - under very specific circumstances.
The EEC (European Economic Community) combined countries (states) on an economic level. It was replaced by the EU (European Union, which was at first called the European Community), where they additionally also built up a common legislative. Somehow similar to a federation, the individual parts retain a certain amount of authority over their own laws. That makes sense, as members have different cultural backgrounds, geological differences, possibly different languages, whatever.
Now, let's go even further. *Cities* have their own legislation. In the United Kingdom, we still have a region called Scotland, and cities like York. Yes, the York law *"From Monday to Saturday, within the medieval walls of the city of York, it is legal to murder a Scotsman – but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow."* was abolished in 2013, but it still illustrates the point that a "combined country" made up of "combined cities" is not really a uniform homogenous entity.
Ah, yes, Tanzania. Part of it was Germany East Africa, then the British territory Tanganyika (later part of the British Commonwealth), to merge later with Zanzibar later to become the *United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar* - which would, a few months later, be transformed to Tanzania. This was not a united country at first, it was just that the governments of Tanganyika and Zanzibar had some common goals.
TL;DR version:
Consider the function of the combined country/state/union/federation/empire/pact/organization. That will give some possible names based on their function.
Note that propaganda from the government may also play a major role. Like, ya know, "Republic of the Union of Myanmar" or "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation". Uh.
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Not countries, but provincies of Dominican Republic:
* "Monte Cristi" and "Puerto Plata" merged into "Monte Plata"
* "Bayajá" and "La Jaguana" merged into "Bayaguana"
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You're spoiled for choice of good answers here: considerations of political motivation from Tom; the socio-linguistic and cultural contexts in which real nations have formed from AlexP, and supporting examples from others.
The storyteller must also consider **who** gets to pick the name. Sometimes it's victorious politicians who carve up territory as spoils, as did the European powers with the remains of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. The same people who coined the phrase "The Great Game" to describe geopolitics went on to cause, or be involved in, some of the trouble described elsewhere in this thread.
Speaking of trouble, sometimes governments take things by force, and the carving-up happens by the generals as they fight. Maybe the press covering the war gets to do the naming. Remember your Clausewitz: "War is the continuation of politics by other means." In the real world, again, you have your pick of character studies and real-time analysis of how large international bodies behave in the context of war. How have regional names in the news today received their names?
You brought up companies, which are another avenue to populate your story. The corporate world is full of stories of (real!) rich people who sometimes do crazy things, and affect the world in fascinating ways. Are the "deciders" in your story ruthless corporate types, clever tricksters, honest businessmen, crafty guild mavens? The merger of the country might not be decided by the businesses themselves, but there will be economic considerations. Whoever works with the details will organize them a certain way, and will probably name things however makes sense to the character.
To make a macro aside, economics should not be ignored, because it affects how people make decisions. How is market share to be distributed, and by whom? Will the civilian companies of the new country be expected to compete, and how ruthlessly will they do so with their new countrymen? Will the government intervene to protect some industries, or some individual players? Will some (or all) industries be subject to special controls by the government; maybe important logistical concerns, weapons manufacturers, or some key technology? How involved are government officials in business? How honest are they? What are societal expectations? How does your government get its revenue, what percentage of the population does it employ, and how well are its members paid? These are decidedly economic concerns which may or may not also affect your government. They will almost certainly affect your characters.
The name for a new country, then, is a product of the process that generated it, which is enacted by the characters in your story, who are shaped by their time, place, and culture. That's how I'd figure out how to name a country.
Hope that helps, and happy writing!
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The trope of an ancient advanced civilisation that disappeared is as old as the hills, but it does raise an interesting question: what kinds of evidence would suggest that somebody else was here first? After a few hundred years, most buildings, bridges, and other structures would have collapsed, and after a few thousand there are likely to be only fragments. After a million years or more, is anything likely to remain? Humanity has made such a huge impact on the Earth that even a million years after we're gone, surely something will remain; I can't think of a way that buried reinforced concrete "rocks" could've formed naturally, for example.
I'm toying with the idea that a prior, [sufficiently advanced](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SufficientlyAdvancedAlien), civilisation disappeared in some kind of cataclysm at least a hundred thousand years ago, preferably more. I don't want there to be any ruined buildings or monuments, but I'm ok with the extremely rare [magical artifact](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClarkesThirdLaw). I don't know exactly what kinds of technologies and abilities these peoples had, other than that they were probably equivalent to a Kardashev Type I or II. I do like the idea that they were capable of performing geological scale engineering or terraforming because that's a nice little *deus ex machina* to conceal my map-drawing abilities—the in-universe hint would be that the dates from radiocarbon dating and supposed geological timescales required for mountain building just don't add up.
On the surface, it feels like lazy worldbuilding, but I want to turn that trope on its head somewhat. To prevent this question from being too broad, I want to limit the evidence to be geological in origin (so if there's a partially-complete Dyson sphere around the sun, it hasn't been discovered yet).
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There are some long lasting footprints a civilization can leave behind:
* Buried glass manufacts: unless in contact with fluoridric acid, glass is practically untouched by other reactant. This, together with the peculiar shapes we give to most glass objects (flat sheets for windows, hollow bottles or glasses, just to say some) is a clear sign of non-natural process behind the formation of those artifacts
* Large engineering jobs: think of nuclear plants, or large dams (a K-I society should have them). What they leave in the place they are built is significant and very likely to be noticeable even after very long time. Not only the concrete foundation, but also, for the nuclear plant, residual background radioactivity or, for the dam, different erosion/sediment layers.
Just as an example, we have been able to find [a natural fission reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor) 1.7 billion year after it was active.
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> Oklo is the only known location for this in the world and consists of 16 sites at which self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions took place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, and ran for a few hundred thousand years, averaging probably less than 100 kW of thermal power during that time.
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Radioactive isotopes.
If there was any nuclear industry there is likely to be very long-lived and non-naturally occurring isotopes left behind. For example Zirconium-93 has a half-life of 1.53 million years.
Long term nuclear waste tends to be stored away very carefully in geologically stable sites and is likely to survive longer than any other remnant of civilization. The decay time would give you a good way to date the lost civilization.
Of course KI and KII civilizations would have better ways of dealing with radioactive waste than burying it but they would also be manufacturing isotopes to suit their needs and would leave behind isotope profiles which were not natural.
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I am no expert, but your question got me thinking about it, so:
Cities.Even though the buildings collapse and disappear, their rubble more-or-less falls into its own footprint. So you would find a layer of the decay-materials of concrete, and steel. Sure, after millions of years this "layer" will go from being defined, to being spread through strata, but I imagine it would be detectable for a SUPER long time just by the chemical ghost.
Similarly, you are going to find fossils, which are SUPER weird. When our sewerage system gets flooded, and filled with sand, and the sand is infused with mineral-rich-water, etc., etc. - Well, it would be hard to mistake fossilized sewerage pipes as femurs.
And I could imagine there are more than a few military structures which are reinforced, and in geologically stable areas. Nuclear-waste disposal sites are built with the itnention of storing this material for ~million years and it will be identifiable for a long time after that. If some civilization discovers that, it won't be long to breach it, and inside they are going to find the "sufficiently advanced"/ magic technology.
OK, so all of that stuff is JUST what WE would leave behind if we died today. A million years is an easy timescale to still recognize who we are/were.
But for how long could a civilization remind the planet they existed? The best way would be to send something off-world, and have it come back. Here is what I might do:
Create a LOT of small containers, shaped in a way they can re-enter the atmosphere intact. Ship them off near-by to the L1 and L2 points, which are positions outside of earths orbit, but keep a fixed-poistion relative to earth so that they don't orbit us, and objects are able to stay there indefinately. Put the object nearby, but in a way in which their orbits will decay and intersect the earth's orbit eventually.
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I don't know why nobody mentioned satellites and space debris. A piece of something that is manufactured could stay in the orbit for a long time. But, if it's too small, you need to correct the orbit. There is some discussion on SE about making satellites stay in orbit for a long time, see [here](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/8391/why-do-artificial-satellites-need-orbit-correction-but-natural-ones-dont?noredirect=1&lq=1) the discussion on orbit correction, and [here](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/15320/what-would-be-the-most-difficult-challenge-to-make-a-10-000-year-satellite?noredirect=1&lq=1) the one on making long lasting satellites.
A civilization could build something on an asteroid already orbiting the Earth and leave it there for the next civilization to discover. That will be big enough not to need orbit corrections, and if you coat part of the asteroid with glass or aluminum, it would be visible from Earth. That mysterious space object will always be a puzzle for the generation to come.
Also, if you are advanced enough, build pyramids on the Moon and put metal plates on them, so they shine. They won't be discovered easily, but they will last millions of years. Or you could go all out and sculpt the Moon like in Greg Bear's book [Eon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eon_(novel)).
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Was this past civilization human? If so, consider time capsules. People have a cute little desire to leave something behind. Before written languages were even invented, people left their hand prints and other little paintings on their cave walls, almost as if to say 'I was here!' Today, we bury time capsules all over the Earth, whether it's our own personal capsule or one organized by a school, company, or local government.
If the people in your old society were advanced enough, they could have constructed some capsules that stood the test of time. How cool would it be to unbury one from a millenia ago and sift through the items of their time? It might not satisfy your scientific needs but you could do so much more building with that past society.
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If human civilization went extinct today, future paleontologists would notice some very unusual things. Rabbits somehow migrated to Australia. Wild boar migrated to America. Raccoons somehow crossed the Atlantic to thrive in Europe. And many other species migrated from one continent to another.
All these introductions of non-native species at approximately the same time would need some explanation. (Although maybe future paleontologies would postulate an unprecedented drop in sea level rather than apes carrying animals in boats.)
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Okay a K-I Civilisation uses all the energy available on a planet this going to leave behind a few odd traces, radio-isotopes that shouldn't be there, strata that are unusually enriched in impure silica compounds from semiconductor solar farms, lenses of oddly regular conglomerate rock from concrete cities, possibly preserving grass artifacts. K-Is don't necessarily have any space travel/industry etc... so I'm going to ignore that side of things completely but there are definite possibilities in the direction of off planet artifacts surviving as well.
A K-II Civilisation, by definition, either has a Dyson Swarm, Dyson Sphere or inhabits 10,000,000,000 worlds at K-I levels of energy density. A Dyson Swarm is composed of space habitats arranged in orbital shells that intercept all available energy from the stellar primary, you are not going to miss the remains of that in your star system if you have *eyes*, let alone telescopes. A Dyson Sphere well yeah enough said. A civilisation spread across that many worlds doesn't have to terraform but probably will, also you're likely to see large-scale astro-engineering in star systems with inhabited worlds, orbital shipyards, widespread asteroidal mining and "herding", pressurised habitats on small bodies like the moon.
Either level, if they use plastics, will leave traces of polymer residual chemicals in the water of any inhabited world pretty well forever after habitation. Stainless Steel, that stuff will last next to forever under oxidising or reducing regimes. They probably also use a *lot* of mono-crystalline diamond for construction towards the end of K-I and for most of K-II, that's either going to burn or more likely it's going to survive intact when everything else collapses around it; in fact buildings done in diamond are probably going to survive even when their foundations fail, you'll find them lying around on their sides all over the place.
Edit: I realised that there's actually a fourth option for a K-II Civilisation; the civilisation that builds 3300 odd Ringworlds; odds are that since the Ringworld is not quite stable in orbit of a natural star (allowances are made for this in *[The Ringworld Engineers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ringworld_Engineers)*) a galaxy peopled by a civilisation that built thousands of them and then disappeared would be home to many Ringworlds, and chunks of broken Ringworlds, spinning through interstellar space. Thought for a disaster story, what happens when a rogue Ringworld plows through an inhabited star system?
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Jewelry is the longest lasting thing a society would make. Gold doesn't corrode and neither do gems.
Mount Rushmore was predicted to be the longest last monument mankind has made with an expected lifespan of 100,000 years.
For anything to last longer than 100,000 years, it would need to be buried
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Here is what you need to keep your relics nice.
1. **Dry.** Water means life and life means chipping and gnawing away at things. Eroding things. Ice walls crushing things. When it is dry you have none of that.
2. **Buried.** Wind is a distant second to water as regards wearing things away but it gets there eventually. Once you are buried you are out of the wind.
3. Geologically stable. 100,000 years is not too much in geological time but you could have a lot of earthquakes. If it is flat and stable things wont get shook up or buried.
Here is a [gentleman who was unearthed](http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/228194) from underground in the Taklamakan desert, where it is dry and stable.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/xVG2i.png)
Maybe his lips are a little chapped, but otherwise really good looking for 3000 years old. If he can keep that well under those circumstances, other things can keep that well. Certainly structures would do fine.
Of course the best way to preserve delicate things is in amber. This lizard is 23 million years old.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ucG7G.jpg)
Maybe there is some amber equivalent you could have encase your relics. That would be pretty cool.
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Portions of their space structures will be intact. Plastics will have completely disintegrated, and micrometeoroids will have eroded exterior surfaces. However, given the near-vacuum (just interstellar hydrogen and solar wind), depending on their composition and location, some metal components will survive.
Objects without internal atmospheres will fare best, and those with thick hulls. For instance, I imagine a robotic mining operation burrowed into an asteroid would be highly recognizable.
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At a million years, we start talking about geological timescales, during which mountains form and erode.
It is theoretically possible to have something -- after all, we find fossils as old [as 3bn years](https://www.livescience.com/58062-images-oldest-fossils-on-earth.html), however whatever the surviving items might be, they should at the very least withstand different sources of erosion.
"Science clarified" lists these major sources: [running water, ice, wind, near-shore waves and gravity](http://www.scienceclarified.com/El-Ex/Erosion.html).
So, whatever it is, it should stay the same under pulverization by pressure, when they are gobbled under some tectonic plate during mountain formation or just under tons of sediment; washed over by water and other liquids, etc.
Therefore, if the civilization is anything like ours, it is quite unlikely that anything recognizable as part of *advanced* civilization might remain.
Most of items we create do not withstand even 10 years of use, not to speak of abuse. Buildings will crumble in 50-100 years, unless repairs are done, Oldest ruins found are several [thousand years](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe), but from then on, we don't have seem to have anything much really in terms of structures, and all the old ruins seem to only be preserved because they have been underground, but not TOO much underground, where pressure would destroy them.
Oldest tools found [are circa 2,5 million years old](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan), but basically they are just... stones.
I liked the idea of radioactive waste deposit, but even a tectonically stable place would still have other sources of erosion, and during a million years, that plate may undergo some changes -- fractures, faults, etc. due to interaction with the other plates, so I assume during a million years all the concrete would have washed away/eroded and the deposit would have spilled.
So, looking at what we are able to find and assuming similar type of civilazation -- it would be possible to find some fossilized remains. It MIGHT be possible to find some remains of some structures which have been underground for most part of the million years, however, not if they have been moved too deep down for then they would be crushed by pressure.
Note also that while the structures would move downwards into Earth's crust, they would be not only become under more pressure, but would also prone to groundwater. Since geological processes usually take long time, they would be exposed to groundwater for a long time as well during their journey. So any sort of metallic items would probably rust/corrode away during the first ten thousand years. Any plastic would have degraded. The only things would remain would be stones.
As Terry Pratchett et al wrote in the "Science of Discworld": [Deep time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time) would wash over everything.
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There wouldn't be any "evidence" unless you already know about that civilization. What we have are the things that "suggest" the possibility of having a civilization.
So, you define "normal" and everything that's not "normal" may suggest there's something weird going on. For example, there are a lot of fossilized clams and oysters shells on top of a mountain, it suggests long ago, there was an oysters civilization lived on top of the mountain. (or maybe oysters used to be able to fly, or the mountain used to be under the ocean..)
This method only works for past civilization that somewhat similar to the current one. Because if the past and its remnants are somehow incomprehensible then there's no way to know. Imagine a society of fire elementals swimming in magma, or society of ethereal ghosts, or mushroom...
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If you are acquainted with the lifeboat foundation, (<https://lifeboat.com/>)
then you might imagine that their info preserver project is successful.
Which would ultimately mean that a library of information and a means of reading said library might eventually be found.
Another non natural artifact that would be obviously man made is artificially made diamonds. They are formed at high pressure using "diamond seeds" as a crystal formation template, and are easily distinguishable from diamond formed in geologic processes.
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In a novel I am writing, one of the characters is an immortal\* shape-shifter, called 'Creature'. Creature has been around since shortly after the beginning of life on earth. Its cells divide/replicate 1000X times faster than a human's, and it can consciously control this proccess to shape-shift and grow in any way it wants (within the constraints of normal, real-world biology).
My question is, how would Creature avoid cancer? All this super-fast cell division should result in cancer, but it doesn't. How?
The proccess can be direct action taken by Creature, or something already present in its physiology.
\*Creature can be killed, but won't die of old age/has an indefinite lifespan.
OK, some of the answers/comments made me realize I need to clear up a few things:
* Creature cannot control cancerous cells. It cannot make them divide or stop them from dividing.
* Creature can cannot detect single cancerous cells. It can only detect them once they reach a critical number, around 100 million or so.
* The shapeshifting proccess is similar to [The Thing in the 1982 movie.](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/), although I'm not sure about the speed.
Sorry if this negates any of your answers.
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I see two main approaches here:
1. It takes care of individual cancer cells immediately.
If this Creature conciously controls the division of his cells, to me it seems reasonable to assume that he can also remove cells, or at the very least not let them replicate further on their own. Especially if he uses this for his shapeshifting ability, he'd have to get rid of cells in certain places to assume the form he wants.
If we then assume that he can recognize when a cell is cancerous, he could opt to remove it immediately, or let it sit in isolation until it dies, without further dividing this specific one.
This could also be used for plot points maybe - cancerous cells might slow down its shapeshifting ability because it has to take care of them while it tries to take on a different form. Or maybe that's why it only uses the ability rarely, because in time it produces more and more cancer cells? It might kill Creature in the end, or make its ability become less and less efficient until it can't use it at all anymore.
2. It can't identify cancer cells and removes tumors later
Maybe your Creature just doesn't know immediately when a cell is cancerous, and thus can't take care of it. That would mean that tumors would build up in its body, and it has to take care of them regularly, which is not as bad for Creature as it is for humans, because its ability implies that natural healing is a lot more efficient.
The tumor could be removed via operations, which might require your creature to depend on others to operate him from time to time. It'd have to regularly find new trustworthy surgeons as the old ones die. In extreme cases, it might opt to just crudely cut off/out a part of its own body and regrow it. Depends on how quickly its abilities work.
Another way would be a more "natural" approach: maybe this creature, by very specific division and killing of cells, can cut off parts of its body, even on the inside. These parts would die off, somehow be removed from the body (similarly to a digestion system) and then replaced with new, healthy cells.
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I could also imagine that it has somehow adapted to just living with cancer, but I don't know enough medical details about what cancer does and doesn't to come up with a believable scenario.
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**TL:DR - biologically speaking, he can't get cancer in the first place**
Cancer is caused by mutations in cell DNA which lead to the cell being unable to control functions like growth, death (cells can self-destruct), tissue-typing (i.e. you be a skin cell, you be a liver cell) and adhesion to neighboring cells.
Here's another relevant piece of information: cancer isn't the only thing standing in the way of organism mortality. There are lots of other problems. One of them is that chromosomes are capped with protective pieces of DNA called Telomeres which gradually degrade and are not properly repaired. Once they're gone, actual cell DNA at the tips of chromosomes is liable to damage.
In summary, a lot (not all - you'll need to do some hand-waving) of the problems caused by ageing is due to DNA damage. Cells are not very good at repairing their own DNA. In fact they cause damage to their genetic code when they divide and make a copy of the DNA to pass into the daughter cell.
In order for Creature to be immortal in the first place, his cells are going to have to do a much better job of copying and maintaining his DNA than your average mammal. In order for him to grow so fast and shape-shift, he'll need the ability to control cell adhesion and tissue-typing too.
So: as a side-effect of the biology necessary to his unique abilities (copy and maintain his DNA perfectly, and has total control over adhesion and tissue structure), he can't possibly get cancer.
(I am a former geneticist, although I haven't worked in the field for 20 years. This information should be largely accurate, although my recollection may be hazy and it is, of course, not up with the latest research.)
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Cancerous tissue (in most cases) kills by growing uncontrolled and leaving no space for other cells. If the creature can control cell growth, cancer should not be an issue as it is in humans. If no cell can grow uncontrolled, it does not matter whether the cell is cancerous or not.
However, mutations, could be a problem, which leads to cells just not doing what they are supposed to be. You could solve this by using long-living stem cells which are in a frozen-like state, have a slow metabolism and don't do anything except replicating every hundred years. Then these stem cells could be a way to conserve the original genetic information.
Another option would be to just select the fittest cells for survival. The creature would then evolve over hundreds of years. Only the mechanism, which selects and controls cell growth and thus shape shifting has to be preserved and has to be able to perform this task over million of years. Maybe this is controlled by cells that have a slower growth rate than the rest of the tissue.
EDIT:
If cancer means that the control of cell growth and shape shifting doesn't work for cancerous cells, cancer could be a problem. The shapeshifter could grow a layer of healthy cells around the cancerous tissue which does not allow any nutrients to enter inside the cancerous tissue, which lets the cancer cells die of hunger. (Note that cancer cells usually grow very fast and need a lot more nutrients than healthy cells). If the shapeshifter can controll the growth of cells into any shape, he can probably easilly detect if cells don't grow the way he wants and can thus detect the cancer cells.
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Assume Creature has conscious control of its immune system, then it just programs the system to attack any cell (or large group of cells) which appear cancerous. Note that this is an active area of research in cancer treatment: <http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/treatmenttypes/immunotherapy/immunotherapy-toc>
This also takes care of the problem of diseases &c.
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It periodically makes a copy of itself which it stores in suspended animation. If things go wrong without the possibility of repairing the problem, it will bring to life an old copy of itself that with the information it now has, can avoid the problem. It then commits suicide.
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If Creature can detect a lump of cancer cells, he could just steer his healthy cells to shapeshift the body in such a way, that the cancerous lump is no longer provided with nutrients and fresh oxygen. Without metabolism, the lump would just die and could be reabsorbed by Creature.
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I try to answer your question and go off on a few tangents... sorry.
Well, first off, if you are going for x1000 cell division rate you probably would need to take a few liberties away from true realism. If a x1000 cell goes out of control there is not much it can do except for discharge it(which would probably result in an abomination of sorts if it manages to survive.)
Anyway, in order to replicate a cell first needs to acquire all the materials needed for 2 cells. For x1000 times the regeneration it would need enough materials and energy for 1001 cells... which is a lot to manage. If it is shape shifting it would need to break down its previous cells or have compressed super-materials that it can build or break down to compress or expand its mass(which would still have the same mass even at different sizes and still have limitations on how much it can change its size.) In this case it really does not need to care much about cancer because if cancer starts to form it can just start breaking it down again.
When it comes to extra mass it can stash organic material places that it can find if it wants to change its size kind of like a storage unit it can re-assimilate(which would make it more efficient than carrying around mass it is not using.)
If you are going for very fast morphing it would probably be more efficient if it throws up an facade of sorts while it actually makes the real change more slowly.
I think the hive-mind creature could work as well. It could be made of of small primitive creatures with different purposes that are intelligent as a whole. The hive would evaluate its peers and so it would automatically deal with cancer cells.
To be fair, the human body is a bit weird itself: there are many non-human symbiotic organisms inside the human body ([some sources might suggest they outnumber human cells by 10 to 1](http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/06/13/154913334/finally-a-map-of-all-the-microbes-on-your-body).) You could play around with symbiotic organisms taken to more of an extreme.
Oh, and just to note: shape-shifting and hyper-regeneration would mean the creature would need to be ridiculously energy efficient or have ungodly appetite.
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**Cut off all blood supply to the cancer, then digest it.**
Why rely on the things that Earth animals do to fight cancer when you can change your body at will?
Cancers, like all portions of the body, must receive blood to grow. Furthermore, for most cancers, in order to become dangerous, they must become malignant. If your creature is smart and gives itself redundant organs, this could easily be true of *all* cancers. Luckily for your creature, while it may be incapable of controlling the growth of the cancer, it is fully capable of controlling the growth of everything surrounding the cancer.
Your creature can simply grow a thick, acid resistant membrane around any cancer it develops. Then, fill this membrane with acid and digest the cancer. Without blood or lymph vessels connecting to it, the cancer should be unable to spread wile this happens.
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I think you'd have to redefine what is cancerous for this particular individual. It sounds like it's entire body is a cancer of sorts except he has control over it.
To be able to do the things it does and not actually die of cancer in a couple of years, it must have a highly developed immune system that evolved with it that is extremely aggressive to any gene pattern not fitting within it's parameters. This also means that some changes it might try to perform it's body might actively fight against it because of 'foreign' substances, breaking down anything that doesn't belong and immediately uses it for healthy cells.
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Normal biology evolved to be imperfect in replication. Multi-cell life is a recent innovation. For most of its existence on Earth, individual cells were "successful" or not, and a long part of the ramp up to complex life was evolving the mechanism for evolution itself. It needs to copy well enough but not too perfectly, as well as allow for mutations to build up something useful without making the cell non-viable in the mean time.
That's not what we want for use within the tissue of a multi-cell animal.
A cell could be designed *not* to mutate. The copy mechanism is more robust, doesn't shuffle things around "just because", and has strong error checking and correcting codes like we use in our information storage technology.
A living cell might find it too much overhead (thus less efficient) to constantly checksum every gene expression, so that would not be expected to arise naturally. But it could be engineered: add a step in the complex transciption process used by eucaryote cells, to *check* protein coding genes, and somehow also check regulatory regions at least periodicly, certainly when replicating.
The replication mechanism already instantiated in the metabolism checks the code in both copies, before it is allowed to do anything more. In general, any error should be a fatal error, rather than being fault tolerant like real life. It should be brittle in light of changes, not robust.
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Well, first off you probably want to drop "within the constraints of normal, real-world biology." from anywhere in your premise, because basically everything you mention (1000x cell division, conscious control of cell division, whatever "any way it wants) are clearly outside of "normal, real-world biology."
If you really are trying to have this in any way realistic your premise also has a ton of other flaws. For instance, even at that rate, changing into anything is an hours/days affair. To change, our hero has to eat hundreds of pounds of food, and excrete hundreds of pounds of excrement.
Bottom line is your idea is entirely unrealistic, and if you want realism you should find something else.
Either way, this should be of interest:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality>
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Ever seen the Declaration of Independence? The original document, when on display? I was amazed at how much effort is expended on keeping it preserved and yet with all that effort, it has faded significantly and continues to fade. Your cancer question has the same critical issue--in order to recognize a cancerous cell, it must know what the original DNA (or whatever this being utilizes for its cellular instructions) looks like, otherwise there can be no recognition of when cancer occurs. If the being has an internal biological vault which safely stores the single original DNA structure created at conception, it would always have an accurate map to determine when newly created cells are acceptable or have mutated from the norm.
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As others have suggested, maybe cancerous cells do form, but the immortal's body deals with them.
But my suggestion is that once the tumor reaches a certain size, it is simply disconnected and shape-shifted out of the body. Without resources, the tumor dies (assuming the immortal does not burn it or throw it in acid).
At least, most of the time it dies...
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[
Diseases that cause changes in the behaviour of their hosts are nothing new. Rabies causing animals to bite others is the best known example, but there are plenty of other (often nightmarish) [behaviour-altering diseases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-altering_parasite).
Scientists have discovered a disease, called “Change Of Vacation: International Destination”, that causes its human hosts to travel more than they would normally. They are not sure why it is doing it, but they suspect it is to ensure that it does not "die out" after infecting everyone in a local community.
How is the disease changing the behaviour of its hosts so that they travel more?
Preferably this disease is caused by a virus, but it is not a hard requirement.
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Many elderly people get something similar - the feeling of "not being in the right place", usually in their case because the "right place" would maybe be their childhood home, or the house but like it was twenty years prior. So, they start expressing the desire of "going home" (and, often, wander in search of it).
This feeling is linked to the levels of two neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin. Alter those, and very little is needed to start the wandering impulse.
Also, traveling abroad will alter the circadian rhythms, which changes the activity pattern of the front hypothalamus suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). This in turn increases the synthesis of melatonin and other hormones and makes "having traveled far" detectable at a biochemical level.
So what the virus or agent needs to do is to depress the dopamine/serotonin cycle *subject to a melatonin production level below a certain threshold* so that the victim will experience intense boredom, unhappiness and desire to escape, but with a boost in energy levels to enable them to *do* something instead of falling into depression and apathism.
If and when circadian alteration is detected, the cycle will revert as far as possible, a sort of "recompense mechanism". Affected people will get "itchy feet" (or maybe it is called "cabin fever"?) and wander around. Those who move far enough will experience relief and a general sense of well-being the farther they go, thus positively reinforcing the "traveling" compulsion. After a while, the impulse to relocate will reappear.
You won't be able to [have victims climb to a precise height and die there](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/how-the-zombie-fungus-takes-over-ants-bodies-to-control-their-minds/545864/), but as far as traveling goes, that's doable.
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**In vino veritas** (in wine lies the truth)
There is a genuine albeit extremely rare condition called [auto-brewery syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-brewery_syndrome). In very non-technical terms, an affected person has fermentation occurring in their gut to produce ethanol, which then intoxicates the person as if they had ingested alcohol through more conventional means.
Imagine a virus that is spread by touch or body fluids that induced severe auto-brewery syndrome, not continuously but cyclically with increasing peaks. The cycles are over a period of several days - so a patient gets drunk, then sobers up and shows no sign of auto-brewery syndrome, then several days later gets more drunk and so on, until eventually the ethanol dosage is at toxic levels. Every time a patient is in a "drunk" phase they are likely to spread the disease through contact with others by ignoring even normal personal space limits and/or by infecting those who restrain them when they become too obnoxious.
Now we put patient zero in a fairly affluent society but one with strict limits on freedom of speech, maybe even a social credits system of some sort. Patient zero is at work when s/he ignorantly becomes roaring drunk and lets everyone know what s/he thinks of the available equipment, the manager and the ruling body of the country. During this rant, lots of people are touched and infected as patient zero staggers around. S/he is not preaching revolution or sedition so the police are not called on the spot, but when patient zero sobers up s/he decides that taking an overseas holiday or emigrating would be a really good idea. This process is repeated for a fair proportion of patient zero's co-workers and family who were infected when they behave similarly in the next week - as the initial response is very likely to be a police investigation anyone who has any sort of a guilty conscience and enough money is going to run for it.
Now let's look at what happens to patient zero and the first few cohorts of infected people. They arrive in their destination countries of first choice and proceed to make even worse drunken asses of themselves. Repeatedly. Due to this behaviour they either are deported or flee voluntarily to their country of second choice before they can be deported, infecting more people along the way.
Intermittent drunkenness is not likely to be recognised as a transmittable disease for a considerable period. (Sustained drunkenness would be recognised quickly - as soon as the police put someone in the cells to sober up and they were still drunk 12+ hours later there would be a doctor called in who would be comparing notes with other doctors very quickly.) By the time this disease is recognised as such it would be able to spread very widely.
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Vivid dreams at night and dull bored feelings by day? The virus may affect your dopamine levels, you need to produce it in larger quantities or die in a depressive episode (i.e. eliminate yourself from the gene pool). Your brief profile as a survivor: you need to feed on new experiences all the time to feel alive; you may even refuse/ignore the closure of Bondi beach. Of course, an enhanced libido may allow you to survive longer - you will search for new sex partners; nothing personal, you're just meant to infect them.
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# Paranoia
There are many causes of paranoia but for our purposes drugs, such as marijuana, would be a good parallel and gives a good two stage hit. The disease interacts with the [endocannabinoid system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannabinoid_system) in much the same way that marijuana does - making some relaxed and happier and inducing paranoia in others. The relaxation helps spread the disease to others as they get closer whereas the paranoia only increases until the infected flees their current environment under the impression they're being followed.
As the initial phase subsides those who were initially mellowed now begin to experience the paranoia as their relaxation leaves them and withdrawal begins. Not all infected will experience such extreme paranoia that it drives them to flee but enough will that it can drive some infected abroad and spread the disease there.
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**Escape!!**
As has been suggested in Italy, early notification that there IS an outbreak of the disease, and that a quarantine IS impending, was enough to make people evacuate the quarantine zone.
Downside there is that some of them were already infected/contagious, so carried the disease onward out of the quarantine zone.
A simple human-nature response of "lets get out of here before the lockdown" is enough to spread the disease more, further, and faster than otherwise.
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## Carownervirus
Pathogen that prefers warmer, carbon-rich atmospheres to multiply in. Alters human endorphin production [[1](https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201650)] to be happier when producing such atmospheres. Hosts feel happier and happier when driving their vehicles more and further to produce larger volumes of greenhouse gasses. Slowly and without anyone really noticing, human society is impacted to such a degree that normal human life can no longer be sustained (kind of a slow burner novel though!), civilization crumbles, virus achieves 100% coverage, humans die out but atmosphere is now at a high temperature and very high carbon level, greenhouse effect means that this is now self-sustaining. The virus now has the perfect environment to evolve to next stage.
## Influenzer
Pathogen that consumes dopamine. It is well understood that posting the next Instagram hit, seeing those likes rack up, provides more dopamine than is found in consuming such media. In the social media-governed world of the "future", influencers are driven to keep posting ever-more FOMO inducing content [[2](https://now.northropgrumman.com/this-is-your-brain-on-instagram-effects-of-social-media-on-the-brain)]. As the host body changes to service this new situation, the level of FOMO-inducement required to produce the same amount of dopamine increases, inducing the host to travel further and seek out ever more thrilling locations, activities, and full moon parties, thereby spreading to more people in more countries #vanlife.
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**Wanderlust** and **Claustrophobia**
The virus affects brain in such a way as to cause immense dissatisfaction with one's current surroundings. For people who can afford travelling, this may result in increased likelihood of picking exotic vacation destinations and/or long-distance travels with multiple stops, but it also works on a smaller scale: Infected people will feel extremely uncomfortable in confined spaces and will show an increased preference to spending time outside their own home.
Quoting from Wikipedia:
>
> Wanderlust may reflect an intense urge for self-development by experiencing the unknown, confronting unforeseen challenges, getting to know unfamiliar cultures, ways of life and behaviours or may be **driven by the desire to escape and leave behind depressive feelings of guilt**, and has been linked to bipolar disorder in the periodicity of the attacks.
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>
> How is the disease changing the behaviour of its hosts so that they
> travel more?
>
>
>
**Werewolf Syndrome.**
Every few months/years the human blacks out, goes stark raving nuts, and murders his family. After that he's inflicted with paranoia (someone did this to me, there's no way I would have a fair trial), and he flees to a new location.
At that point in his cycle he becomes very outgoing and friendly and rebuilds his life.
The bite of a werewolf does in fact create a new werewolf, but so does having sex with them while they're in their friendly phase.
Of course this leads to all kinds of confusion, the wife kills the husband who himself had a history of this sort of thing. And the rate of transmission needs to be low enough that it doesn't make everyone a werewolf but whatever.
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In the darkest months up here in the north or when its been cloudy for weeks, I get one thing stuck on my mind: Travel to sunnier places. Either south or to the mountain. So consider a disease that makes grey days feel even greyer, and you get less out of sunlight than normal.
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Your description makes one implication, which may be misunderstood. Regardless of how wildly unimaginable the behavior-changing disease effects may be, the causative factors/parasites don't really *understand* that they are altering the behavior of their host.
Viruses, for example, don't really have any *intelligence*, they are simply constantly changing, some of their forms seem to exhibit a specific response in a series of hosts, and that's how they come to be. We interpret the behavior-altering symptoms by ourselves, but that was not a "goal" of the pathological causative factors at all. The entire process is driven a lot more by chance (if not entirely), than by intelligence.
Speaking as such, the travelling behavior pathophysiology can be more "cynically" tracked down to some more classical system. Which leads us to:
The **[Vestibular System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_system)** is your target. The system that informs the brain (among other things) about the current motion status of the body (linear accelerations, gravity, rotations in various planes, etc.). The **[vestibular nerve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_nerve)** transmits information from the **[otolith organs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otolith)** to the brain. As you probably expect, the involved mechanisms are *extraordinarily complex*, but you can definitely "invent" a mechanism that is quite plausible. A trivial example:
The nerve transmits sensory information related to the motion state. Therefore, when relaxed, no information is transmitted. Your virus could, **somehow**, reverse this mechanism (there **can** be plausible ways for this), so that the nerve fires when you are not moving and fires a lot less when you are moving, i.e. motion **inhibits** the neural cells.
You can see where I'm going with this! If patients feel irregular motion patterns when they are standing still, and stillness when they are moving, then they may become dizzy when standing still and the only thing that can help them relieve the dizziness is **motion**. Therefore, patients will seek to be in motion as much as possible. Tune the effects down a bit, so that dizziness does not set in very quickly when someone stands still, and you will have a fair balance of people that feel strongly annoyed when not moving, and will have to move often to feel relieved. Slowly, it will not be uncommon for victims to try to spend many hours in moving vehicles, airplanes, etc.
So, travelling is not "intended", but helps to relieve the symptoms.
The only drawback with this "theory" is that a fair level of medicine can, at least, trace that down to the vestibular system, because travelers practically "know" why they are travelling. Maybe you can fine-tune the symptoms a bit more, so that it is not entirely clear to those affected about **why**, but they do feel a significant ease and wellness when in motion!
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**It makes you seek warm climates**
Perhaps it subtly interferes with temperature sense and pupil dilation, or with melatonin production.
Regardless of mechanism, the net result is that one of the early symptoms is that its victims begin to feel as if they live in a cold, dark place, and so seek out bright warm climates.
In order to be successful as a disease spreading mechanism, it doesn't have to affect everyone the same way- it just needs to affect a significant number of people from disparate places to travel to the same place.
So although this does not affect people who already live in warm climates in the same way, it does encourage people from cold climates to visit popular vacation destinations, thus causing an abnormal spike in local population density, which aids in the transmission of the disease. The infected infect other vacationers, who then return home, spreading the disease far and wide.
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I like the idea of a virus or bacteria that cycles through excreting different "party" drugs. Here are my thoughts:
**Increase Openness to New Experiences**
A well known affect of psilocybin (the drug found in magic-mushrooms), is that it creates a [long lasting openness](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/single_dose_of_hallucinogen_may_create_lasting_personality_change). Microdosing this with a virus inside you and the openness might be more longer lasting. This will make people want to experience new things such as travelling.
**Energy to Move**
The disease could then releases a drug like cocaine, amphetamines or even just caffeine to make people more active. This will encourage them to get off the sofa and not just enjoy psilocybin induced trips on the sofa or in the garden.
**Meet New People**
How can we make people interact more? Easy, there's a well known party drug for that too: MDMA. The parasite can finally secret MDMA into its host so that when people are out-and-about, they then want to interact with people intimately, thus spreading the disease more easily.
The interesting thing here is that scientists have engineered [bacteria that can produce psilocybin](https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-made-a-bacterium-that-poops-out-psilocybin), so there is scientific grounding for potentially infectious organisms producing some of these chemicals. What's more, if scientists are doing it, what is stopping back-alley chemists/biologists from doing the same? This could be the mutated experiment of a genius drug cook/biologist which might give an interesting back story to a main character.
Finally, I think and interesting idea could be a symbiotic relationship between several parasites that each create one of these chemicals, making it harder to vaccinate against.
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This kind of happens. Some infections affect specific organ function driving animals to e.g. seek and remain by large quantities of water which, particularly in some areas, drive those animals into close proximity with other animals for longer periods of time.
Maybe a slightly more advanced virus could do similar by driving a person to baser/pathological cravings/imperatives (must drink, must flee/hide, must eat brains, etc.), possibly at random or on a loop.
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How can 2 werewolves (or other secret/outcasts group members) with *current technology* find/confirm each other without meeting each other in person? Also, this *process is publicly known and voluntary* (eg. a government initiative to have werewolves meet each other, while the government *themselves do not know who are/aren't werewolves* (nor do they really care)).
In this example I use werewolves, but can be any kind of physically or behaviorally distinct "in" group (so lets assume these werewolves are just like ordinary people and want normal lives, but they have the ability to turn into werewolves).
So here are the rules...
1. A wereperson can transform into a werewolf at any time and this process happens instantly and they are fully in control of themselves in this form
2. Werewolves can't kill anyone (or at least we can assume they are subject to similar human laws among werewolves surrounding murder)
3. Normal people will *always* attack a werewolf if they ever find one and may seek them out (note attack could include just plain discrimination against the wereperson and all of this *may not be prohibited by the law*)
4. Normal people know there are werewolves among them
My initial thought was something like Bumble, but with an additional checkbox for "werewolf" (so people can't just know that someone is a wereperson just by the fact that they are using a certain app / service), but people could lie on the checkbox to get the identity of other (honest) werewolves.
Anyone have any ideas? Perhaps there is some kind of game theory model that already addresses this problem (eg. the game "The Werewolves" has a game theory [strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)), but that game is much more structured / different than this problem)?
\* What would be a solution if werewolves could only change *in the presence of another werewolf* who is also attempting to transform *at the same time*?
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What you need is a chain of trust.
The proof of "I am a werewolf" absent trust is the same problem dealt with in [digital signatures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signature). If I sign a document with my private key, and publish my public key saying that I am Joe NotAWerewolf, all people will know is that someone who published a public key claiming to be Joe NotAWerewolf signed the document. They don't know that I *am* Joe NotAWerewolf, because there's no proof that the person who published the public key is who they say they are.
The solution is to have a trusted authority publish my public key, saying "Yes, this is Joe NotAWerewolf's public key, I've met him and can verify that."
This situation is slightly different, in that you don't want to make it *publicly* available, so what you want is a [Shibboleth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth), digital or otherwise.
The government publishes a "Find Another Werecreature" app. They give the digital shibboleth (an algorithm that generates a consistent but indistinguishable-from-random string based on the time of execution and potentially other variables) to public representative werecreature that they, for whatever reason, trust and will not kill.
This individual can then spread the algorithm to other individuals he trusts and knows are werecreatures. As they, in turn, spread it to *their* werewolf networks, you can have werecreatures who never meet each other face-to-face but who can nonetheless confirm that they are part of the same trust network.
Now, in this more simplistic trust system, one defector could potentially expose many members, but if werewolves are inclined to "hang together or else we shall hang separately", it could work.
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I think what you're looking for is a [zero-knowledge proof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof). The werewolf would first need a secret that the other party also knows if and only if they're also a werewolf. To build upon David Hambling's answer, this could be something related to their heightened senses. For example take the [colorful balls and a color-blind friend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof#Two_balls_and_the_colour-blind_friend) example, and translate that into smells:
* The tester needs two object that look the same, but smell differently enough for a werewolf.
* Tester hides these behind their back, and presents one to the werewolf-under-test, then hides again.
* Tester presents an object again (either the same or switched, chosen randomly).
* Werewolf-under-test tells the tester whether the object was switched or not.
* Repeat until reasonably sure that the werewolf-under-test isn't just randomly guessing.
This has a drawback that a human can easily know that two thing will smell differently (for example, two t-shirts of the exact same brand, previously worn by two different people) without actually being able to discern the difference themselves. This could be used to trick a werewolf into revealing their identity, so there's room for improvement here.
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You need an anonymous **online video chat** platform.
This assumes that a werewolf in werewolf form can not be identified as their human form.
The werewolves transform into their werewolf form, stand in front of a neutral background and then communicate through their webcams. Anyone who shows up on that platform and looks like a human is banned - either for their own protection or because they are human agents trying to find werewolves.
Before the werewolves agree to exchange personal information or even agree ot a meeting, they should take some time to get to know each other and ask each other to perform various tasks in form of the webcam so they are not being catfished by someone just showing them a video of a werewolf.
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A little known fact about werewolves is that even when they are in their human form they maintain their werewolf metabolism and thus [have a slightly elevated body temperature](https://pets.webmd.com/dogs/high-fever-in-dogs#1-2), seeming as if they are perpetually running a [mild fever](https://www.healthhype.com/sudden-fever-causes-of-acute-fever-in-adults.html). Not only that but the eyes of werewolves are slightly different, [as humans have trichromatic vision and wolves have dichromatic vision](https://wagwalking.com/sense/can-dogs-see-infrared), the lycanthropy couldn't remove the third cone in your retina so instead it increased the range of colour each cone could percieve and thus werewolves can see infrared and this allows them to spot other werewolves as they are percieved as brighter than normal humans.
Fortunately most people don't know this, as werewolves have seen each other as slightly brighter for thousands of years and the science explaining infrared light is only recent and such this is a closely guarded secret among those who know and something that simply can't be explained by those who don't. Even doctors who treat werewolves just notice that some of their patients have a chronic fever but outside of the temperature are entirely asymptomatic, they prescribe a good sleep and perhaps a diueretic, the werewolves finish the course and feel fine thus do not return to the doctor afterwards. Those who do are minor medical oddities, perhaps written about and forgotten in some small medical journal as an uninteresting case of chronic fever with no negative symptoms.
Seeing another werewolf in a crowd or on an IR camera is proof, however sick people confuse the results so its bad to start witch hunts against potential fever patients.
However if you, hypothetically had some kind of global pandemic where people's temperatures were closely measured and any sign of a fever was cause for consequence; The whole community would risk exposure, but what are the chances of something like that happening...
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If you wish to see how people from a prejudiced groip find each other, think of all the gay people that use grindr and tinder. You only find people who match what you are searching for.
Modify one of these to have a mode that can only be activated by werewolves - say, facial recognition, or pairing with a Bluetooth device that identifies the smell of a werewolf. There you have it. It will be hackeable, but exploits can be patched.
It may even be that such a thing already exists in the real world. I hear some users of grindr are bears, so the lycanthrope community may already have found a solution for your stated problem.
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# Subcultural shibboleths.
A lot of the other answers have focused on technical solutions to this problem, but I'm going to propose a solution to this problem that has been used by similar groups in real life: cultural shibboleths that, when used properly, identify a person as a member of a given subculture.
Simply put, the werewolves would form a distinct subculture, much like the LGBT or neonazi subcultures IRL, as a result of being members of a distinct group within society that tries to conceal their identities in public. They would develop their own jargon, idioms, and slang, and the correct use of these linguistic features would help mark someone as belonging to this subculture.
This might also be paired with symbols and markings that they might adopt whose meanings aren't well-known to the public and seem innocuous but would be obvious to other members of the subculture. For instance, the FBI [documented](https://wikileaks.org/wiki/File:FBI-pedophile-symbols-page1.jpg) certain pedophile groups using a triangular spiral as a symbol for pedophiles who molested boys, while the Anti-Defamation League has documented a wide variety of [white-supremacist symbols](https://www.adl.org/hate-symbols).
Exactly what symbols werewolves might adopt would depend on your story and exactly how werewolves work, but perhaps they might adopt numerical symbols based on the number of forms they can take or symbols of animals like butterflies that symbolize metamorphosis. They might also adopt more abstract symbols that don't have any apparent connection to being a werewolf.
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# 3rd Party Authentication Required
What's needed:
1. A 100% proven method of proving someone's status as a werewolf if they are standing in front of them, willing to be tested.
2. A third party (probably other werewolves) who verifies werewolf identities, and gives ID numbers
or Passwords to verified werewolves. Werewolves would have to opt in
and prove their status as werewolves to use the service. A werewolf
who has not verified with the third party could not be identified as
a werewolf through the service. However since the O.P. has said
that it's voluntary, this will be fine.
3. The hash (cryptographic) of these numbers/passwords is stored in an online database.
4. The database requires 2 ID's to run a request for confirmation, and it only gives a positive result if both ID's are found, otherwise, it returns a failed reply.
5. Apps can be developed expressly for this purpose, or existing apps can be modified to add this feature to their programs. But instead of ticking a box, the werewolves would need to put in their ID numbers or passwords.
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As others have said, a trusted third party is needed. However, this can be done anonymously.
You appear before the trusted party and prove you're a werewolf. You are then given a private key, the public key goes on a list published by the third party. These keys simply have numbers, though, no names.
The person who you are trying to prove that you're a werewolf sends you a message, you sign it with your private key, if they can decrypt it with the public key they know you proved you have shown the third party that you're a werewolf.
Note that this means there's no master list of werewolves in case the third party's files are breached. The third party doesn't retain the key, even if their data is breached the hacker can't pretend to be a werewolf. You can also have any number of verifiers. If one quits the list of keys doesn't get updated but still works.
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Since someone is probably going to say it about my solution: everything can be hacked or bypassed given enough effort.
You use a simple test that proves you are a werewolf each time you log on if you want to use the wereperson privileges. I first thought of a blood test like people with diabetes do but a safer method is to use a werewolf-change program. Only werepersons know it is included and at some point during the log-in you can change form. Instead of a face-recognition program you have a wereperson recognition program that registers a form change and does a few simple tests to see if it is photoshopped or not (done on the server not on the login device) then you get full wereperson access. In combination with a small blood-test or other fysiological tests you would either need to hack the program or kidnap a wereperson to get access as a normal person.
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This might require some slight development, but you're not looking at off-the-shelf technology anyway.
It is axiomatic that werewolves, like other canids, recognise each other by scent, and that this scent is so far too subtle for technology to distinguish.
A werewolf can anonymously send a scent sample to a central registrar with a digital signature. The registrar validates the sample (by smell) and ensures it is unique. They can then issues an authorisation for that signature so they can use Werewolf Tinder or whatever. Thus all werewolves can get issued with logins.
Other means would require other physical forms of validation using werewolf senses which cannot be replicated by other means (vision, hearing etc).
[Answer]
Here's an idea that is roughly an improved version of [mjm](/users/75351)'s [answer](/a/175233/43697), also incorporating some ideas of using a shibboleth.
Set up a game of three card monte using three (or more!) identical baubles (balls, beads, actual cards; can be anything as long as they are visually identical), one of which has been impregnated with a distinctive aroma that only werewolves can detect. Ask the potential werewolf to pick one. *Don't explain the objective*. A real werewolf should pick up on one of the objects being different and always select that one. Repeat three or so times to reduce the chances of a human picking correctly out of dumb luck. If it doesn't mix the scent too much, "mix" by dumping all the baubles in a bag and shaking (eliminates any chance of visual tracking).
Before letting the potential werewolf choose, the werewolf administering the test should inspect each object to know which one is the 'target'. The tester should pick up each object and 'look' at it closely (but is really smelling it!), and possibly touch his/her hand to his/her mouth after, as if in thought (again, actually smelling the hand). This is to make it less obvious that this is a scent test. If the candidate does likewise, that's also a shibboleth.
Obviously, you'll also want to reverse roles so that the candidate can be sure that the tester is also really a werewolf.
If werewolves as a group are fairly consistent in finding certain aromas "pleasing" and others "displeasing", you can improve upon this by using multiple scents, but using one that is "good" and others that are "bad" or neutral. Ask the candidate to pick their favorite bauble. The theory is that they will pick the one with the "good" scent.
---
Okay, that said, this doesn't actually help the OP, who specified that the potential werewolves should be able to identify *without* meeting physically. However, I think it's a sufficiently useful idea that I want to post it anyway.
[Answer]
1. Even if werewolf is in human form, he/she cannot fully conceal his/her canine nature, so he/she has enhanced sense of smell. And its easy to distinguish other werewolf by sniffing. Humans cannot distinguish this smells, in best case they say "Hm, strange perfume...".
2. Werewolf has slightly different mimic, so their facial expressions is slightly different. If you live long enough with werewolves, you can start seeing this little things, breaking masquerade and revealing werewolves in humans form, even if you are ordinary human without improved werewolf grade perception.
3. All werewolfs can carry tamper proof token, that doesn't looks weird, be it premium membership of dog grooming saloon, badge of "meat lovers club", smarthpones of special model, tatoos, clothers and so on.
4. Probably, they have agreements like this: "This summer we all wear "meat lovers club" badge, sunshades and dark blue clothes, this autumn we all wear leather jackets, red knitted hat and smartphones with funny dog like case, this winter we all wear black coats, red and white scarfs and hiking boots" - they change accessories and clothers to make it harder for people to record this marks and impersonate werewolves.
[Answer]
**Pheromones**
As canines, werewolves have a superhuman sense of smell. They can smell each other, even while in human form. They will even notice when they are in an area where another werewolf was present not too long ago.
Just like with dogs, those pheromones might be most concentrated in their urine. So a werewolf who is looking to meet other werewolves would urinate in a public place, every day at the same time. Or if they are afraid of getting caught for public urination, pee in a bottle at home and spill a bit of it in public places as part of their daily routine.
Any other werewolf who enters that general area would notice that scent. They could tell how long ago the other werewolf urinated there. So they could just wait there at the usual time and approach them.
[Answer]
**Exploit differences in senses**
Assuming that werewolves have some different senses, the (every day) experiences when sensing something could be used to determine to which group one belongs.
Think of people with a color-blindness caused by a mutation that turns the "red" photopsin into the "green" photopsin. In this case something that is bright red to normal humans will appear the same as something that is black to normal humans. Of course, such color-blind humans grow up in a world where most people are "normal", and so they will learn what colors every-day objects have (according to normal humans). But if the situation is reversed (the normal people being the rare ones), then the color-blind people will not know. In the latter case, these people may not know that strawberries and berries of the deadly nightshade have different colors.
There could be actual color-blindness tests being given to each other, if werewolves and humans have different sights. But it would also work for smells. They could specify a common object, and the other person has to answer with another object that smells similar. If you ask a couple of those, then you could determine whether that person is a werewolf or not. An alternative is to ask: "does X smell like Y?"
Note that if people are sending each other color-blindness tests, one would have to make sure that there are more than 2 solutions. Otherwise someone could just use an image manipulation program and alter the colors to see the solution.
The person who initiates the visual or smell test is not outed, because humans may also use this kind of test to find out who is a werewolf. Everyone can administer such a test. It is however possible that werewolves are better at imitating humans in these test than vice versa, like in the color-blind human example. That way humans might use this kind of test, but in reality it's doesn't work very well to detect werewolves.
] |
[Question]
[
In my hypothetical world, a bladesmith is challenged to create a sword with *supernatural* properties by the King, to prove his ability. The swordsmith wishes to present the King with a sword that **glows**.
My first thought was that he could make a normal, strong sword, and then somehow 'dope' it with radium, or another radioactive element (This is probably an extreme misunderstanding of such a process). However radium was only discovered and isolated in a usable form in 1911, which is **outside the time period**.
Assuming access to **pre-20th Century technology and knowledge** how does 'the most skilled bladesmith in all the land' accomplish creating such a sword? Are there any examples of such a weapon in history?
[Answer]
Simply apply zinc to it.
Behold [sphalerite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphalerite):
>
> Sphalerite ((Zn, Fe)S) is a mineral that is the **chief ore of zinc**.
>
>
>
The wiki also says this:
>
> Around 95 % of all primary zinc is extracted from sphaleritic ores.
>
>
>
And the most relevant part for this question:
>
> Some specimens have a red **iridescence** within the gray-black crystals; these are called "ruby sphalerite." The pale yellow and red varieties have very little iron and are translucent. The darker, more opaque varieties contain more iron. **Some specimens are also fluorescent in ultraviolet light**.
>
>
>
Part of the ore is made of zinc sulfide. [Its own page in Wikipedia has this to say about it:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_sulfide)
>
> Zinc sulfide, with addition of few ppm of suitable activator, exhibits **strong phosphorescence** (described by Nikola Tesla in 1893), and is currently used in many applications, from cathode ray tubes through X-ray screens to glow in the dark products. When silver is used as activator, the resulting color is bright blue, with maximum at 450 nanometers. Using manganese yields an orange-red color at around 590 nanometers. **Copper gives long-time glow, and it has the familiar greenish glow-in-the-dark**. Copper-doped zinc sulfide ("ZnS plus Cu") is used also in electroluminescent panels. It also exhibits phosphorescence due to impurities on illumination with blue or ultraviolet light.
>
>
>
And this is the glow-in-the-dark effect in action:
Here is a similar lego ghost under regular light, for comparison:
Not so impressive for us, who grew up playing with such toys. But this would sure look like the devil's work to people from two hundred years ago.
---
With all that in mind, you may go for:
* **Iridescence:** the sword will glow in different hues of red depending on the angle of light on it;
* **Fluorescence:** the sword will glow somewhat weakily when bathed by sunlight. You may need to be in a somewhat dark room with a view to the sky to see this effect;
* **Phosphorescence:** now this is where it's at. The sword will not shine very much under sunlight, but at night it may give off enough light for you to read by it, and will do so for hours. Requires sunlight to charge.
Last but not least: a blade made of this material would be unfeasible. You want to carve it on the sword, either as gems, or as engraved patterns. You may use spharelite powder for the latter.
[Answer]
I'm afraid this will not be possible. At the most, the blade's fuller can be re-made using sphalerite or other **phosphorescent** substance.
Radioluminescence, even with 20th century technology, would require very powerful radiation levels. Being in the same room with such a blade would be unhealthy enough that the blade would be thought cursed, and the blacksmith promptly burned at the stake (Tritium radiofluorescence is too weak to have the blade "glow" - unless one prepared a hollow crystal blade perhaps; doping the metal with radioactive elements, i.e. leveraging [Cherenkov radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation), requires an alpha emitter of very high intensity).
# Parlor trick
There are several slow-burning substances that smell little, and nothing like fire or smoke (some nitrates have a distinctive loo smell). Choose one that is solid and adhesive enough, coat the blade and add colorants (copper to burn green, salt to burn red etc). Hide a spring-mounted flint on the scabbard, so that when the flint is armed, drawing the sword will ignite the blade. The flame can last up to half a minute.
Iron and sulfur can be used to make a sort of Roman candle effect.
[Answer]
Probably not the answer you are looking for, but if there is no requirement that the sword be made of metal, then, make it out of wood, remove the fuller and fill it with ... **[mushrooms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panellus_stipticus#Bioluminescence)**. This sword emits light all the time, but it is only visible in darkness. It could probably be produced by the ancient Greeks.
An even bolder solution for non-iron swords, would be to make it out of glass, empty glass to be precise, and fill it with a complete microsystem, inclusive of phytoplankton and these **[bioluminescent creatures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctiluca_scintillans)**. The phytoplankton will produce the oxygen and the food for the light-emitting sea-sparkles. The dead sea-sparkles produce the food for the phytoplankton. It requires a bit of trial and error, but eventually the right combination can be found ([link](https://eco-sphere.com/) for the skeptics). This sword emits light every time one shakes it, best viewed at night. This could be produced with XIX century technology, as long as it is not a very long sword.
Finally, for the iron sword, we could resort to embedding a [Van de Graaf generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator) in the design. The electrostatic discharge along the blade may create a visible glow due to [corona discharge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_discharge) (try it at home, it is quite cool). The embedding of the Van de Graaf requires watch-making skills. There will be two such machines, on in the handle based on a spring-loaded mechanism, which needs regular winding, and one in a charging station hidden in the ceremonial sword-holder, i.e. a big vase vase connected to a flywheel running a larger Van de Graaf machine.
[Answer]
You will make the sword out of [uranium glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gw32s.jpg)
<https://www.terapeak.com/worth/signed-gibson-vaseline-uranium-glass-dagger-knife-sword-art-rare/141901713306/>
Most uranium glass objects are late 19th / early 20th century but the Wikipedia states that uranium glass was also made in the Middle Ages and used by Romans for mosaic tiles.
>
> Pre-industrial usage The use of uranium glass dates back to at
> least 79 AD, the date of a mosaic containing yellow glass with 1%
> uranium oxide found in a Roman villa on Cape Posillipo in the Bay of
> Naples, Italy by R. T. Gunther of the University of Oxford in
> 1912. Starting in the late Middle Ages, pitchblende was extracted from > >the Habsburg silver mines in Joachimsthal, Bohemia (now
> Jáchymov in the Czech Republic) and was used as a coloring agent in
> the local glassmaking industry.Martin Klaproth (1743–1817), who
> discovered uranium, later experimented with the use of the element as
> a glass colourant.
>
>
>
---
But how to make it glow? I am sure you do not have black light. You need to go out when most ambient sunlight is in the very short wavelengths. **Blue hour.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_hour>
>
> The blue hour (from French l'heure bleue)[1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gw32s.jpg)[a] is a period
> of twilight in the morning and in the evening, during the civil and
> nautical twilight phases, when the sun is at a significant depth below
> the horizon and when the residual, indirect sunlight takes on a
> predominantly blue shade… This effect is caused by the relative
> diffusibility of short blue wavelengths of light versus the longer red
> wavelengths. During the blue "hour" (typically a
> period about 20 minutes in length), red light passes straight into
> space, while blue light is scattered in the atmosphere, so reaches
> Earth's surface.
>
>
>
What is true for blue should be even more true for ultraviolet. I feel like I have seen things glow somewhat at dusk but I struggled to find an image on google to demonstrate the effect.
---
Your king will not be doing battle with this sword. It is a sword for cool walks at dusk. But it will be a sword, and under the right circumstances it will glow.
[Answer]
# Make the sword a light bulb
1. Take the finest sword in the land, make the pommel hollow.
2. Place a [Leyden Jar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyden_jar) (invented in 1745) capacitor in the pommel
3. Inlay a [platinum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum#History) (scientifically described in 1752) filament into the sword. The filament will have to be insulated where it contacts the reasonably conductive steel, but there are a variety of ways to do that.
4. Discharge the capacitor, the sword briefly glows like a [lightbulb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb#Early_pre-commercial_research) (demonstrated in 1802). Because it is a lightbulb.
[Answer]
I'm going out on a limb here, but just give me a shot.
## Radium
I know I know, you specifically requested something other than this because of the discovery date, but for the sake of argument let's explore it a little more.
Other answers have provided a lot of creative and neat alternatives, however none of them would make a *practical* sword. The radium solution would let you have an actual, usable sword, that would glow very nicely, even in a range of colors. Your main problem with it just seems to be that it was, in our history, discovered a *hair* past the deadline. That is really the only weak link in the solution, but you could easily work around that without requiring suspension of disbelief.
### Not all of ancient history is well-documented.
There's plenty we don't know about our own history, even during the time of written records. For crying out loud, we're still (somewhat) arguing over how the Egyptians moved some rocks around. It's really not out of the realm of possibility that radium was, even by accident, isolated much earlier than 1911, and the details of how and where were simply lost. Virtually every major religious text mention someone at some point wielding a flaming sword, or similar fantastical implement. We often dismiss those as just stories, but a lot of what appears magical in the past was likely inspired by actual events that were simply misunderstood.
### You're going for effect, right?
If someone crafted a glowing sword after 1911, there would be zero mystery and therefore nobody would pay attention beyond going "Oh that's neat." If you want a powerful king to have a fantastic weapon, it's actually *necessary* that the methods of its creation be unknown to the public. Maybe the king himself doesn't even know the secret, it was just gifted to him by a legendary swordsmith or alchemist who may or may not fully understand how they made it.
### The drawbacks
Okay so now the bad news. Radium, of course, is radioactive and hazardous. It also can't be applied in a permanent fashion, but luckily the phosphorescent coating that is the actual glowing part can be re-applied as needed. The hazards of the radiation aren't trivial, but they also aren't totally detrimental. If your king is only carrying the sword into battle or for ceremonial purposes, and it is safely stored otherwise, he could say *relatively* safe from it. Also your swordsmith would be at risk, but if he learned from a predecessor or even from experience, he would probably know that *something* about the magical material was unsafe, and could limit his own exposure so that it doesn't hurt him *too* badly.
] |
[Question]
[
This is a magic world question, and we certainly do not have anything on this planet which feeds on emotion. But if we did, I'm wondering how it might work with a look at science for something plausible. Feasting on particular pheromones in the air? It could eat other things as well, because just living on fear doesn't seem practical. (But if anyone can think of a way for it to JUST live on fear, party on! And let me know.) No matter what, this is going to be a stretch. I've been trying to figure out how one would google it and where the heck to start. **If your answer is no, don't bother answering. I already know it's close to an impossibility. Again, looking to stretch the bounds of science to explain a creature which feeds on fear and how that would be managed.**
[Answer]
Consider the hormone [Norepinephrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norepinephrine). On Earth, this chemical is produced by as part of the "fight-or-flight" response, that is, when an animal is panicking, anxious, or generally high strung. If your creature evolved separately, it might have a completely different use for the molecule. Instead of making the creature anxious, maybe it acts like an enjoyable drug, or maybe it serves as an essential micronutrient, like a vitamin. It could even be an aphrodisiac. Regardless, it's a chemical your creatures want.
In order to actually get the Norepinephrine, the creature would have to induce great stress in a person (most easily by scaring them) and then extract the Norepinephrine from their bodies. They could act like leeches, secreting an anesthetic from their jaws and silently filtering it from the bloodstream, or they could violently rip out the person's [adrenal glands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_gland) (where the hormone is produced)--whatever's to your story's best interests.
Unfortunately, it's not scientifically plausible for them to feed\* off of the actual emotional state of fear, since that feeling is quite literally all in your head. It would have to be a chemical mechanism. Going straight for the hormone seems like your best bet, although there is some [tentative evidence that emotional signals can be chemically imprinted in human sweat.](http://www.livescience.com/24578-humans-smell-fear.html)
\*For commonly accepted definitions of "feed".
[Answer]
Emotions are created from various transmitters. There is some good research into how emotions are formed displayed as the [Lövheim cube of emotion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%B6vheim_cube_of_emotion).
The following image is the Lövheim cube of emotion showing emotions with different levels of three major neurotransmitters. NB: The direction of the arrow implies increasing quantity.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0ntyS.png)
Therefore different combinations of this could provide feed for said creature. That is if you are wanting a strictly materialistic approach. You could justify a metaphysical back-world which actually creates emotions as an abstract metaphysical entity (but not that scientific given the current scientific philosophical paradigm).
[Answer]
Perhaps we've got it wrong. Perhaps the creature doesn't derive any actual nutritional value from the emotions of others. Instead, maybe it possesses some psychic transceiver that "hijacks" the minds of others, so that they can do its thinking for it.
Consider that, in the context of "survival of the fittest", having a large, on-board brain is pretty expensive. It requires a lot of blood, absorbs a lot of nutrients, and requires a nearly constant supply of oxygen. It is incredibly vulnerable to injury--any human can easily be incapacitated, maimed, or killed with a blow to the head, even if that blow would barely have caused injury to another part of the body. And, of course, a big brain is *big*. It's an obvious target, and it can't be easily concealed or otherwise protected, because it's closely connected with our sensory apparatus. It requires a big body to carry it around, and that body requires a lot of nutrients of its own.
Thus, a "mind parasite" might have some significant advantages right out of the gate. If it can "outsource" its cognitive functions to some nearby human, it doesn't have to maintain all that computing hardware on premises. When no humans are around, it can use its tiny animal brain to act like a normal animal. When a human comes near, it can steal some of that human's data processing power to make some smart decisions.
Of course, there's no telling what kind of bizarre, chaotic effects this will have on the emotions of the human host.
[Answer]
Sure, there could (hypothetically) be a creature that feeds on "feelings", but it'd have to be alien (drastically different evolution). It could feed on the (rather weak) electric field neural impulses (not entirely unlike a Babel Fish).
The power of the brain waves decrease inverse to the square of the distance, so the creature would effectively have to sit on the head of its victim like a skullcap, somewhat like an EEG:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1A4dY.jpg)
Deriving substantial energy would be a struggle for this creature, because it's essentially converting disorganized energy (brain waves are essentially random) into organized, which means, by the second law of thermo, only a fraction of the energy it absorbs would be available for metabolism and stuff). At the same time, it wouldn't require much energy; it'd just be a parasite.
A subspecies specially adapted to humans could develop a specialized energy-harvesting organ for emotion-specific areas of the brain (in EEG scans, emotions generally correlate to specific areas).
Answer partially inspired by this MTG card:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aXUp7.png)
See: <http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/verslagen/capita-selecta/CS-Oude_Bos-Danny.pdf>
[Answer]
## Play with catalysis
(Bit of a wireframe answer here, will expand later. Feel free to edit.)
A creature (larger than a microorganism) feeding on fear or other emotions ie excess adrenaline, pheromones etc from a prey is not very plausible.
But some applied hand waving might lead to a creature that doesn't specifically feed on those substances, but rather uses them as a catalyst to break down some energy-rich material otherwise not useful as food.
Perhaps a certain pheromone is released by fear (true) that is "expensive" for the body to manufacture (plausible).
Perhaps your creature evolved to use an otherwise unused nutrient for food by a process depending on that pheromone being present as a catalyst. (far fetched but not impossible)
Utilizing fear-pheromone produced by others instead of making your own would be a logical step.
This is not hard science, naturally, but it keeps the hand waving somewhat in the acceptable range for science based.
[Answer]
I think it may be very difficult to actually get energy from emotions in the sense most physicists use, but there may be other versions which fit to your goals. Consider that you can find a lazy person with "low energy," scare the bejezus out of them, and watch how their energy levels skyrocket. You may be able to play games with this to get the desired effect. You may be able to have your creature get physical energy from other food sources, but be unable to render it into usable energy without the assistance of someone else's emotions.
The first step would be to construct a metabolic system which fits the bill. For some reason, the creature needs to store energy in a form it can't utilize until it is in the presence of someone with strong emotions. Obviously this is a pretty strange thing to evolve, but since we're talking about the utter fringes of science, I'll handwave that away.
I'd create a metabolism like this: the energy from food is stored in a normal form, like glucose or fatty acids or whatever makes sense. It cannot be used directly. To be used, it must be converted to CompoundA, which is converted to CompoundB. CompoundB would be the form which is actually usable by the creature. However, there's a catch. CompoundA is not very likely to convert to CompoundB. It's far more likely to try to convert to CompoundC which is totally and completely useless. The creature must undergo a physiological change to ensure it converts to CompoundB instead, such as the release of enzymes.
So far this metabolism is pretty realistic. In fact, it's *way* simpler than the [Krebs cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citric_acid_cycle) so we haven't done anything too out of this world. Let's make it a bit different. What if the physiological change needed to make this work isn't always safe to undergo. Maybe it leaves the creature more vulnerable than it's comfortable with. It needs something to let it know that it's safe to undergo this effect.
In any realistic creature, this would be some internal mechanism, but what if it's external. What if there's something about this creature that is an evolutionary dead end such that it is incapable of properly determining whether it is safe or not. Maybe it used to have a symbiote that let it know when it was safe, and that symbiote went extinct. Now you have a creature that literally cannot metabolize their own food without risking whatever horrible results occur from doing it in the wrong environment.
Enter your human. Humans can detect all sorts of interesting things about the environment. The environment can affect our emotions, and we can act on them. Perhaps at some point our creature discovered that if nearby humans were exhibiting a particular emotion (such as fear) it was safe to metabolize. This could be passive, indicating that the human is just providing information about the safety of the environment, or it could be active. In the active case, it would imply that the creature knows it can manipulate the human to respond to the situation as long as that human is experiencing the desired emotion. The creature might be able to manipulate the human into sacrificing their own health and wellbeing to protect the creature, but only if the human is experiencing mortal terror.
If this ever happened, the creatures would get mighty good at causing these emotions, might quick.
[Answer]
Most studies indicate emotions have a remarkably low nutritional value. Any hypothetical organism feeding on them would die of starvation. Thus it is most probable Darwinian evolution would remove them from the gene pool.
However, there could be a monster with highly developed mirror neurones. This creature obtains great pleasure from the stimulation of responding to the emotions of its victims. The stronger the emotion the greater the pleasure.
This does mean, in purely human oriented pejorative terms, that this monster is a pervert deriving vicarious pleasure from the suffering of its victims. Now whether the monster is a magical human being with hypertrophied mirror neurons or is simply an animal with a similar capacity I will leave to the ingenuity of the OP to devise as they see fit.
[Answer]
No. It’s just a particular meaning ascribed to a brain state. Imagine a creature that feeds off having the check-engine light on in your car: not the power from the specific indicator bulb, but gets energy from how many log entries are in the OBD. That's simply not an energy source. There is no potential energy between different values in the program.
[Answer]
You could say that some people do feed on fear already.
We humans are, in evolution terms, transitioning from a predator's lifestyle to a more tame gatherer lifestyle. Think about it. [We have canine teeth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_tooth). The vast majority of us eat flesh. Yet, as a species, we do not hunt.
The instinct of hunting is still strong in some of us, though. That's partially the reason why we make a sport out of it. Some people make a lifestyle out of it. But why do we do that, when it is much cheaper, convenient, and generally safer to go to the closest grocery store for meat? Sometimes people don't even eat their catch, but make a trophy or a hat out of it.
I reason that the thrill of the hunt is something some people crave. Just like some people are driven onto solving problems, and some others enjoy composing music, or writing books or software, some people are compelled to kill, violently, for no reason - at least no reason that we may perceive in a first glance. Sometimes the killer [will also go into cannibalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_cannibalism#21st_century). Sometimes the killer will [kill multiple times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_number_of_victims#Serial_killers_with_the_highest_known_victim_count). Do notice that serial killing an cannibalism usually go hand in hand. Would this somehow relate to hunting for food?
Now take into account that the psychopaths above do not, as a rule of thumb, kill their victims in swift, painless or in any otherwise ways subtle (i.e.: lethal injection or other forms of poisoning, a bullet to the back of the skull while the victim sleeps).
Would it have been the same if the victims had not suffered? I believe many of those killers take actual pleasure from the suffering of their victims.
And while a serial killer does not convert the fear and pain of their victims into adenosine triphosphate - the fact remains that watching closely while others suffer so greatly, or even provoking that suffering, is a **craving** that serial killers feel the need to **satiate**.
So maybe your fictional creatures need the tension of the killing for their mental health, just like we humans need things like love, trust and friendship. Maybe your creatures have the psychological profile of a human serial killer because [they do feed on humans](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/42832/how-could-a-species-survive-on-just-luring-in-and-eating-humans/42837#42837).
P.S.: I don't mean to imply that carnivore animals are necessarily cruel because they hunt. Cruelty is something I can only attribute to human beings in our real world, and arguably some intelligent animals like chimps and dolphins, but that's a stretch and by no means I think they come close to us in such aspect. But it does seem, sometimes, like the thrill of the hunt is a real necessity for some animals. Some people think that's the reason we can't keep beasts like the great white shark in confinement - they mostly refuse to eat food that they have not caught themselves.
P.P.S.: while writing this, I had the song [Vicarious, by Tool](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUXBCdt5IPg), stuck in my mind. Mostly because of its lyrics, which are somewhat related to what I wrote:
>
> Part vampire, part warrior
>
> Carnivore and voyeur
>
> Stare at the transmittal
>
> Sing to the death rattle(...)
>
> We all feed on tragedy, it's like blood to a vampire (...)
>
> Vicariously I live while the whole world dies
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>
[Answer]
*I like the sight of fear in the morning.* Your creature could be releasing a hormone only when he is confronting a creature that fears it. This system is similar to flight response but works in a twisted way. This explanation does not even need to detect fear any other than seeing someone afraid.
If you make these creatures fear inducing, there would even be an evolutionary advantage. The specimens that can induce more fear, thus protecting the nest, will have more of this hormone. Now make that hormone related to the reproduction, you are then good to go.
[Answer]
A little less directly than some of the answers suggesting the creature feed on hormones, one of the things adrenaline or other fight-or-flight hormones *does*, is get the body ready for action - including increasing the easily available energy in the body, including glucose in the blood, so that the body can readily act.
So perhaps your creature doesn't directly feed on fear, but uses the fear to increase the food value of its prey - either as filtering or directly feeding on the blood, as a parasite or predator. Any production of adrenaline would function the same way, it doesn't *have* to be fear, but fear is probably easiest for such a creature (predator, or parasite) to induce in its prey... whether through physical or chemical means (a physical attack or some kind of drug or venom). This makes slightly more sense to me than the creature feeding off of the hormones directly, that seems more specialized and less likely.
On the other hand, if you want to loosen your requirements a little, and allow a little hand-waving (and, perhaps including Renan's idea of parapsychology), you might find something a little more direct. The idea of [auras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura_(paranormal)), or the [stone tape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape) phenomenon, suggest that the magnetic, electric, or chemical interactions of living bodies can manifest in a subtle field of energy surrounding the person - essentially a very weak field of leaking waste energy, but we are hand-waving, so go with it.
If this might be so, then it is possible that an adrenaline response could charge up the aura in a way similar to the way it charges up the body, releasing stored energy into accessible forms, the better for a body in crisis to be able to use it. Then, if your creature can feed off that weak energy field or leaked bio-electric impulses or brainwaves or whatever, producing fear should increase the the energy and therefore the food value of what it gets, instead of or in addition to getting glucose and other forms of energy out of adrenaline charged blood. Given the weak and limited nature of this theoretical aura, and the limits of transmitting energy over any distance, the creature would still need to be extremely close to or touching its prey (or physically dug in), in order to be able to access this energy.
Also, as with physical adrenaline responses, fear *itself* isn't necessary, any strong emotion should give similar stress responses - but fear may be easier for the creature to induce or recognize. Possibly the process of being fed on (feeling weak as the blood is filtered or energy fed from) may *produce* fear or despair, even if the initial reaction the creature wanted (fight-or-flight) could just as well have been from any stress response.
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Emotions are simply the product of various chemicals produced in the brain such as oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine. Perhaps your hypothetical creature feeds on these chemicals or has become addicted to them?
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What do people do when they're afraid? Fight or flight. And running, movement, is an energy that can be harnessed.
1. Somebody could make one. There are devices that can harness energy from movement, even from our daily lives, like fans that catch the wind made by large passing trucks, or a stair that sinks when you step on it. Imagine a creature that when seen inspires complete terror. The maze/set up includes a monster, a way to harness energy from the flight, and some feedback mechanism to the, possibly manufactured, creature based off the take. The difference between running and walking though (other than which routes you'd take) is power, but the work is the same.
2. It's how this thing gets around. Nature has a lot of examples involving movement-Viruses make people sneeze and stuff to spread them, flowers attract creatures which get the pollen on them and move it around, Velcro was based off a [bur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_and_loop_fastener) that got in someone's dog's fur. A creature could (not much handwaving) evolve that doesn't 'feed off of emotion' but it still relies on it to survive. You don't 'feed off sleep' (unless you eat while you sleep or vice versa) but you still do it (sleep that is), and even sleep extra when you've gone too long without out it. ([Sleep debt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_debt))
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What kind of creature could 'feed off emotion'?
It's in the blood. People respond differently when they're terrified, whether it's not thinking clearly, or running farther than normal with adrenaline. This does involve some science. It could be a virus or something really small, like tics.
In Eragon, The [Fanghur](http://inheritance.wikia.com/wiki/Fanghur) attack their prey mentally to stun them. Dragon fear-induced fear beyond the fact you're *facing a dragon* - is also common in the genre. Paralyzed prey hold still nicely. (And morale does affect the outcome of battle.)
There's also [Dream Crabs](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Dream_crab) in Doctor Who.
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So I need a barren wasteland with some dead vegetation (mainly dead trees). There should be pretty much no living plants left but it should be apparent that it was a lush place for flora and fauna about 20-25 years ago.
**What could have killed all the vegetation while leaving some dead trees still standing? What could be the reason for plants not growing back?**
The thing that comes to mind is a volcanic eruption. But that usually brings nutrition to the area affected and that's why the place would probably be blossoming again after 20-25 years.
Could there be something in the ground like toxic soil or just low levels of nutrition that would make it inhabitable? What could the toxic soil be? How did it get there? Why would the ground suddenly lack in nutrition?
Any other reasons why this could happen?
There is no specific location for this wasteland, but I would rather not have it placed very far north or have it be a typical sand desert. It would take at least several days to walk through it. Assume Earth-like conditions and medieval tech.
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There's a reason why "salting the earth" is an expression.
Excessive salt will suck out the water in plants and kill them, leaving the skeletons behind. you will need to ensure the salt can't have washed away since.
This salt could be suddenly supplied by a volcano by having the volcanic ash containing a large amount of salt. Otherwise some evil conquerers could have done it.
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One option is to have the area's water needs originally met by only a single river. Rivers naturally meander, which will occasionally cause them to jump their banks and take a new route. For example, the Mississippi River has been on the verge of re-routing itself down the Atchafalaya River's path for many years. If your single source of water meandered enough to find a different path that bypassed the area in question, you'd see the plants gradually die off as groundwater was depleted and never regenerated. Since there was no destructive force like a fire, volcano, or windstorm, trees would generally die in place and many would remain standing.
This type of scenario could be triggered by a number of different causes, both natural (meandering, landslides, sinkholes, earthquakes) or artificial but low-tech (dams, canals, excavation). This type of scenario could also be reversible, in case you need it to be.
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If you want a more exotic reason than excess salt, a very very rare natural phenomenon could cause radio activity that would kill the vegetation and everything else in an area. As far as we know it has only happened in one geographical area here on earth at 16 sites in Oklo, Gabon Africa.
In simple layman's terms, there existed in the area very rich uranium deposits that as some point in ancient earth history, ground water entered the deposits, and caused natural nuclear fission to take place. This of course released great amounts of energy, and thus heat, which boiled away the water until the the reaction would stop, and the deposits would cool. But then the groundwater would flow back in and the reaction would start slowly once again. (This could happen in cycles from days to weeks or even months.)
Anyway, the heat and radiation would easily create the conditions you are looking for, and would cause the rise of many local legends about it being a magical and deadly place. There would also be steam vents and it would likely cause heavy fog in the area on cool days. The radiation could also have a preservative affect preventing the natural decay process of the trees and other plants in the area, because bacteria and molds would be killed as well. The whole area would be mysteriously dead but also have the appearance of being frozen in time for centuries.
There would be times when the reaction would die down enough, and the amount of radiation to subside to allow the area to be entered without lethal doses of radiation. But imagine what stories would arise from people entering the "cursed" area when the Gods or whatever are "angry" and then mysteriously die days later with their hair falling out suddenly in large chunks, sever pain, and a host of other mysterious symptoms.
Also had another thought about how this could have been influenced by humans. If they were trying to irrigate an area and diverted a river to do so, it could have caused an abundance of ground water to enter an area where there once was very little causing the conditions to be just right for the process to begin.
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Just to offer a few non-chemical options as well:
* The region used to be fed by a river, somehow the river got diverted and turned the region into a desert. Depending on the strength of the desert, they may be no plant life left. This does set some limits on the weather.
* Rapid climate change. Suppose the climate changed a lot due to some previous event (say large volcano eruption or meteorite impact, this can happen thousands of miles away). Most plants would not adapt and die. Plants that would thrive in the new climate may not exist close enough to colonize the land within 20-25 years. Depending on the severity of the climate change and the variety and adaptability of the native plants, some plant and even animal life may still exist. If you go into nuclear winter type scenario (also works with volcano ash cloud) effectively everything would be dead.
* Radiation. One of the nastier ways to kill all life. You'd probably still see some plants life with lots of mutation and cancer. A drawback would be that the land would still be radioactive.
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Areas around volcanoes have dead zones all the time. when the activity changes locations all of a sudden you have a bunch of dead trees standing around.
Look at [Yellowstone National Park](https://www.google.com/search?q=yellowstone%20dead%20trees&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS603US603&espv=2&biw=1858&bih=976&tbm=isch&imgil=fL6_5beXEP9lMM%253A%253B9OEClyFXa529vM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.rockymtnrefl.com%25252FYellowstoneDeadTreescd91899.html&source=iu&pf=m&fir=fL6_5beXEP9lMM%253A%252C9OEClyFXa529vM%252C_&usg=__nML3gmHV1TvxWViSuiibFLILW3c%3D&ved=0CCcQyjc&ei=GHj0VMTrBdGnyAS0u4KwDQ#imgdii=_&imgrc=5I41IRdg5aAibM%253A%3BiK5lz7BZaN805M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fthumbs.dreamstime.com%252Fz%252Fyellowstone-national-park-mystic-scenery-usa-dead-trees-scary-landscape-sunny-ambiance-33269758.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dreamstime.com%252Froyalty-free-stock-photos-yellowstone-national-park-mystic-scenery-usa-dead-trees-scary-landscape-sunny-ambiance-image33269758%3B1065%3B1300). Especially around the hot springs for easy pictures. Dead trees standing all over. The hot springs can change the ph of the soil. gas vents can also do this, but that is more dangerous (it would kill people too), and would likely be more localized.
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Severe forest fires can do what you describe. Fire can have a [wide range of effects](http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/range/publications/documents/fire2.htm) on soil, but one of them is that in clayey soils it can destroy the soil's ability to hold water - kind of like putting a clay pot in a kiln. It changes the structure permanently.
So if you had an area that was once densely wooded, with lots of fuel on the ground, and a fire came roaring through, it would kill all vegetation, likely leave large, charred, dead trees standing, and prevent new plants from being able to grow.
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This answer builds on several of the others and offers a purely natural way to achieve the desired result.
If you have a low-lying basin near the sea then an exceptionally high tide/storm/tsunami would flood the area with sea water.
Over the next few decades that sea-water would gradually evaporate, naturally concentrating the salt into a smaller and smaller area.
In the end once all the water has vanished you would see an area that had normal vegetation at the edges, dead trees in the center, and slowly decreasing levels of vegetation until you reach a completely dead area in the center.
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Consider looking at the Salton Sea in Southern California. I think it was in 1910 that the Colorado River flooded, and due to some bad design it breached trough some irrigation gates and flooded the Salton Sea. Move this event to some tree covered basin and you have an event that would kill the tress and leave them standing. A rather shallow lake would do this, say something around ten to fifteen feet deep. Have the flood go through a salt deposit and you have the chemical to keep the basin quite barren of vegetation for a few centuries.
Draining the lake might be a problem, it may take a decade or so to evaporate. You could invent some device in your story line where most of the water soaks into the ground over the course of some time that fits your needs, the ground retaining the salt so your landscape remains sterile.
The flood alone would drown the trees, the salt would be the reason the vegetation does not grow back.
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You have severe limits by rejecting desert, and having medieval tech. Humans had way too weak influence to do anything too destructive back then, and life is adaptable.
But I do have something for you, even if it might take few centuries instead of few decades:
Start with a landlocked sea, like Black Sea. Earthquake sealed connection to other seas, and changed course of few important incoming rivers. Evaporation is bigger than water inflow. For first few decades, life can continue, even as fishing is worse, but not too bad.
Only after few decades, when sea evaporated, you have winds spreading salt all over, destroying the countryside. Even if remains of sea are somewhere (see Dead Sea), life cannot continue.
If you want to go full speed, you can [close Gibraltar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_salinity_crisis), and dry out Mediterranean sea. Much deeper, much hotter, climate in whole area was much worse. As link says, it really happened 5.6MYA, and might happen again (but then we would drill channel to flood it back).
But of course such events are much slower. It would take 1000 years for Mediterranean sea to almost completely evaporate. Even then, life would be possible in river deltas.
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Oil.
A natural oil leakage from underground, tar pits and similar water contamination will lay an area barren. An earthquake could be the release mechanism.
If it was once lush, it could become boggy too, with oil-soaked dead vegetation decayed in the mess, making some areas impossible to traverse, and deceptive until caught in it.
Natural gas would also produce will-o-wisps, and eerie sounds as it escaped from the ground. You can make it very dramatic by having small flames burn spontaneously if you want. Spontaneous combustion is very believable in such an area. In some places the air itself could be so poisonous as to kill any animals that wander in, even if they could get a firm footing and not get caught in the bog.
Of course if magic is involved you could add any number of additional intriguing aspects.
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I would suggest a build up of some chemicals in the soil, perhaps salts as suggested by Ratchet Freak.
The build up could be caused by adding a fertilizer that had an adverse reaction with minerals in the local soil. Sulfur has been used as a fertilizer for a very long time, but I have not found a good substance for it to react with, others might be better at chemistry 101 than me.
And when the local plants don't grow well, what do you do? Add more and more fertilizer until you have an environmental catastrophe.
The end result is soil saturated with the chemicals.
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Some few grams of antihydrogen (antimatter) annihilates over the area with massive (let say 10 times of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima) energy release (without radioactive spill of "unburnt fuel") cause soil to turn into a glass or a ceramic, rendering essantial minarals insoluble in the water.
In this "glass desert" and without essantial minerals plant life cannot recover for a long time (hundred years may be).
A few trees might still stand in the center of explosion (like the trees in the center of the [tunguska explosion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event)).
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**Radioactive fallout**
We have pretty much this situation in the "[Red Forest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Forest)" near Chernobyl. Fallout tends to stay very localized because it binds easily to soil. So unless you have massive rainfalls that wash away the soil, a dumping-ground for Cs-137 or Sr-90 could make a localized and rather well defined area practically sterile for at least a century.
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In the real world, sailing is undoubtedly dangerous, but 90% of that danger comes from either the weather, your mistakes, or other ships. Animals don't really count as a factor, unless you fall overboard into water with sharks in it, or try to go whaling (In which case you deserve everything that comes your way you monster).
If humans were developing their civilization from the mesolithic in a world where all rivers are somewhat wider and deeper, and all large bodies of water (from huge lakes to oceans) contain various dangerous megafauna (from territorial animals that would mistake a boat for a competitor and will try to "chase" it out of their territory to actually predatory creatures some of which would be able and willing to snag some snack right off the top deck of a small boat; basically "what if prehistoric sea reptiles didn't go extinct" scenario).
**So "here be dragons" is a phrase with *literal* meaning now. How would that affect humanity's historical relationship with sailing?**
I guess when we'll develop large ships, like galleons, these would be massive enough for the sea creatures to stop being a threat, but will humans even get that far?
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**A firey, large bowsprit, among other things**
Humans have dealt with predators larger than them before. There are some methods to ward them off. Ships will be more armored from the get-go, but just like with early humans on land, the goal will be to prevent attacks instead of defending against a larger opponent when possible.
**Fire**
The creature would likely be scared of fire, just like it's land counterparts. Ships would likely have a controlled way to create a large fire without taking the rest of the ship with it.
[Greek Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire) (i.e. fire that stays lit even when water is thrown on it) would be extremely valuable, and likely would have been developed sooner. It would be the best way to make sure the creature was licking its wounds for a while to come after the battle.
Several early sea battles involved [setting the other ships on fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ship), so extra fireproofing would have likely lead to more early sea battles involving boarding the other ship.
Early sailors will have to devise ways to make sure the fire doesn't burn a literal hole in the ship and sink them the old fashioned way.
**Making the ship look big**
The other trick to avoid large predators is to make yourself look large enough to scare them off. Likely early ships would have added some large pieces of cloth stretched over an out-rigger to make the ship look larger from below.
A larger bowsprit would also help scare off predators, so they'd stop being beautiful girls, and start being large scarecrow-like things.
**Bunkers**
Small ships will have more fortified bunkers along with pointy spears that can be used to defend against wrapping tentacles. The ship will likely take some damage in a close range scuffle with creatures so the goal will be to prevent this from happening.
They'll still need long-range weaponry for other humans.
**Kraken hunting parties**
Early tribes will band together to kill large creatures decimating sea trade. The carcasses would be gathered and used for meat and parts when possible. Fighting the large creature would become a rite of passage for the tribe.
As sea fairing grows into big business, ships will be specially designed to hunt and kill these creatures. The Navy will commission special officers with special training in man v Kraken combat.
**Big ships faster**
We'd get to large, multi-decked ships faster. All ship manufacturing would be large, government subsided businesses. The ships must be large enough and have enough weaponry to defend against the creatures.
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Humans would deal with threats the way they have done throughout history: they would eradicate those animals who threaten their safety and that's the end of it. If any survive, that'll be only because they'll have learned to avoid humans. In continents where megafauna did not co-evolve with humans, all dangerous megafauna (and plenty of other tasty fauna) was eradicated by humans in prehistoric times. Take, for example, the [European cave lion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthera_spelaea):
*Source: Heinrich Harder, 1920, via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hoehlenloewe_CaveLion_hharder.jpg)*
Humans didn't want to live alongside lions. African lions have co-evolved with humans and learned that despite their fragile bipedal appearance, they could actually pose a danger and should be avoided. European lions were unfamiliar with humans when they first arrived, and were too slow to learn this lesson, so they went extinct.
Humans do not tolerate threats to their life or the life of their children and never will. They don't even tolerate threat to their source of income (such as domesticated animals). Only in the very modern age have they started to tolerate some form of nature, such as indicated by your parenthetical comment in the first paragraph of your question, an attitude for which you would have been in a very small minority 200 years ago, and even this positive attitude only exists on the condition the animals are no threat to humans or to the money humans earn.
So, initially there would be yet another source of danger on the seas, but as soon as humans finish off those animals, it would be just yet another example of ecosystem collapse.
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Okay firstly, you might want to narrow down what sort of sea beasts there are their commonality, and dangerousness since this will determine how sailing is affected. A world filled with twisty sea serpents that can wrap around your ship looks much different from one where a mosasaurus rips out your rudder. But Im going to throw out some general stuff.
* Ships will mostly likely feature saw patterned spikes along the keel, and other parts of the ship so its harder to wrap around the ship or bite it
* If creatures can leap out of the water to get crew on deck then an armored cover would be in order, something like a Korean turtle ship perhaps (add spikes and razor edges on that too)
* Ports in various parts of the ship to stab spears through would be useful
* If possible people will defiantly research and utilize various scents and sounds to see if they can drive creatures away or at least irritate them
* All of this will make sea travel even more dangerous than it already is, however sea travel is still very fast so its likely people will try very hard to use it (assuming people develop large scale boating at all which is very much dependent on what your masters look like and how they behave)
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The first thing it would do would be to delay ocean, river and lake travel developmentally.
Humans used rivers as the earliest "roads" pretty much everywhere. With rivers being far more dangerous, they'd either wipe out the megafauna in them (more work than not), harvest them (less work than not), or avoid using the river.
Similar things would happen with seas and near-shore ocean creatures. Either humans wipe out the hostile creatures, harvest them for food and resources, or have to avoid sea/ocean going.
Assuming these hostile creatures aren't a net boon:
People's that didn't require clearing the waterways -- like steppe or plains nomads -- would have an advantage over the settled cities that rely on goods being transported by river, ocean or sea. So I could see "nomad" civilizations getting further ahead than (in our world) the flood-plain, and river/forest/coast civilizations (which started becoming more dominant around 6000 years ago).
Now, in our world, the nomad civilizations still tended to regularly conquer the water-dependent civilizations (often they where pushed by nomads further inland, and found the city dwellers rich and easy to conquer), especially early on in our history (Persia, for example, was a nomad civilization conquering a city-civilization originally).
Maybe this lasts longer.
In our world, eventually the city-civilizations started scaling up more. In the West, Rome, Egypt, Greece and their descendents start getting strong enough that they are able to usually hold their own against "barbarian" waves (at least until the Mongols). All of them, however, relied on water to do this. So I'm not sure how much it would help.
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The other side of the coin, where harvesting this megafauna is a net benefit, is you'd see faster expansion of the city civilizations as they develop better ability to harvest it. Much like the mammoth fueled human expansion, the same could happen along the coasts of the world. It is possible that the land-based Nomads would arrive in an area and find it already harvested and fortified by the coastal peoples, slowing down their growth.
Learning deeper sea travel and being able to chase the great beasts of the water deeper would become a huge economic advantage. So naval technology might develop faster than it did in our world.
With most of your calories coming from the sea harvest, your base on land wouldn't need the land around it. Farming becomes less important. Fortifying yourself against raids from the relatively impoverished inland nomads becomes important. So you build your settlements on places like Venice, where a land army is at a serious disadvantage. Farming forests becomes key to producing the great ships needed for your food supply.
Maybe you go "a viking" and raid the land-dwellers for resources hard to find at sea, and force them to provide tribute or be crushed by marines. You battle with farmers, ensuring that large stands of forest you need for your ships stay intact.
Leaving sight of land remains dangerous for non-monster reasons, but you get better at it than ancient non-Polynesian people did in our history, because calories is power, and monsters are calories. Your ships scour the 7 seas for places to hunt the monsters and bring more food home. When you find monsters, you land and do the work to preserve the food, before setting out and heading home. Those places where you land become increasingly fortified, and eventually form permanent settlements, which rule over the local non-sea folk.
Advances in navigation eventually lead to global empires at lower technology levels than today.
Inland dwellers fear the coasts and the oceans, and have fragmented governments. Eventually those inland people develop better road technology, bridge fortifications strong enough not to be destroyed by the raiders. Eventually a the dryland war happens, where a large inland empire fights the largest ocean empire, and loses, but almost wins.
This causes a seismic shift in how the ocean civilizations treat the interior. Some attempt to clean out the rebels, others rule them, others start merging with them.
In this phase of history, perhaps the materials science of the drylanders and the astronomy of the wetlanders join, and they develop true ocean going ships, including coal powered iron clads. Around this time the deep oceans are no longer safe for the monsters of the deep, and an extinction event happens; the huge spike in food production followed by the collapse of the monster fishery leads to the wetlanders now needing dryland resources, and a massive war.
Ideally this war should be fought with airships, clockwork and lots of gears everywhere.
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Ships might try to be less detectable.
[Counter shading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countershading). Light on the bottom and dark on top, so that they blend in with the surface from below. Humans might figure this out earlier (in our world it wasn't really understood as a form of camouflage until the early 1900s).
Garbage and waste would not be casually disposed of overboard. Ships would have to figure out some way to store this, which will be difficult for onboard sanitation. They might store as much as possible then dump it all at once when they can quickly leave the area.
Using tar on ships is not going to work, they will smell you from miles away. Maybe they would use something like teak or birch bark that doesn't need extra preservatives as an outer coating.
Sound reduction. This one is going to be really hard. The actual noise of a ship sailing with the wind is probably not too bad, but there was a lot of yelling and moving heavy objects around involved, so that's going to have to stop (or at least not be transmitted into water--maybe it would be OK to have noise in the air). Hulls might have some kind of noise insulation along the inside. Boots might have soft soles, or something soft on the outside to muffle them.
Maybe coastlines might have things that make *extra* noise continuously, to drown out any noise that ships make.
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The question has a false premise, that large aquatic animals that could be called "sea monsters" are a significant threat to ships.
In reality many possible dangers in the oceans are many, many times more likely to damage or sink ships or kill people aboard them than encounters with large sea creatures, which are a tiny fraction as likely to cause trouble as storms, uncharted rocks and reefs, navigation errors, fires, epidemics, scurvey from lack of proper food, etc. But even today, boats as large as some ships in fantasy settings are occassionally sunk by encounters with sea life.
I recently read about an infestation of jellyfish in Japanese waters. Japanese fishermen took to catching Jellyfish for lack of more valuable prey, and one boat tried to haul up a a netfull of jellyfish so heavy that the boat capsided.
And I read about an American fishing boat which had a similar fate. It hauled up so many fish that it eventually capsized and sank. The fact that one of the fish it hauled up was a ten-ton basking shark probably contributed to the sinking, since it probably did a lot of damage thrashing around.
Many sailboats have been damaged and/or sunk by collisions with large sea life, for example with orcas or with pilot whales, which are certainly smaller than great whales. And those sailboats may seem tiny compared to modern ships, but might be as large as some ships which were used to cross oceans during the age of sail.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_ship_Squirrel_(1570s)>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_(pinnace)>
The large outrigger canoes used by the Polynesians to colonize widely scattered islands in the Pacific Ocean were also small enough to be easily sunk by encounters with sea life, though of course other dangers would be far more likely.
Procopius claimed that a sea monster (species uncertain) terrorized shipping in the Sea of Mamara, sinking a number of ships for fifty years, and its size as described by Procopius would certainly make it a rather ordinary, medium sized, whale - if it was a whale.
So it is no wonder that some wooden sailing were damaged and/or sank by mostly accidental collisions with large whales - and in a couple of cases allegedly by being struck by the whales' tail or by the whale leaping out of the sea and landing on the ship.
I am uncertain how many ships have been sunk by accidental or deliberate whale actions, but certainly that was a real though unlikely danger in the days of wooden ships and iron men. Different sources on the internet give numbers of whaling ships (as opposed to whaleboats) sunk by Mocha Dick ranging from zero to two dozen, for example.
So possibly your fictional world has far more species of whales, and some of them are far more numerous than in our world. Thus the potential for accidental or deliberate collusions with whales could be higher than in our world.
I note that whales were far more common up to about a couple of million years ago, when many species became extinct. And in those days the giant carniverous shark [Megalodon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalodon) preyed on numerous species of small and medium sized whales, as did the carnivrous whale [*Livyatan mellvilli*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livyatan).
A world where great whale sized predators similar to Megalodon and Livyatan preyed on whales might also be one where those predators also attack ships for some reason.
Or maybe there is at least one species of whales in that world intelligent enough to have language and government. And perhaps a group of humans somewhere decided to try hunting those whales, and as a result the whale government decreed that any ships detected should be attacked and sunk at once, so now no ship can sail far without a whale attack.
And of course in the age of reptiles there were a number of species of giant sea reptiles which were many times larger than any sea turtles or sea crocodiles of today, in the Megaladon size range. And they might attack ships wondering if they were good to eat.
And possibly your oceans could contain an abundance of large squid, some of them much larger than the largest known in our world.
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If you want to make your seas REALLY hard to navigate, do not waste time on big animals with lots of brute force.
Instead, make seas populated with a SMART animal like dolphins or orcas which use tools and communicate, have culture and cooperate defending their realm.
They might even ACTIVELY HUNT human ships to get metal tools which they cannot manufacture underwater.
Some people even might SELL THEM metal tools in exchange for protection during fishing or something.
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ships would form convoys, banding together for protection. these nasty giant octopus might be able to attack and sink one ship, but a dozen who support each other? in history, convoys were formed against pirates or u-boats and have proven to be somewhat effective.
ships would be build to hinder the monsters natural attacks. giant whale capsize ships from beneath? install pointy metal objects on the underside. kraken grappling the ship whole? install spikey stuff all around. ships might adopt the hedgehog-philosophy ...
balistas and similar weapons would be developed sooner and be much more common on ships. some clever mind will find some way to attack the monsters even while underwater. harpoons, for example.
we'd probably see more weapons on board. for the most time it wasn't uncommon for a sailor to be armed, but in your world it would be crazy strange to go unarmed.
if there are any powerful seafaring civilization, they'll want to protect important trade routes, so there might be warships patrolling these routes and the surrounding, hunting these monsters.
humans will study these monsters and find their weaknesses. is a monster largely territorial and marks its territory? find out how to do that and now mark your territory, and maybe deter it. does the monster need deep water to survive? sail through shallow coastal waters as much as possible. learn what habitats the individual monsters prefer, to get an idea whats comming. make maps that mark known populations.
sea trade will be somewhat effected because all this makes it more expensive. we'll probably see a focus towards goods that bring more profit per ton, because everything else is not worth it, economically. sea trade might be less important to your economies. another option would be to travel at land for as much as possible and just cross the smallest sea possible. for example if you want to trade from casablanca to valencia, you'd not sail your goods from c to v, but instead bring them to the strait of gibraltar by land, cross the short distance there by ship and continue to transport by land.
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Well, I would go for a different spin. We can do so much with beasts like this!
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## [Take Dune and make it moist.](https://www.deviantart.com/leywad/art/Dune-Ride-the-sandworm-119340616)
If the animal is that large and dangerous, why not spend some effort to bring them to use instead of hunting them down or trying to evade them?
Make your humans live in a symbiotic relationship with your dangerous megafauna, not only using them as prey for food but hunting partners, animals of burden, guard animals, beasts of war and so on.
Nessie is far less likely to try anything funny against your ship if you're being scorted by Krumpy, your pet kraken!
Heck, you may even ditch sails entirely. Why use it, if you can make friends with a dragon turtle to ferry your stuff around? What about a racing boat tugged along by a pair of massive mega sharks? Or what about a group of sea nomads that travel around on the backs of massive manta-rays, "flying" along the coast?
Water beasts used in this manner isn't unheard off in mythology. One of those famed beasts is the Hippocampus, or the Mer-horse, if you will:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ukwzt.png)
I mean - animals that large everywhere already have several issues that you'll have to handwave anyway. Making them smart enough to be tame-able wouldn't be the hardest thing to explain away!
So, my suggestion - instead of using it as a constraint for your worldbuilding, have fun with it and use it to push your narrative in a more fantastic direction. Bring them inside the fold of your civilizations, make them part of it, and I'm sure some amazing stories will end up writing themselves out!
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It would create a giant dent in sea-travel. People tend to avoid the unknown and dangerous (besides the most adventurous of us). So most people would merely stop sailing.
Alternatively, people would find safe routes that avoid those undersea monsters hunting grounds. The whole point of a map saying "here there be dragons" is like saying "avoid this area at all costs or be utterly decimated".
Of course, the most adventurous people would find a way to hunt those creatures. They would make ships able to withstand attack from the monsters, sail out, and hunt them down. The ships would most likely have metal plates added to the bottom and perhaps have some way of dropping a form of payload underneath to drop into the gaping mouth of an attacking beast and destroy it from the inside
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## Sailing may become limited or even non-existant
This may not be an answer you were expecting, but [Windhaven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windhaven) by George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle describes a world where, due to storms and large sea creatures ("... or perhaps a scylla's tooth, long as her arm, ..."), ships are neither safe nor reliable, except for local travel. In this scenario, other means of long-distance travel may be the better choice:
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> For the land-bound, the flyers were the most regular source of contact with the other islands. The seas, daily storm-lashed and infested with scyllas and seacats and other predators, were too dangerous for regular ship travel except among islands within the same local group. The flyers were the links, and the others looked to them for news, gossip, songs, stories, romance.
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The demigods are immortal individuals that protect our reality from eldritch abominations, such as Cthulhu, Niggurath, etc, on a plane that exists between our world and theirs. These battles against these eldritch forces and their minions happen on a daily basis to prevent them from breaching our world.
A demigod is born with a divine spark in their soul, which matures as they age and blooms around puberty, when it reveals itself. At this point, they are taken from their families by the demigods and put through a process that turns them into true demigods in order to control their power. This process suppresses their memories as a human, in which they exist as a vague, half-forgotten dream.
These demigods are still half-mortal, making them susceptible to human illnesses. One of their capabilities is regeneration. They can rapidly heal or regrow body parts and organs at an accelerated rate. However, this would rationally lead to an increase of cancer in humans. This disease occurs from abnormal cell growth, in which cells divide too often and create tumors. This would kill my demigods in quick succession, making the time and investment placed into them worthless.
How can I prevent this from occurring in my demigods?
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**As normal humans control their bodies on a gross level, demigods are aware and in control on a cellular level.**
As an ordinary human, I have a modicum of awareness of my body. I can perceive an itchy place and scratch it. I am very aware of the state of and the alignment of my teeth, and position of my tongue. I receive consistent messages from bowels and bladder and I can intervene on their behalf when they signal their needs. Should I choose I can become aware of my breathing, a function which does not require my attention but over which I can take conscious control if I wish.
Your demigods have an even greater bodily awareness, down to the cellular level. Like my breathing, demigods can allow the cells to go about their business on autopilot and the cells generally get things done. However a demigod may choose to pay more attention to hormone levels, blood flow, sympathetic tone, and especially something like healing and regeneration. A demigod may choose to heal with a scar or not. Certainly an uncontrolled proliferation like cancer would be preempted by conscious volition. It may be that senescence of otherwise useful cells is also controlled consciously which give the demigods their long lives.
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There are animals who are immune to cancer. According to [this article](https://www.sciencealert.com/these-animals-can-t-get-cancer-and-scientists-think-they-could-hold-a-cure), it is due to a specific protein called hyaluronan that causes skin elasticity and cancer resistance. The divine spark they have could cause, in addition to other abilities, an abundance of hyaluronan that provides cancer immunity(and elastic skin, I guess).
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It *is* true that most cancer cells regenerate rapidly. However, that does not mean that rapidly regenerating cells *lead to cancer*. That's like saying "Horses eat a lot of food. My brother eats a lot of food. Therefore, my brother is a horse." The most rapidly regenerating cells in the body are not proportionally more likely to develop cancer. For example, the cells in hair follicles, nails, the mouth, digestive tract, and bone marrow all regenerate substantially faster than "typical cells". That's one of the reasons that people often look pale, get nauseous, and lose their hair when undergoing chemotherapy (most of which broadly targets rapidly growing cells).
As an example, the cells that line the stomach and intestines live less than a week, while, skin cells live a few weeks, and liver cells live from several months to over a year. If the likelihood of cancer was proportional to the cell turnover rate, you'd expect stomach and intestinal cancer to be the most common types, but they're not.
You might expect there to be *some* detectable increase in cancer rates as the cell replacement rate increases, because each division is a chance for a mutation that happens as a result of the division process itself. However, there are other, more common causes of cell mutation: radiation, environmental exposure to certain carcinogens, etc. It's even possible for rapidly dividing cells to be LESS susceptible to mutation, because the cells aren't exposed to the mutagen long enough, and when a cell dies, the mutagen gets removed from the body along with the debris from the dead cell.
As already mentioned by @RomainL, the immune system is responsible for keeping cancer in check. A stronger immune system (but not so strong as to cause autoimmune diseases) is the simplest way to keep cancer from developing. Also, the cells would probably need longer telomeres (which tell a cell when it's time to die for good). But there's SO much about our biology that is only barely understood, it's probably best not to get super specific about the mechanics of regeneration. Anything you come up with is likely to be proven incorrect, possibly very soon. Just keep it vague, and say the demigods bodies repair themselves much more rapidly than normal humans. Why no cancer? Answering that question would require teams of scientists to examine lots of demigods. If that's not happening in your world, then it's likely that no one knows the specifics, so don't try to explain it.
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Cancers are complex diseases but one key aspect is that cancerous cells avoid detection by the host immune system, the simplest solution IMO would be to give your demi-god better immune system.
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... I've been waiting so long to bust out my Naked Mole Rat knowledge unto this website. (The answer will be a bit simplified, since the Naked Mole Rat's mechanisms to prevent cancer/aging are very in-depth and complex)
**Make em like Naked Mole Rats Baby!!**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nZAEd.jpg)
Naked Mole Rats are exceptionally long lived creatures (living up to the age of 30 with no real degradation to its health) when compared to similarly sized creatures, like the mouse (which only lives around 4.5 years at best).
**Functions that make Naked Mole Rats very long lived**
* Naked Mole Rat Ribosomes have a third piece in their ribosomes, which when compared to Mouse ribosomes make between 4 to 40 times less errors. This more precise translation of proteins reduces the chances of misfolded proteins occurring, which would otherwise reduce the lifespan of a Naked Mole Rat (since misfolded proteins are heavily theorized to contribute to the aging process)
* **HMW-HA** (High Molecular Weight Hyaluronic Acid) in Naked Mole rats is *five times* larger than in other animals, which leads to HMW-HA accumulating in the Naked Mole Rat's body (along with a combination of less active HA degrading enzymes). This accumulation of HMW-HA prevents Naked Mole Rat cells from growing close together. HMW-HA is also the chemical activates the anti-cancer response of gene p16, which stops Naked Mole Rat cells from proliferating when too many of them are close together.
**Side Effects:**
Giving your Demigods the ability to produce HMW-HA like the Naked Mole Rat's would cause physical changes to the appearance of a Demigod. Their skin would become very elastic, much like the Naked Mole Rat's (and they ain't too pretty.)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2AQbU.jpg)
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> **Sources**
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> Last Image obtained from this [site](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjeidqYu6LlAhUMJTQIHWE-BBQQjB16BAgBEAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.allcreaturespod.com%2Fepisodes%2Fepisode-32-inconceivable-naked-mole-rat%2F&psig=AOvVaw0iSB7Yumm_JxK_o4NjuS6_&ust=1571373021075766)
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> [Website](https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2013/09/naked-mole-rats-have-unusual-and-efficient-ribosomes/) with data on the Naked Mole Rat's Unique Ribosomes
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> More in depth look at Naked Mole Rat's anti-cancer [Mechanisms](https://www.pnas.org/content/110/43/17350)
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[Answer]
To simplify it (a lot) you will get cancer if:
* there is a faulty gene already present that practically ensures a person
gets cancer at some point
* the cell is exposed to something that triggers the wrong mutation
* the combination of the above: there is a preexisting genetic risk, and then the right (wrong) trigger happens.
**Side note:** not all mutations are "bad". If some mutations weren't beneficial, then evolution won't happen. In fact, it's pretty much a random roulette: any mutation that won't kill an organism before it menages to procreate will get passed down to its offspring. The mutations that increase the chance of procreation happening are more likely to get passed down the line, but that's not essential. The mutation **doesn't have to be** beneficial. The only condition is, I think, that the given mutation must be **at least** not deadly until the organism manages to reproduce. The living organisms (humans included) end up with a lot of random stuff this way.
So, aside from cancer, the demigods may end up with different mutations, some of those they may even want to keep. For example someone loses an eye, then after regenerating it they end up with a vividly yellow eye, or the one that sees an unusual light spectrum (eg. ultraviolet).
What would stop them from performing the process a few times, until they end up with good/acceptable result?
**The point to consider:**
Usually cells can only divide a limited number of times, until their [telomeres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere) are too short and they can divide no longer. In a way, this can protect against cancer (which is a cell that divides uncontrollably) but I've read somewhere that sometimes cancerous cells protect their telomeres which makes them sort of immortal...?
If the demigods have a very long/unlimited lifespan and are not ageing or ageing at a different rate that can also mean that their telomeres are:
1. not shortening at all
2. shortening at a slower rate than in normal humans
Option 1) will make a scenario of "regenerate until I'm pleased with the result" possible, and will make your demigods virtually immortal.
Option 2) I think is more interesting. It means regeneration costs something. The more you regenerate, the faster you'll age and the sooner you'll die. If you regenerate your eyes too many times you may end up blind etc. It also makes a scenario of "regenerate until I'm pleased with the result" possible, but there will be limitations, for example you only try until you end up with something not deadly. This means there will be people with bad/random results: disfigured, scarred, with patchy skin, horns, six fingers etc. Because if they want to fix it, they have to pay with their lifespan, and many won't be willing to do that.
**An idea:**
To limit the possibility of a mutation happening, the exposure to mutagens may be deliberately limited. For example there may exist special chambers you're suppose to go in to regenerate. There's no light in them, and the air is filtered. The forced isolation will be psychologically traumatic, but still a lot safer than not using the chamber. You'll regenerate outside the regeneration chamber only if you have no other choice. You don't go in sick if possible, as that will increase the risk of mutations (for example if you have a flu and your injury is limited enough that you can wait until the virus is out of your system, you'll wait). You go in completely naked. Before you go in, you're disinfected. You eat only a nasty nutritious paste through your entire stay in the regeneration chamber etc. Regeneration tanks may be another option instead of the chamber in this case but it's been done to death. Or maybe the tanks are only used when the damage is very significant.
**An issue worth considering:**
What if a person regenerates their reproductive organs and a mutation happens that affects the reproductive cells? They may even not be aware of it until a child with a mutation is born...
(I also like the @Willk's idea of demigods being aware/in control of the regeneration proces, at least partially, for example they can trigger it or temporarily stop it, and at a higher level of skill even control it entirely)
[Answer]
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> The demigods are immortal individuals that protect our reality from eldritch abominations, such as Cthulhu, Niggurath, etc, on a plane that exists between our world and theirs. These battles against these eldritch forces and their minions happen on a daily basis to prevent them from breaching our world.
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This plane that exists between our world and their is immaterial (or nonmaterial). In this plane the only things that exist are minds and concepts.
When the demigods step into this plane their mortal bodies evaporate into nothingness. They live and fight in this plane as a conceptualisation of themselves. Without the limits of physical matter they are able to quickly regenerate from wounds or injuries, these wounds are simply the concepts of wounds so can be suppressed by a sufficiently bright concept of non-wound.
When they return to the mortal world they create a new physical vessel for themselves. If their old body had cancer it would not matter to their new one.
The only thing to watch out for is a disease of the mind, if one of your heroes lives with cancer for a long period the idea that they are dieing might creep into their image or conceptualisation of themselves, placing them in real danger.
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In the world I'm making, humans trade with a variety of species, one of which is a society of merpeople. Humans typically acquire goods and services in the form of fish, pearls, under sea flora for medicine, navigation assistance, and passage through merfolk waters. What I would like to know is **what would a race of merpeople likely want in exchange for goods and services?**
Potentially Key Details:
* Humans have the highest form of technology at something between late medieval and mid age of exploration depending on region where the merfolk are early to mid medieval generally speaking.
* Metal work is limited for the merfolk (unless someone can tell me how metal work would function underwater but that may be a question for another time).
* The merfolk live in large underwater cities often built from manipulated coral or other such underwater structures.
* They farm fish by raising generations within underwater cages like modern pisciculture.
* The common trade good in this world is gold coins but, generally speaking, most would still deal in bartering.
Physically the merpeople are in appearance human above the torso with their lower half being like a fish (Disney's little mermaid style) with the inclusion of gills on their neck and more fishlike eyes. They eat about as much as the average person would and can digest the same types of food as a fish would as well.
Merfolk society is not one united kingdom; there are many kingdoms under the sea that have their own established borders and trade routes among each other that may interact with human traders in different ways.
[Answer]
Let me list a few ideas:
1. Metal products. It is very unlikely that there would be many merfolk willing to spend prolonged periods of time outside of water just to craft metal objects. Metal products can be many, from weapons(most likely harpoons, or other weapons that are meant to stab) to tools, jewelry and ornaments. While rare, you don't need to use much of metal for many tools, the main parts of tool might be from something else. For jewelry, metal being rare only increases their value.
2. Ceramics(porcelain, pottery, etc.). For the same reason, it's unlikely that pottery would be mass produced by merfolk. Still it is decent way to store things. This might include some "chemical weapons" sealed in pottery. For example quicklime could be used in underwater warfare. When pot full of quicklime is thrown at someone, breaks and quicklime escapes into water, prepare for some burns.
3. Boats. It might seem counterintuitive, but boats can still likely be of use to Merfolk. They're a very simple way of transporting a very large amount of comodities of any kind. These boats would be however have to be crafted with merfolks in mind, using tamed fish or whales to pull them.
4. Building materials could still be of some use to them. However I am not sure what would be ideal for merfolk civilization.
Edit:
5. Nets! How could I have forgotten about nets. I'm pretty sure nets would be of use for merfolk. They don't need to be used just for fishing, they'd make - decent windows. While merfolk can probably make something similar out of underwater plants, it could still have use, or it could at least be treated as an exotic commodity (land-folk made means exotic).
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Trade Goods
What They Have...
* Fish
* Medicinal Underwater Plants
* Psychotropic Underwater Plants
* Transportation (storm-proof undersea barges)
* Coral and Geodes
* Nonferrous Metals
* Shipwreck Cargo
What They Want...
* Rustproof Metal Tools and Weapons
* Bags/Jugs of fresh water
* Buoyant wood - it is like anti-gravity to them
[Answer]
Many of the ideas I had (metal goods, ceramics, etc) are well-described by other answers. So I'll focus on the ones that are not yet listed.
## Storage
Even on land, secure storage of goods is an important service. Banks can secure actual goods (think safe deposit boxes) or virtual ones (a tally of your money, so you don't have to hide it under your mattress). And there are many non-banks that can keep goods safe. Safety here means both safe from others stealing it and safe from the environment.
## Accumulating Wealth
Merfolk may also wish to own things that are not stored away but, rather, kept in production. For example, a flock of sheep. Milk, meat, and wool might be of direct use to a merperson, or they could be used to trade for other things or simply to accumulate wealth. Owning a flock and hiring humans to caretake it might work out better economically than simply trading for the actual goods you want each time you want them.
Depending on the laws of the human society, it is possible that a merperson who owned land (even if they could not live on it, or even visit) might have rights that they would not have otherwise. Voting (if it is a society that votes), or the occasional ear of the monarch, or other legal niceties accorded to landowners.
The goods the merfolk produce could pay for these things and their upkeep, and pay the humans they hire to look after them.
## Record Keeping
Another poster mentioned writing and I agree it's a strong choice. Recording the history and stories of the merfolk, as well keeping records of their financial transactions would be very useful.
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A pair other ideas about what merfolks could desire from surface people:
* air: surface people could easily fill animal bladders or goatskins
with air (they have lungs) and sell them to the merfolks: they could be used as
entertainment (think of bubble fountains for the VIP parties) or to help lifting heavy weights underwater. Of course, if merfolk have lungs too, they could fill them on their own\*, so, even if goatskins and bladders would still be useful, they would be of less value
* transportation: swimming for long distances would be very tiring, and probably only the richest ones could afford to breed a dolphin or a giant seahorse to ride. But merfolk could easily pay for a lift on human ships: these could feature some kind of net (or even a small undersea cabin) underwater, where the merfolk can enter and wait for the ship to arrive near their destination
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**Don't think too hard - just look at real life**
In a way you kind of answered your own question. In real life we have lots of countries that buy/sell each other loads of things. In the past, we had barter, but many governments minted their own coin. This goes back to at least Ancient Greek times - the Chinese even had paper currency!
Alternatively, larger deals incorporated other things. For example, in exchange for a huge amount of gold and other treasures, the Pope once sent away Atilla the Hun's army. Plus, you even say that there are other kingdoms - the merpeople are not unified. I'm going to try and answer 2 questions at once: **what do the merpeople want from humans**, and **what do the humans want from merpeople** (I know you have the second part covered, but maybe you'll get some new ideas). So, a few things that can take place:
**Currency**: Merpeople pay for human goods with either **gold/precious gems** they find underwater, or even **sand dollars**! If they are a hierarchical civilization, I have no doubt that each kingdom has its own mining operation, and not all areas of the ocean are equally as bountiful. They'll also want to buy minerals and rocks from humans on land that are rare underwater for decorative reasons, capital, or other reasons.
**Luxury/hi-tech products**: Greek fire (fire that doesn't get put out with water) would be found easily in the land of merpeople but its secrets has been lost above ground. Souvenirs from shipwrecks are also possible - you can orchestrate entire deals with this if the ship is valuable enough. Rich merpeople would want to buy stuff that is common on land, but impossible to craft and grow underwater - like human architecture or palm trees. Paintings would be uncommon underwater as the paint would just go everywhere, so paintings would be popular purchases also.
**Military support**: Hire a mercenary navy. Imagine fighting a force that comes from under water and attacks you, and can't be drowned at sea - they're at home when they're at sea! Plus, they have greek fire, which means their ships might burn, but yours WILL burn! Tech inferiority or not, this is going to be terrifying. Rich humans will buy mercs from the ocean. The merpeople may also hire human mercenaries to kill any humans overfishing in their waters on land itself.
**Food**: Fish - obviously the cheapest and most consistent product can be sold to humans in return for all kinds of human food, like coconuts, various exotic meats like chicken and lamb, etc. It's just a matter of whether merpeople can digest it, and if they can afford it.
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Okay, I'm going to go there.
**Sex.**
It's going to happen. You know it, I know it. Mermaids know it.
[Professional mermaids say 'merverts' are making their lives a hassle](https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/professional-mermaids-merverts-cosplay-dress-up-13358424.php)
Can't have a believable economy without the oldest profession.
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Territoriality. They would want surface dwellers to stop doing certain things, or start doing certain other things.
Stop dumping that filth in the river! Whew! It really stinks. On the other hand, if you dump your raw sewage in this *other* river, it will nicely fertilize the commercial kelp beds.
Stop using drag nets to fish in this area. That's our garden for plaid weed, and your nets destroy it.
[Answer]
**Various foods**.
Venison.
* This matured and flavorsome meat would be highly valued by people who only have fish, crabs, prawns and sea-slugs as protein sources. Those who enjoy the ultimate acquired taste of the [sea urchin](https://pogogi.com/sea-urchin-a-seafood-delicacy), may also gain a taste for [Fois gras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras).
Pheasant.
* Again a luxury meat which requires dry-air preparation, strong, rich flavor - a rare meat to be savored by the rich.
Chicken, beef, lamb.
* These flavors are more for the common people of the sea, relatively cheap and available to the masses.
Herbs and spices.
* There are many thousands of such flavors simply not available in the deep, where everything is just plain salty.
Boiled sweets.
* Gobstoppers could provide a non-nutritious energy boost, various flavours might please, lemon, mint, strawberry, pepper - well who knows what might catch the mere-people's imagination and taste.
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My first choice was going to be metal, but you've already mentioned that it's a limited resource for the land people. My second choice is decorated stone / statues, reasonining is pretty simple. I can't imagine weilding a hammer and chisle underwater being very efficient.
So for the rich merfolk they would commission pillars, statues and ornamants as the high end goods. For the more normal merfolk, probably not that far different from what the people want. They'd want different grains/berries/vegetables/meat/feathers/hides/furs.
this bit is a little fluffy as i'm not sure how it would occur. I'd imagine the greatest service they would like is to be able to record their knowledge, we write, I'm assuming the merfolk can't write, nor do they have the capability to.
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Freshwater fish. Living in the sea, this would be an otherwise unobtainable delicacy.
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# Medicine
Just as the oceans have a bounty of medicinal fish and plants, so too does the land, in rainforests, deserts, all over. Obviously, merfolk would not generally be able to waltz deep into a rainforest to collect plants.
# Stone
Given that merfolk have limited access to metals/tools, they would have a hard time quarrying anything but the softest rocks. However, powerful merfolk would clearly prefer a palace built from marble over one built from coral. This would surely be expensive beyond measure, but that only adds to the prestige value of the result. Conversely, merfolk would have better access to pumice and other volcanic rocks emanating from steam vents. As you know, pumice is valued on land as a light, porous rock useful for personal grooming, soil filler, etc.
# Knowledge
Land walkers would surely have knowledge of principles and processes which occur more readily (or exclusively) out of the water. Because they lack the benefit of buoyancy, land folk have been forced to make heavier use of leverage, leading to wheels, levers, and the like. Conversely, merfolk would have much better, even intuitive understanding of fluid dynamics, including pressure, turbulence, laminar flow, venturi effects, and other things which are useful for building above-ground devices of varying complexity. Of course, they would describe these phenomena in medieval language, but that does not preclude a kind of formal knowledge of them which can be communicated across species.
# Clothing
Merfolk would be challenged to weave fabrics underwater. Perhaps they could use coastal areas to harvest reeds and fibrous plants, but surely they could not grow vast tracts of cotton and other textile plants, and looms would be exceedingly difficult to operate underwater. It would also be more challenging to tan and dry hides, and bringing leather hides underwater probably wouldn't be useful anyway. Plant-based clothing could likely survive and would surely have luxury value even if domestic merclothes were more practical.
# Fertilizer
On the one hand, we must ask: "What does a mertoilet look like, and how does it work?" Presumably, elimination simply occurs in some area where the currents take away and disperse the results quickly. On the other hand, most plants are growth-limited by the availability of phosphorus, nitrogen, and other elements commonly occurring in animal waste. It's possible that merfolk have domesticated large fields of seaweed, and that they fertilize them by also keeping their food fish in the same area, possibly also using the fields as their communal toilet.
However, water will tend to disperse nutrients, and simple tide action will guarantee that the water doesn't just sit still and let nutrients settle slowly over the course of hours. Perhaps merfolk learn how to fertilize seaweed manually by burying wastes in the seabed near the plants. If so, then one limit to seaweed yields will be how much "fertilizer" they can apply. While medieval Asians were applying "night soil" to their fields, this was far less common among Europeans, so it is plausible that your land walkers would rather sell their waste to the stupid merfolk than let it build up in their cities and cause disease. They could even build primitive sewer pipes that bring it directly down into shallow coastal areas, and thus a coastal landwalker and merfolk city could operate symbiotically.
[Answer]
I am going to go with another material manufactured via fire:
## Coins of Glass
I could see Coins of Glass being a legitimate currency. Because it is an item that can be only be crafted by humans, the rarity of it would be its value -- MUCH more valuable than all that cheap gold we have lying around the sea-bottom.
Of course merfolk wouldn't realize that glass actually comes from sand.
In addition, clear glass will almost appear magical underwater as it would be nearly invisible.
[Answer]
Military: Mercenaries, weapons, training, logistics (e.g. canned food), technology, etc
Quality of live: Jewelry, technology, glassware, food, art, literature, etc
Production: Technology, tools (e.g. steel mining picks), machines, slaves, etc
Services: Companionship, banking, outsourced prisons, education, performances, etc
Abstract: Alliances, land ownership, investment, mining rights, etc.
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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.
Pretend I'm writing a story about a world exactly like our own.
Real world physics, no magic, modern technology.
Suddenly an eccentric world leader comes up with the idea to replace the melting glaciers in Earth's polar regions with glaciers/icebergs made of [pykrete](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete), which has a higher melting point, in a mad/genius attempt to help save the polar bears and other arctic life.
Ignoring the political issues involved, would this be a viable solution or would it have disasterous consequences?
---
**Clarification:**
The world leader is not attempting to replace the entire north/south pole with pykrete, just the parts that melt due to Earth's rising average temperature.
He's mad/genius, not completely stupid.
[Answer]
No. The logistical issues have already been covered but even if you solved that it wouldn't help.
1. The Pykrete would still melt, it has low thermal conductivity so it melts slowly but if the exterior temperature is above freezing then it will still melt. There is no need for equations here. The speed is greater than zero so as the temperature rises the pykrete will melt eventually.
2. Pykrete is not white. It's a short of muddy-brown color. This would cause it to absorb far more heat from sunlight than the white ice or snow does - and actually cause the area to warm faster than it would otherwise.
Essentially you are creating an artificial [Ice Albedo feedback](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice%E2%80%93albedo_feedback) situation. Sea Ice has an Albedo of between 0.5 and 0.7, reflecting away between 50% and 70% of the incoming energy from the sun. As per this [study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165232X99000026) fresh snow has an albedo of around 0.83 and ice around 0.38.
Unfortunately I cannot find a figure for the albedo of pykrete but from the color alone you can see that it will be lower than that of pure ice, allowing it to absorb more energy. Trees and bare soil for example have an albedo of around 0.15 which seems reasonable as a starting point for a model. Even if you are generous to Pykrete and take a figure somewhere between ice (0.38) and bare soil (0.15) you're absorbing 3 times as much energy as snow does, and still substantially more energy than ice.
[Answer]
The polar ice caps are estimated to contain between 27 and 32 million cubic kilometer of ice. Let's round this up to 30 million cubic kilometer.
To make pykerete, we would need to blend it with sawdust, so that water is 86% and sawdust 14%. Let's also round up ice density to 1000 $kg/m^3$ and wood density to 700 $kg/m^3$
The volume of sawdust required is...
$$30 \times 10^6 km^3 of \ ice \times \frac{14 \text{% sawdust by mass}}{86 \text{% ice by mass}} \times \frac{1000 kg/m^3 \text{ ice}}{700 kg/m^3 \text{ sawdust}} = 7 \times 10^6 km^3 of sawdust$$
According to this [estimate](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34134366) there are $3 \times 10^{12}$ trees on Earth. Assuming an average volume of 1 cubic meter of wood per tree, it turns out we don't have enough trees to make all that sawdust.
So we would end up with no trees, lees oxygen in the atmosphere and a destroyed global climate.
[Answer]
The current winter max ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is roughly [20,000km$^{3}$](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_ice_pack#/media/File:Plot_arctic_sea_ice_volume.svg) to replace that with Pykrete you'd need around 2800 gigatons of sawdust or similar filler material and 20,000 gigatons of fresh water to produce that much Pykrete.
Pykrete still melts at 0°C, it just melts slower than the same volume of pure ice, so the end result is that you're dumping fresh water and wood chips into the Arctic Ocean. The added carbon from the wood could be disastrous in terms of anthropogenic warming based on Carbon Dioxide and Methane releases. The fact that the sawdust melted out of the Pykrete would cover the surface and prevent light from getting into the water is a two edged sword, it will reduce the ocean [albedo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo) compared to open water but it will also choke the surface disrupting the [phytoplankton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoplankton) blooming cycles that form the basis of the oceanic food chain and a large source of global oxygen.
I've ignored any replacement of permanent ice like the [Greenland Ice Sheet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet) due to the logistically impossibility of emplacing material in such locations.
[Answer]
I can't stand idle and watch bad math go unchecked ;-). I will present the correct figures for how much wood this would require first, then append the equation of how to calculate at the end.
### Global wood production
Firstly, how much wood does the globe consume annually? [According to this link](https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/timber/mis/presentations/PepkeGlobalWoodMkts050510.pdf), it was close to:
$$ R\_w = 4\times 10^9 \; \text{m}^3\text{/yr} $$
As of 2008. I believe this includes all construction *and* firewood. We will use a round value for the density of wood as $\rho\_w = 700 \; \text{kg/m}^3 $ and convert this into a mass:
$$ R\_w = 2.8 \times 10^{12} \; \text{kg/yr} $$
### Replacing all polar ice with Pykrete
I didn't know what Pykrete was before this question, but a quick google search suggests it is a mixture of 86% ice and 14% wood pulp / sawdust **by weight**. If one wishes to replace *all* 30 million cubic kilometers of polar ice with and equivalent amount of Pyrkete, you would need
$$M\_w = 3.6 \times 10^{18} \text{kg}$$
of wood. This is roughly six orders of magnitude, or *1 million* times more wood than is produced annually.
### Replacing just the net yearly ice loss
[According to NASA](https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-study-shows-global-sea-ice-diminishing-despite-antarctic-gains) global polar ice is decreasing at a rate of:
$$ R\_I = 5 \times 10^4 \; \text{km}^2 \text{/yr}$$
I wasn't able to find an estimate of how many cubic meters this is, but if we assume an approximate average of 100m of height (it doesn't really matter, as you will see), then the rate of volume of ice loss is:
$$ R\_I = 5 \times 10^{12} \; \text{m}^3\text{/yr} $$
To produce this much Pykrete a year you would need:
$$ M\_w = 6.1 \times 10^{14} \text{kg} $$
per year, or *219* times the current world yearly wood consumption.
### Why Pykrete
Besides the infeasible scales we are discussing, I saw no indication online that Pykrete would give any advantage to ice loss; [Pykrete is structurally similar to concrete](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete) at temperatures around $-15 \text{C}$.
### Appendix: Calculate the mass of wood for a given volume of Pykrete:
The fact that Pykrete is 14% wood by total weight can be expressed as:
$$ M\_w = 0.14 M\_p $$
Where $M\_p$ is the total mass of Pykrete. This total mass is of course the mass of both ice and wood combined: $M\_p = M\_w + M\_i$. Substituting this and rearranging gives:
$$ 0.86 M\_w = 0.14 M\_i $$
The mass of ice $M\_i$ can be calculated as $M\_i = \rho\_i V\_i$ where $\rho\_i$ is the density of ice. The Volume of ice can be substituted for the total volume of Pykrete minus the total volume of wood: $V\_i = V\_p - V\_w$:
$$ 0.86 M\_w = 0.14 \rho\_i ( V\_p - V\_w ) $$
And finally the volume of wood is related to the mass of wood: $V\_w = M\_w / \rho\_w $ where $\rho\_w$ is the density of wood. Therefore:
$$ 0.86 M\_w = 0.14 \rho\_i ( V\_p - M\_w / \rho\_w ) $$
Some algebra is now required to solve for $M\_w$. It simplifies to:
$$ M\_w = \frac{0.14 \rho\_i \rho\_w}{0.86\rho\_w + 0.14\rho\_w} V\_p $$
Which is the required amount of wood as a function of the desired volume of Pykrete.
[Answer]
I'm not sure this is an answer, but it's too long for a comment.
How do you expect to freeze the pykrete?
If you simply expect to dump all this material (stated by other answers) and it freeze on it's own, you are adding to the problem of rising temperatures. Even if the water and wood mixture freezes, it has raised the surrounding temperature to do so. A single ton of this material probably wouldn't make that much of a temperature difference, but at the amounts you are talking about, you're likely to cause more problems.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us:
>
> <https://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/bergerd/NSC_111/thermo6.html>
>
> 2. When heat is transferred from one body to another, the temperatures equalize. As the temperature of the heat source falls, that of the heat sink rises.
>
>
>
So, as the water and wood mass loses temperature (heat source), the temperature of the surrounding ice (heat sink) rises. Of course, this doesn't account for latent heat, but it's still heat transfer.
Cooling/freezing materials in a mechanical way, such as using a refrigeration unit, simply moves the heat from one material and radiates it in another location. Needing to freeze X,XXX number of tons of water and wood will raise the temperature of another location by a considerable amount.
The First Law of Thermodynamics tells us:
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> <http://wikieducator.org/Thermodynamics/Energy>
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> The internal energy of a system is constant unless changed by doing work or by heating
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>
>
So, we would have to move the heat out of the "system" of the poles and move it someplace else. Unfortunately, on a scale this large, the Earth's atmosphere likely becomes the new "system". Unless we radiate the heat directly into space, we're simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.
To do any of this freezing in a man-made way would take massive refrigeration units that would cause more heat production and greenhouse gasses, causing more issues with the heating of the poles. Even if we could physically build them, the cost would be astronomical, probably on the order of the GDP of some medium sized countries.
And if would could still manage that, why not go ahead and just freeze salt water? It freezes at about 28 degrees F (<https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oceanfreeze.html>) and we'd have to get the ice to be considerably colder than that to stay frozen for any significant amount of time to make the effort worth doing.
According to an article I just found, the ice is also melting from the bottom:
>
> <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/may/09/global-warming-is-melting-antarctic-ice-from-below>
>
> With global warming, both of the poles are warming quite quickly, and this warming is causing ice to melt in both regions. When we think of ice melting, we may think of it melting from above, as the ice is heated from the air, from sunlight, or from infrared energy from the atmosphere. But in truth, a lot of the melting comes from below. For instance, in the Antarctic, the ice shelves extend from the land out over the water. The bottom of the ice shelf is exposed to the ocean. If the ocean warms up, it can melt the underside of the shelf and cause it to thin or break off into the ocean.
>
>
>
The research paper the article references:
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> <http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/4/eaap9467.full>
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> Using a simple ocean model driven by observed forcing, we show that freshwater input from basal melt of ice shelves partially offsets the salt flux by sea ice formation in polynyas found in both regions, preventing full-depth convection and formation of DSW (Dense Shelf Water).
>
>
>
Instead of just dumping ice on top, the real answer seems to be to also remove the heat from below. So, to make our ice in a manner that might work, we would have to take at least some of those ginormous refrigeration units to the bottom of the ice shelf to cool the bottom of the glaciers.
Now that I've written this out, it seems more like an argument that the real scientists in your book would use against the "eccentric world leader". Combine this answer with the other answers provided, and the pykrete plan really does seem to be a horribly thought out plan, just like you might expect from a politician who gets their "good ideas" from lobbyists.
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[Question]
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The area of the earth covered by desert is more than 20%. (Sites range from 20-33%, I don't know why the wide range).
With technology close to providing zero cost solar (not free, but declining each year by a substantial fraction) the ability to desalinate water and pump it over desert land will be viable at some point in time.
What would be the resulting downside to doing this? The new land would be a source of food to reduce starvation, and plants to help clean the air and provide oxygen. Would there be any negative impact to the earth's ecosystem?
[Answer]
Dust - and sand - is a vital part of the engine which drives our climate, they constitute the majority of nucleating particles in our atmosphere which allows moisture to condense and form rain, hail and snow under a wider range of conditions. In addition to that, the blow-off from deserts also fertilise the oceans to a high degree and create algae blooms which feed food chains.
Without these effects the result on global climate and local oceanic life could be catastrophic. How catastrophic - unfortunately we don't know yet, there's simply too much we don't know about how the process works.
However not all deserts are sand and dust - the Antarctic is technically a desert, which is why your sources disagree on the percentage.
[Answer]
One counter-intuitive effect would probably be severe damage to parts of the South American rainforests if certain parts of the Sahara disappear. Apparently they are relying on the nutrients in the dust that is blown over the Atlantic. [Link to one recent article on the phenomenon](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100809/full/news.2010.396.html).
[Answer]
A lot of negative posts, so here's a more positive view:
While terraforming ALL of the Earth's deserts away might be a pipe dream at the moment, there were serious engineering proposals in the 20th Century that might have altered the climate of the Sahara considerably, by flooding areas that were below the sea level:
The most interesting of these projects was the Qatarra Sea proposal in Western Egypt, which would have also generated electric power in the process. While the lake itself would likely be too salty to suport life, the shores would thrive.
Of course, the electricity potential of such a project would be dwarfed by the energy generated from [littering the desert with solar panels](http://www.desertec.org/).
As countries around the Sahara will get better governance & property rights protections, and become richer, they will probably follow the path of other better managed countries in making the desert bloom, with or without solar power.
Careful ecological management could greatly shrink the Sahara even without massive irrigation work. With fusion or near-zero cost solar, it's quite likely that more and more of the wastelands of Earth will be reclaimed. It would likely not be massive and wasteful open lakes, but subterranean irrigation micro-arrays going straight to the roots of cultivated plants (better known as [Drip Irrigation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_irrigation)).
There will be those who will moan and decry the loss of habitat for some desert spider or spiny shrub, but most likely the Chadians and Nigeriens will be too busy growing out their gardens to care.
[Answer]
Just dig a hole in desertground, about 2 meters deep, than dig a hole on the same latitude, but not in the desert. You'll notice that the desertground is much cooler.
Sand reflects more light than a forest or moister ground, which absorbs more. This means, your idea would heat the earth up even more.
You should read about [albedo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo) which tells how a surface reflects light.
The albedo factor of deserts is ~0.3 which means 30% is reflected, Forests have 0.05-0.18, so this is 6 to <2 times less.
When 20% of the earth will absorb 600% the sunlight it does now, the earh will absorb a total of 120% more sunligh (!) and thus warm up.
The gained space would soon be populated by people and within some generations, earths population growth will get even faster, so the food problem would be pushed a little but further in the future but is not solved.
[Answer]
You need to distinguish between semi-desert like Arizona, and "real" desert like Sahara or Atacama.
Semidesert does have soil and can benefit from irrigation.
"Real" desert has little or no soil (no organic materials). Irrigating sand will NOT create fertile land. It will take decades to add organic materials and bacteria to create fertile soil on top of sand.
Also it would be wise to take into account any **future climate changes we are already committed to due of already released CO2.** Temperatures **will** increase and deserts would be more "deserted" and less hospitable.
Also, with climate change, currently productive lands will experience dry spells and become desert, so irrigation efforts should be focused there (if money are issue, as it always is).
Interesting side effect of more irrigated land would be more evaporation, which will (according to weather models) increase severity of weather events (more vapors = more energy in air = more energy for Nature to play with). Things like tornadoes.
[Answer]
The safest answer is that we don't know. Life on Earth is often the result of an equilibrium and pumping to much water into the land will cause some problems. As other mentioned, we need deserts, as they play a role in our biosphere. I will say that we don't know for sure what will happen if we change millions of kilometres into marshes by pumping water into them but we could still try to regain the lands that were taken by the desert during the last decades/centuries.
Re-affecting the land cannot be done simply by adding more water, it is not always the solution. In northern China and in the Sahel, the main source of desertification is the erosion of the grounds. Erosion caused (in China) by overusing the land. A combination of deforestation and overusing the soil with poor agricultural practices has led to the desertification of what was once the birthplace of the chinese civilization. This problem is also present in the Amazon. The deforestation has not led to fertile lands but lands that are affected but erosion in a large scale. The ground is simply collapsing as there is a lot of water but nothing to retain the soil.
If it can be done, it is surely a slow process. Add water to fill rivers and wait for the plants to develop before adding more water. Increase the water with the increase of water retention given by the increase in plants in the area.
[Answer]
To expand on a point Sempie made, the colour of the ground determines how much light it reflects. White is the best reflector; black absorbs. This is why a black car will be hotter on the outside than a white car after a day in the sun.
This principle also applies to infra-red, which is the type of radiation via which we get our heat from the sun. White or near-white surfaces such as desert sand reflect a lot of heat. However, the reflected heat does not all go back out into space; some stays and diffuses evenly over the planet.
If you were to change the desert into a more fertile landscape, such as one of soil and trees, or fields for farming, your land would be hotter. However, the air *near* the land - I.e. the zone in which people walk around - would actually be cooler. This effect is why deserts are hot in the day and cold at night: during the day, the sand reflects the Sun's heat and heats the air, which is what people move around in and breathe. This makes it feel very hot. During the night, there is no heat to reflect and the ground has not stored any, so it gets very cold.
So, in summary, you wouldn't actually have a net **temperature** change. The **difference** between day and night, however, would be quite different, but this would make for very good farming land.
N.B.: Although the temperature wouldn't change as a *direct* result, other climatic effects will occur and may have an impact on temperature. See other answers.
[Answer]
We are already seeing most of the negative impacts of these kinds of changes already. The western states such as Nevada and California are now experiencing some of the worst droughts in US history.
Many projects starting in the first half of the 20th century have drastically changed the landscape such as the building of the Hoover Dam, and thousands of other dams all over the US, as well as other big projects like the Central Valley Project in CA which diverted millions of gallons of water to the central valley to irrigate farmland.
This prompted millions of folks to move to areas which were previously deserts. The land was not suited to support so many people; people who showered every day and used thousands of gallons of water a year per household to grow lawns.. lawns in the middle of the desert. This all lead to the water crisis they are experiencing now. There are many water saving regulations in place now, but it is too little, too late.
It is also very unlikely that we would ever be able to eliminate the world's deserts. The current rate that deserts are growing massively outstrip our ability to reverse it. A desalinization plant takes a massive amount of power to operate. Only wealthy nations such as Saudi Arabia are rich enough to build and operate them.
Desalinization plants must also be relatively close to the coast. The Sahara Desert is thousands of miles across. There would be no way to bring enough fresh water inland to turn it into a tropical paradise.
I'm sorry to say, but this is just a pipe dream (pun intended).
[Answer]
Why can't all the organic waste we produce from foodstuffs isn't used to layer areas of desert with sand driven over it..e.g.from Cairo..This will help hold onto water that falls, though rainfall is irregular....
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[Question]
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I'm looking to use water as a radiation shielding device, but do not want to waste space on my ship with waste and other water byproducts. Rather than just storing waste, I plan to use it as part of my radiation shielding, particularly the urine.
A bit of background on my ship. The ship is not large, and is a 30 meter diameter sphere on the front of an atomic engine (not radiation shielded) with different levels; 25 meters for a spinning artificial gravity, 4 for a water filled layer of insulation, and the last meter filled with....waste. The layers of (semi) liquid are completely heated by the excess heat of the engine, and are separated by an inch think metal.
This is not about how to get this craft into space, but rather to travel in space with it. Assuming there is a small waste reclamation plant on the ship at some location, I plan to give this ship a long travel time, (to Pluto and back) with a crew of 4 people.
**This is a bit of an awkward question to ask, but how well does urine (and possibly other waste) act as an additional radiation shield?**
I expect they may not like the smell however.....
Bonus: How well does flesh work as a radiation shield?
Edit:
For all those curious about recycling the water for recirculation, *I plan to*, but the journey of the ship will be 34 years give or take. This means that not only will the water from urine be used, but also from fecal matter and other bodily fluids. Even then, there's diminishing returns on the amount of water reclaimed; although that's not a problem for the ISS, if my travellers are 3.5 billion miles out (~15 years at top speed) they will have a problem with replenishing their supplies along the way. I don't plan for them to encounter further water, so they'll need every drop. The process for fecal water reclamation is a bit longer and their water reclaimer is not suited to that amount of waste.
However, I don't feel that information is relevant to the question, but rather provides a bit of background as to why the question is in the form it's in and why I don't "just reclaim the water then store it".
[Answer]
Urine would work fine.
However, urine has a lot of dissolved salts and other nasty stuff in it that can, over time, create buildups that would block pipes and cause other problems.
Also, if it springs a leak, would you rather be breathing in floating globs of urine or floating globs of water? (assuming a micro gravity vehicle).
It doesn't take much to purify the urine into water (especially if you don't take it all the way to drinkable). Unless the vehicle has very low power generation/collection capabilities, there should be plenty of power to bring it back to drinkable. That would mean that you can either bring less water or you can have a reserve tank that you can drink in a pinch (say, your water tank gets punctured). Also, there will be fewer problems if those two tanks get mixed somehow.
[Answer]
I'm fond of a phrase I've coined: "technology dichotomy." You can't, for example, expect to have time travel without first inventing the wheel. How does this apply to your question?
Recycling technology preceeded space travel by a long, long way. [Aristotle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#History) understood the basics of desalination. In other words, it is a technology dichotomy to have an interplanetary space ship *without* reclamation.
Next, add inefficiency. The cost of tanks to hold all the water you need without reclamation, plus the tanks for waste, the fuel to move it all ... all because you don't want to recycle.
Finally, add the benefits of recycling. In an emergency, you can ration and use reclamation to survive for a very long time. Without it, once you've drunk the last drop in the tank, you're basically dead.
Techniques could be used to make sure there is always adequate radition shielding, such as inner and outer tanks, one to hold source water, and one to hold waste such that there is always a minimum amount of water between you and outer space... but we're layering solution-upon-solution just to avoid reclamation, which is a millenial-old science and an obviously-available technology.
...And this all assumes you can drink water that has been used for radiation shielding. Various sources ([1](https://emergency.cdc.gov/radiation/watersafety.asp), [2](https://www.livescience.com/13443-radiation-contaminated-water-kill.html)) suggest irradiated water is unlikely to be a problem. But I'm not sure I want to drink the water and wait for the warm, fuzzy feeling. *IfyouknowwhatImean...* They're not testing water that has been used for interplanetary radiation shielding.
You're probably looking for shock value, but in reality, keeping the shielding and hydration sources separate is far more efficient, meaning a more cost-effective operation. If you don't do it, your competitor will, just to save fuel costs if nothing else.
I'm not a nuclear physicist, but I suspect a layer of [heavy water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water) (deuterium oxide or 2H2O) would be a better radiation shield than regular water or urine, and that your ship would only carry enough water to compensate for loss due to imperfect reclamation and emergencies.
As for flesh. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're thinking of a biologically-grown shielding and that you're not putting people or animals at risk. Either way, flesh would be an unlikely candidate for raditation shielding due to its tendency to suffer from [Melanoma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanoma), better known as "skin cancer," which is caused by radiation.
[Answer]
No no, that's a terrible idea.
## Radiation shielding tends to become radioactive.
When an atom is bombarded by radiation, it is often altered - neutrons flipped to protons, lose a neutron, gain one, etc. When it's *just water*, you're dealing with only 2 atoms - hydrogen and oxygen - you know what they do. You know how to deal with it. And water is pretty well-behaved, doesn't take much to clean up water in a light-water reactor.
```
From "Hogan's Heroes":
Mueller: This water is for use in nuclear experiments. It is known as "heavy" water.
Klink: I drank some of that water. (gasps) Will I die from it?
Mueller: Only if Berlin finds out.
```
Urine is made of *myriad* elements: these are, after all, things the human body is rejecting. So it could be almost *anything*, now you have to contend with what radioactivity could induce onto all those atoms and isotopes.
Cites for shielding: [Cosmic-ray activation of some elements](https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.03792)... [Activation generally](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_radioactivity) (Wikipedia) [Rutgers](http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/ugrad/labs/summer/rad.pdf) on activation and shieldng
[Answer]
The space radiation consists almost exclusively of charged particles slamming with high velocity against the hull. When they are deaccelerated, they will emit x-rays.
*Water and everything with high water content (food, flesh) and therefore urine has **excellent** shielding properties against charged particles*.
The thing is that water allows in contrast to heavy elements that the charged particle loses their energy more gradually. Heavy elements are stopping charged particles fast and this *causes* strong X-rays...*Bremsstrahlung*.
This is not good, so the perfect shielding a thin outer hull as container, then, erm...*water* as particle shield and then a heavy element shielding to reduce the remaining x-ray radiation. Space agencies are well aware of the problem so the idea of using water as shield are not new.
[Answer]
A variation of what you are looking at has been conceptually designed. This is the "[Spacecoach](https://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=35894)", and is built around massive water balloons which encases the manned portions in order to provide radiation shielding, thermal buffering and a massive store of life support materials.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fXYKE.jpg)
*One conceptual design for the Spacecoach*
The basic Spacecoach can use its vast store of water as a "once through" system, and the waste water is put through the engines, which resemble overpowered microwaves, and proivide an ISP of between 800 and 1200 seconds, similar to nuclear thermal engines, but with less thrust due to a much smaller mass flow.
As noted, it is crazy to think that you can have an advanced spaceship *without* already understanding recycling and closed or semi closed life support systems, and even the Spacecoach would probably work to reclaim water, possibly using wastewater (suitably treated) to run a hydroponic farm, for example. Any accidents or problems in space could take a long time to resolve (assuming they are survivable), so husbanding your resources is always wise.
[Answer]
This has been covered in a book called [Packing for Mars](http://maryroach.net/packing-for-mars.html). IIRC the food is the shield on the outward leg and the waste is the shield coming back.
[Answer]
To an extent, yes.
There are several types of radiation:
* Alpha and beta radiation can be stopped by a thin sheet of metal, so it is not a big issue.
* Gamma rays are very penetrating and cannot be stopped entirely but the more mass you put between the source and yourself, the better. In nuclear power stations they have thick walls made out of heavy concrete, but really it's just a question of how much mass you have between the source and yourself. Heavy materials can be packed closer to the core where they will block more radiation due to being closer, but if you have many tons of something (eg water) it makes sense to place it between the reactor and the crew.
* Neutrons are effectively blocked by light elements but not heavy elements. Since a water molecule has two hydrogen elements, it is quite effective at blocking neutrons.
What you probably want to do is have a long spacecraft with the crew at one end and the reactor at the other. That way, you have the mass of everything else blocking the gamma rays. You also benefit by having more distance between the crew and the reactor, which is a good form of protection in itself.
<http://www.nuclear-power.net/nuclear-power/reactor-physics/atomic-nuclear-physics/radiation/shielding-of-ionizing-radiation/>
[Answer]
This is what might be called a *closed ecology* kind of question. For a journey of the length you are talking about, you would need to decide whether you are going to add massive amounts of mass to take things like drinking water with you, or are you going to recycle as much as you can in order to reduce mass.
If this trip is 34 years, you are going to want to look at as much recycling as possible, just from a practical standpoint. That means everything possible. Any salts removed from the Urine get used somewhere else. Solid waste gets used for something. anything you vent to the outside is lost from your system and cannot be recovered, so you need to bring the replacement for the human body with you, which will add mass you have to move. This also goes for anything you put in a position to be unuseable, such as using urine for radiation shielding.
It was mentioned that matter used as radiation shielding will become radioactive over time. That means in a closed system using urine as a shield, you will not want to recycle that liquid. 34 years continuous exposure to even low level radiation is going to give your passengers all kinds of nasty tumors and cancers. It may even be lethal over time.
All of this doesn't even address the question of *what was the shielding before the urine tank filled up*?
So the short answer is *Yes*, urine will make a workable radiation shield. It's just a really Bad Idea to do so.
Now, If you are really attached to the pee shield idea, you might make some adjustments. Perhaps the astronauts fill it up during the initial phase then go into some sort of Cryo-Sleep for the bulk of the journey. this is going to dramatically reduce the amount of stuff you have to bring with you, and reducing the requirement for a nearly 100% efficient closed system. They wake at the destination, then go back into Cryo for the return.
Your only other option, really, is to build a much, much larger ship and bring the extra mass and food as you need for a 34 year voyage. Adjusting of course for whatever recycling capacity you have.
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[Question]
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In the [1989 Batman movie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096895/)[1],
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> the Joker uses a gas that makes the muscles on your face contract into a "smile" to kill people.
>
>
>
My question is simple; is there currently, or is there a way to make, a chemical that can make someone "smile to death". I imagine that such a substance would cause the muscles in ones' face to contract into a "smile", though it really doesn't matter to me how it works, just that it does. Bonus if you can make the chemical airborne so that we can gas those pesky --insert scapegoat ethnicity or cultural minority here-- with maximum efficiency. Because "if you've gotta go, you might as well go with a smile!" ;-)
I am not going to make it a requirement, but I would absolutely love to hear them laugh maniacally too ;-)
No, not laughing gas. Like in the movie. I cannot explain what happened any better than that.
[1] Yes, after you read the entire question (assuming you did) you will likely backtrack and say "Batman isn't hard-science." I know this and you know this. I don't care, I still want any answers to be based in [hard]science. Answers that are not will be downvoted ruthlessly! If "no, this is completely unrealistic" is the answer, that is fine.
---
[Answer]
My chief reference here is [Appendino et al. (2009)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685611/), though this possibility was first brought to my attention by [this National Geographic article](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090602-smiling-death-potion.html).
The Joker's real-world substance of choice? *Oenanthe crocata*, a type of [water dropwort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_dropwort), later infamously dubbed the "sardonic herb". Ancient Sardinians administered it to the elderly as a sort of sedative, shortly before killing them via various unpleasant methods. However, it large enough doses, it can kill the victim, as the neurotoxins contained in *oenanthe crocata* can be quite potent (see also [Schep et al. (2009)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19514873)).
The major neurotoxin here is [oenanthotoxin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oenanthotoxin) (not too creatively named). In short, it binds to the receptors in the central nervous system that would otherwise receive [gamma-Aminobutyric acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-Aminobutyric_acid), better known as GABA. GABA is the major [inhibitory neurotransmitter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitter#Excitatory_and_inhibitory) in mammals, meaning that it reduces the chance of sending a signal. If the receptors for GABA are blocked, the nervous system cannot function properly, and the person dies.
Now, oenanthotoxin also causes the [*risus sardonicus*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risus_sardonicus), the "sardonic grin" on the corpses of those given enough oenanthotoxin via *oenanthe crocata*. This arises from contractions of facial muscles due to the blockage of the receptors for the GABA neurotransmitter.
I haven't been able to figure out how oenanthotoxin could be made airborne, but I'll let the Joker know if I see him. I'm aware of [gasotransmitters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaseous_signaling_molecules) (see also [Mustafa et al. (2009)](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2744355/)), but I don't believe that oenanthotoxin is a member of that family.
Also, *risus sardonicus* can also arise early on from [tetanus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetanus) (according to [the CDC](http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/tetanus.pdf)); however, [most patients with tetanus survive](http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/tetanus.html), so it would be a very inefficient poison. That said, according to [this page](http://www.politedissent.com/archives/7233), the Joker deliberately infected a child with tetanus, which led to *risus sardonicus* - so somebody seems to have beaten us there! Still, I prefer oenanthotoxin, because it's much more lethal.
[Answer]
To amplify a couple of points in HDE 226868's answer:
1. [Oenanthotoxin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oenanthotoxin) and many other toxins that are solid at room temperature can be made airborne by binding them to an aerosol solvent. [Tear gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CS_gas), for example, uses a dichloromethane solvent to disperse what would otherwise be a fine crystalline solid. This even makes a rather dense cloud, like what we see in the movie.
2. Joker gas could be a combination of different chemicals. He could have combined one toxin that causes [risus sardonicus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risus_sardonicus) with another that does the actual killing - a [nerve gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)), maybe.
[Answer]
This is a little more creativity to get the desired effects. Ultimately our joker is using a nerve agent or 'nuerotoxin' of some type. They operate by interfering with the brains ability to communicate with a muscle (can go further here, it's interfering with the sodium component of your muscle, causing it to mass contract). Most common form of death here is actually asphyxia...your diaphragm that controls breathing is ultimately a muscle and not being able to communicate with the muscle that lets you breathe is a quicker death. This is followed shortly by heart failure/arrhythmia (heart also being a muscle).
So getting something that can mess with your muscle control that kills through the same means is actually quite plausible...if you can't control your facial muscles, you're not going to be able to control your diaphragm and death from asphyxia comes shortly after.
Strychnine was the first path I followed...it's known to cause the same effects risus sardonicus has as described by HDE, but this is oral and a pretty high dosage to get these effects. Sarin and cyclosarin (Iraq/Iran during their conflict) is another possible one here, though I doubt the joker would want to watch his victim smile for days on end before perishing. VX is another line of thought here...never really used and far deadlier than Sarin.
As an alternative...Batrachotoxin. This comes from a frog and is used by certain tribes as a blow dart poison. Same effect as above, though this is known to target the heart a bit faster (15-20 mins) and works in tiny (microgram) levels. A little modification, and perhaps the facial controls can go first. There is around 100 variations of these toxins (including tetrodotoxin...that poison blowfish are well known for) and it's feasible that atleast one of these toxins will have a pronounced affect on ones face causing the painful grin.
The majority of these toxins appear to be water born...getting them into an aerosol form seems feasible as well (kinda a misty gas).
This does leave the potential of a twisted smile on their face (caused more by all muscles in their face contracting) while dying, however the maniacally laughing trait is a bit of a miss on this route.
So option 2.
Contrary to popular belief, laughing gas does not make one laugh...a few popular movies and tv shows have tried to show that laughing gas makes on laugh at all costs, but it's not really true. It will make you high enough that more things seem funny, yes...but it's not forced laughter in the degree our joker wants here. The best I can find for inducing laughter is actually Psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms. These will cause a person to laugh uncontrollably for no real reason (along with quite a few other affects), however the experience seems subjective and everyone has a different response. Combining this with another toxin that does the actual killing might \*\*\*\*might\*\*\*\* result in seeing someone laugh themselves to death (1 in 1000?), but it's definitely not a guaranteed outcome.
Ya, painfully contorted smile caused by painfully contracting facial muscles seems to be the only route. No laughing yourself to death I guess.
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[Question]
[
It's 2016. A great evil threatens the world, and a great good--you--arises to stop it. Twitter and Instagram are set ablaze with stories of this heroic battle before the news media even has a chance to get on the scene. Collateral damage and casualties are high, but would have been much worse if not for your history-changing intervention.
Later on, some tinfoil-hat schmuck on 4chan with too much time on his hands connects the dots, enlists the help of /b/, and then somehow doxxes you for laughs (and *they would* do it). Turns out the masked hero is really a graphic designer in Boston who supposedly moonlights as an EMT. *Oops.*
Now your parents are being held hostage (the ransom: your death), you're being sued by half the city for property damage, and there are two mobs outside your home; one with cameras and microphones, one with pitchforks and torches. Oh, and the police and the military are on their way to ask you a lot of questions (possibly at gunpoint).
And, of course, TMZ is having a **field day**. Harvey Levin pisses himself with joy as ratings reach unprecedented highs.
Given today's world, **how could a superhero--subject to the following constraints--maintain a secret identity in this day and age, if at all?** Would s/he event *want* to?
* You do not have powers, skills, or gadgetry that make concealing your identity effortless. This includes, but is not limited to:
+ No psychic powers that erase or modify people's memories of you.
+ No shapeshifting powers to look like someone else.
+ No technomancy that can be used to destroy video or photo evidence of your activity *en masse*. You'll have to do this the old-fashioned way.
+ No omniscience that magically tells you if the coast is clear to change or not.
* Costumes are okay, but must be practical (e.g. you have to be able to see through a mask, and ensure it doesn't fall off if you can fly).
* You are more or less human. Maybe the alien/cyborg/mutant/uncannily-deformed parts of you can be concealed with clothing and makeup typical of a warm spring day.
* You are not a recluse; you have a civilian life, a day job, and maybe even a Facebook profile you use to stay in touch with friends and family.
* You might not even have super *powers* at all, but instead super *skills* like those of Batman or ~~Captain America~~ Hawkeye.
* Supervillains are also subject to these limitations, with the possible exception of the desire to maintain another identity.
Also, assume the following about the world:
* Superheroes *are* a part of our culture; the Marvel movies still make a buttload of money, and the Big Bang Theory still does the same product placement.
* The battle I hinted at is the first confirmed instance of super-powered humans. It will not likely be the last, however. How they come about is not relevant.
+ It's possible that other people *do* have superpowers already, but don't use or know of them (or are a lot better at concealing them than you were).
[Answer]
**There is only one way: The cooperation of your national government, and/or, a transnational body like the United Nations.**
As other posters have answered, surveillance is prevalent in our world. I'm not talking about clandestine/illicit surveillance either, instead its all the phone cameras that *will* record, stream, and post your super fight against your super enemies.
When that happens, I guarantee you that the government *will* want to talk to you for a very simple reason: Until proven otherwise, you're a threat. Sure you may save a city. Sure you may have stopped an alien invasion. But you're a powerful being among humans. **Nothing** can stop you. IF you decide that you don't like your city, state, or even national government, you can make life very hard for them on your own. This is an unacceptable state of affairs for any government.
So they'll track you down. No matter what you do, what mask you wear, what costume you have, they will find you. Its not even that hard. All those social media posts can be traced. Maybe as you fly away you're caught on radar or satellite heading to your hideout. Maybe someone sees you enter a manhole when you're escaping and they'll follow you there, finding tracks, fingerprints, etc.
They'll find you and study you and figure out how to kill you. Then they'll give you 2 options:
1. You work for them. They'll protect your identity. They'll protect your family. But you do their missions. You may, one day, select your own target sets, but you need to get them approved by the President or Prime Minister or whoever is the highest Executive in the land. And don't get me wrong: Other countries will notice too. Your country's allies will want to know what/who you are, and depending how close the relationship is, your host country may share your identity with them (think an American superhero being shared by the British), and allow them to also give you target sets in pursuit of their national interests (which has to be aligned with your country's). Your country's enemies will fear you because you're an asset to your country that they cannot counter. They will seek you out, try their best to neutralize you. They will set up an entire directorate in their Intelligence service to study you.
This will ruin the balance of power in the world, with your nation now has something that gives them a massive edge. Sure you may not be able to take over the world by yourself, and you're just one person. There's only so many places you can be in a reasonable amount of time. However, your country can be assured that *they will win any battle you're involved in.* Eventually, the United Nations will request that you'd be placed under their authority, in order to preserve the balance of power. And your country will agree to it, in exchange of some major, major concessions (trade, political, you name it.
2. You retire. Permanently. If you're unwilling to work for them, you're not going to do that superhero crap *ever again.* Remember, by this time, they know everything there is to know about you. They have a lot of leverage. They may not arrest you, they may not try to kill you, but they will not allow you to do anymore superhero stuff. They will hide you away, give you a stipend, make sure you and your family is comfortable, and *watch you for the rest of your natural life.* They do not want you to fall into an enemy's hands either. They don't even want you to fall into an ally's hands, so they will never allow you to emigrate or even leave the country. And if you try to defect, well, your wife isn't super is she? Your kids? Your parents? You know how it goes.
So, in conclusion, the only way you can keep your identity secret is for the government to keep it secret for you. They do this all the time. How many CIA paramilitary guys do you know? How many Tier 1 unit members do you know? The government has a lot of experience keeping people's identities secret. And it is in their interest to keep your identity secret from the public. But never from them.
[Answer]
Follow the lead of Gerry Anderson's "UFO" series.
Here we have an entire globe spanning organization (complete with a moon base) hiding in plain sight, since everyone "works" at a movie studio. Strange vehicles pulling up to the gate or being towed around on trailers? Special effects for the new TV series being filmed. Guys in strange looking costumes? Extras for a movie being filmed on lot "B". Soundstage 13 is closed off? Superproductions inc. is working on a pilot for a new show.
Your superhero can move in and out of the studio complex, get mixed in with crowds of extras, hide his super gear in the prop room with stuff from other shows and disappear in a maze of change rooms, sound stages, offices and workshop spaces. With a little planning, lots of extras with similar physical characteristics can be hired, duplicate props made and even fake publicity to mask what is really going on can be generated. That battle in New York? Wow, a live event for Superduperguy 16! Coming out next May! Premier in Hong Kong (get your advance screening pass by signing up at www.superduperguy16.net/hongkong\_premier).
Most people will "see" what they are being shown, and anyone who tries to dig deeper can always be dismissed as cranks, or even have their theories cooped by the "publicity department" of the "movie studio". If you are convinced that Clark Ghent is Superduperguy and have proof, you might suddenly discover the "Studio" is running a contest asking the public to decide between you and about a dozen other theories (some by real researchers and some put up by the "Studio" itself through cutouts and sock puppets).
The "Studio" even has a few secret weapons of its own. You as a superhero can be "cancelled" and you will be recreated by studio magic as someone else (Coming next spring! The Green Blue Cheese Guy!), or brought back as a sequel or reboot a few years later.
Hiding out in popular culture even gives you lots of extra mobility. Evildude is planing something in Paris, Texas? Superduperguy is attending "Pariscon" and signing autographs for the 12 people in attendance! Publicity tours can be arranged to follow the bad guys, and the superhero's exploits can be explained as more publicity for upcoming episodes of the series. Eventually the bad guys might become tired of this and simply sign contracts with the studio, reducing and limiting mayhem to the sound stages of the world.
[Answer]
I thought I would expand on my comment, because why not, so here are things to consider in our wonderful time and age:
**Law and order, and also justice. And maybe the people a little bit.**
Think CSI. You'll leave fingerprints, DNA or any identifiable marker at some point. If the police is looking for you (and unless you're on their payroll they should be looking for you). It would take time, but should be able find you eventually. I mean, they find terrorists, murderers and other criminals, what makes you think you can hide from them?
Now, you may be wondering "why would the police chase ?". Because the police upholds the law. Fighting in public is most likely against the law. Breaking the law was the right thing to do to save the world? That's a concern for your trial, not the police.
You can debate whether police officers will put much effort into arresting Goodman, or whether a court of justice would sentence him to anything non-symbolic or non-public-service-y. Because if Goodman does good and has public opinion on his side, then he'll probably have some latitude to operate. However, Goodman is *not mandated* by the powers that be (as opposed to Goodcity PD) and that's probably an offence you can pin on them if you want to.
Obviously, if there is property or personal damage, then you have something an angry mob will put your head on a spike for. And then the police will come after you.
**Security cameras, and other forms of cameras**
A British superhero will get recorded *all the time*. They wouldn't even need British Disney to make superhero movies. Western civilization in general is just full of cameras ready to record you.
You have public security cams (operated by the civilian government or by people mandated by them), private security cams (operated by private security companies, or companies that handle their own security) and smartphones.
You may know someone who constantly take pictures and videos of every aspect of their boring life. We all have a smartphone with a camera that's better than what science-fiction ever imagined. I mean, look at [Star Trek's idea of a mobile phone](https://i.stack.imgur.com/o9d3U.jpg). If everybody carries pocket computers with high-definition slo-mo cameras, you'll never not get recorded.
**Social media and the internet mob**
Say one word as a superhero, it will be hashtagged, retweeted, and find its way onto the wall of that one friend who only posts quotes of other people. Throw enough material out there, 4chan will piece everything together somehow. They'll do it. They can get cat abusers arrested and they can harass women out of their home out of pure hate. Don't think they won't hunt you for sport.
Moreover, you only need one unsubstantiated tweet, for instance "Like, Wruce Bayne is tots Batdude, lol #BayneIsBatdudeForPresident2016", for a rumor to spiral out of control. Once that's out there, good luck convincing people that no, your aren't Batdude.
**If it's not social media, it's the regular media**
Okay, I've thrown all of it in the title. See the Panama Papers, Swiss Leaks, Wiki Leaks, and so on. What the internet mob doesn't have access to, maybe the press has. I mean, if even one person knows, you aren't sure that the information won't find its way to an Edward Snowden.
**And if it's not them, it's the NSA**
Seriously, these people have invented global surveillance before the internet.
[Answer]
On the one hand, I think it would not be that hard. You wear a mask, like Batman et al. So people could take pictures of you, analyze them, and say, "Ah, he must be 6'1" and weigh about 190 pounds. Even though he wears a mask we can see some skin around his eyes and mouth so we know that he's white." Maybe a few other clues. But there would be millions of people in the world who would fit such a general description.
Presumably a super hero doesn't show a driver's license or his passport when he's running around doing super hero things. In that sense it would be easier for a super hero than for an illegal alien -- he wouldn't need any fake IDs.
What would make it hard, though, is, sooner or later someone will try to follow you. It can't be all that tough to follow the Batmobile back to the Batcave. Now you know where Batman's secret lair is. What stops someone from waiting an hour or two and then breaking in? Or if the entrance is too secure for that, scout around and find where that might be other entrances. If the Batcave is directly beneath Wayne Manor, how tough can it be to think of the possibility that there may be a connection? Now you're not looking for anyone in the world with the same general height, weight, and build of Batman, but whether Bruce Wayne or someone else in his household fits this description. When you notice that, yes, Bruce Wayne is about the same size and build as Batman, and what a coincidence, his ward Dick Grayson is the same size and build as Robin, you have grounds for real suspicion.
I'm not a big fan of super hero stories, but I've always wondered that no one seems to make a serious effort to track down the hero's secret identity. In real life, wouldn't reporters and curiosity seekers follow him back to his lair? Wouldn't there be a crowd waiting every time he came out the "secret" entrance, taking his picture and trying to get autographs?
[Answer]
Wear a full head/face helmet. One with a voice changer. With cameras that feed into a HUD on the inside of a tinted visor, so even if the tech is knocked out, you can still see, just not as well.
Wear a full bodied, armored suit. One that the not only partially conceals your body shape, also exaggerates it. It adds five inches to your height and makes your shoulders wider. Or, depending on your build, that makes you look like a member of the opposite sex.
Of course, the question is hard to answer without knowing your hero's exact powers. A high-tech hero like Iron Man or Steel has a lot more options. Like robot duplicates, better versions of the above suggestions, phone redirects, etc.
And don't forget, despite all the jokes, Superman doesn't just wear glasses. Clark slouches and wears baggy clothes to hide his height and physique. He talks in a higher register as Clark than as Superman. And Superman always vibrates his face at a high speed so people/pictures don't get a clear look at his face. Assuming they aren't looking somewhere else....
[Answer]
If the hero/ine trains a trusted group of copycats, so they act as a collective under one name from different locations (micro-Anonymus, or Mr.Robot with more than 2 iterations). those who act in the "offline world" don't act in www and vice versa.
And the intel exchange works as a chain (like Eco's Foucault Pendulum secret society through the ages).
[Answer]
As I beleve what N2D2 was trying to say, the number one way normal people figure out a hero's secret identity is that there are never around when the hero is; Clark Kent is never there where Superman shows up. If there were two or more people with the same power/skill set who took turns wearing the mask and saving the world the normal identies could be seen with the super ones. Or on a larger scale more like Liam Neeson's Ra's al Ghul in the “Dark Knight Trilogy” as soon as one is outed or killed the title and mask are passed to someone else for generations.
[Answer]
There are really only 3 conditions that can make a superhero impossible to detect -
1. Ability to travel in a way that avoids detection - The only real way for the government etc to uncover the hero's secret identity is by pinpointing his home base. If Superman is tracked by satellites to always be flying out from the daily planet building, it's just a matter of time before they track each employee and figure out its Clark Kent. Same goes for Batmobile or Spider-Man etc. But if Superman could somehow teleport, then no one will be able to figure out the point of origin. Teleportation is the ideal superpower for this but invisibility etc would work too.
2. A day job that doesn't require being at desk in an office setting - This is the biggest problem with superheroes that are also not super rich. The coworkers are bound to notice frequent absences that occur right when a super fight is in progress. But the good news is that there are plenty of jobs that make things easier. The superhero could have a work-from-home job (any freelance computer software related job will do) or a job that requires daily travel (any low level salesman or TMZ/Nightcrawler type of reporter job will do). As long as the job doesn't require him to be physically visible all day long, he's all set. Any absences during the super fight can be attributed to the super fight itself ("do you expect me to be making sales calls when half of the city is on fire"...). An added benefit of wfh is that no one ever sees him teleport or go invisible or shapeshift etc. Or if he's likely to fight crime only during nights (like Batman), he could get away even with a regular enough day job as long as he's very careful, but I prefer freelance from home even then.
3. Avoid leaving DNA or other physical evidence behind - A fingerprint or hair or a drop of blood etc will eventually be traced back to the superhero. But if he's invulnerable enough that he doesn't bleed or leaves hair etc behind, he'll be ok. Or he could always have a full body suit on that can contain everything. Or, in the worst case scenario, be able to fully and consistently destroy such evidence by heat vision etc.
If the above conditions are met, then it's just a matter of wearing a good helmet and bodysuit/armor. People can take a million pictures or government can track him via drones and satellites, there's simply no way they'll be able to trace him back to anything other then a general region (which can be further mitigated by crime fighting all over the world and never speaking).
[Answer]
How would they hide their identity?
By being really, ridiculously paranoid, tons of misdirection and outright lies, having lots of help - either a network of superheroes or allies (or both) who can cover, substitute, and pool resources to prevent anyone from getting caught, and a lot of luck. And probably access to some kind of advantage of the kind the question thinks too much and which won't qualify as 'effortless' identity concealment anyway unless you've got *all* of them, and everything already mentioned, and a couple layers of misdirection to hide my hero-self from my civilian-self, and a couple different layers for the reverse...
So, let's start with shape-shifting. I can look entirely unlike myself when I'm super-heroing, which nicely conceals my identity...until someone spots me changing back into my own form. Shape-shifting around people ups the chance I'm seen, or get caught on camera, or make some mistake with who knows what about which face. Going somewhere isolated to change my shape makes it more likely for someone to play elimination (how many people seen leaving that bathroom/ camera blind spot, and correlate!). Maybe one of my forms looks a bit too much like someone else - and given the persistence of rumor (as AmiralPatate suggested) and the dangers involved, like imprisonment or experimentation - that's a serious ethical "no" unless I would like to take up villainy. Maybe I thought of that, and picked up a transient form or twelve - but someone can persistently follow me through little changes and will definitely notice big ones, especially if they're looking for a shape-shifter.
And what about the DNA left behind from an injury - maybe I can get someone from those associates/fellow superheroes (in exchange for a shape-shifting alibi) to physically find the sample and hack in to corrupt the file, unless they the cops etc. notice the sabotage and back things up, and/or be really super careful in my private life to never get DNA or prints on file. Maybe I can use my power in unusual ways, either to mimic super durable, strong, flexible, which a shape-shifter should be able to be, or perhaps some kind of matter conversion, like the kind of shape-shifter who can do or fake inanimate objects. Maybe I can pass myself off as a skilled gadget user, or several people working as a group instead of one who shifts so they're looking for the wrong clues on the wrong people. I would have to remember all that, and limit myself a lot, and actually obtain those skills, but it might work.
But it would still be no guarantee. I would have to think of all that, and live with it, and this is with a power that the original question disliked as too much of a loophole. And the same kinds of limitations would be true of any of those 'shortcuts' - after all, your psychic powers and memory modification didn't stop that camera, or facial recognition. The technomancy didn't stop someone from physically following you back to your base, and finding your allies. The omniscience didn't stop DNA testing. Maybe a group that has collective access to all of them can cover for each other, (and maybe they still need to buy influence or favors sometimes) but it really isn't effortless.
(disclaimer - the original questions disallowed shape-shifting, I went with it anyway because it's a personal favorite, I'd already thought about it, and because I don't think it's as effortless as the question suggests. Sorry?)
[Answer]
When you consider that crimes go unsolved all the time, including major crimes like murder, it is not hard to imagine a masked hero or villain escaping identification for a while, *provided that their behavior is not flamboyant*.
If you do not operate on a consistent schedule, avoid areas with lots of eyewitnesses and cameras, wear a good disguise, clean up after yourself, pay for your gear with cash through a variety of different vendors (or make it yourself), employ safe houses far away from your home to store your equipment and change in/out of costume, you can keep people guessing. But the most important factor is to minimize the frequency of your appearance in public. You'd have to be proactive instead of reactive (read: striking your enemies before they're prepared and not arriving to stop them at the scene of a crime already in progress) and be willing to lay low and disappear for weeks or even months at a time, until the heat dies down. Could you carry this on for years or decades? Probably not. But if you want a relatively short run as a superhero, I think it's reasonable.
If, on the other hand, you make a habit of having knock-down, drag-out fights in the middle of main street during rush hour, if your fingerprints and biometrics are a matter of public record, if you're a public figure or celebrity, if you have a flashy outfit that people can spot from far off, and like to leave around a lot of 'calling cards,' then forget about it.
[Answer]
There are three main ways I can think about that superX hides his/her secret identity in superhero fiction.
1. Hero is super enough to use super power to stay hidden. (Superman, Spider-man)
2. Hero's civilian persona is super rich and can conceal any suspicious activity behind a Corporate facade. (Batman, Arrow, Iron Man)
3. Hero is somehow in alliance with the government or similar body. (Cant think of any good example right now. Captain America's identity is known in-universe, right?)
The first option is ruled out by your constraints.
The second one is not really plausible 2016. Ok, it never was, really, but with todays tech it's too unlikely to be a story element. Bruce Wayne might fool the Gotham PD, but never the combined force of internet activists and spy satelites, drones and electronic surveillance.
Which leaves option number three.
Your hero must have allies with real political power to stay hidden. Power to tamper with surveillance cameras, public records et cetera.
Perhaps the best way (which demands official help) is to create false tracks? Enough to make the pitchfork mob confused and super villain dude uncertain.
[Answer]
It all depends on what kind of power you have. For example, Kamen Rider Kabuto won't have this problem. Whenever he needs to transform, go to nearest toilet, call the Kabuto Zecter, henshin, Clock Up, beat the evil guys, return to the toilet booth, Clock Over, un-henshin. No one will notice because not even a second has passed. If someone do notice call Hyper Zecter and do Hyper Clock Up to go back into the past.
Kamen Rider Ryuuki would also be impossible to track. He can just henshin at home, enter the Mirror World and came out from any mirror near the target location. All the government can know is that the hero came out of a mirror (actually anything that can reflect, pool of water can also work). The only way they can know it is you is to knock you out or deal enough damage that your henshin undo itself.
[Answer]
**It would be impossible**
Why? Well let's start with the fact when you are a hero everyone will follow you. No matter If you want or if you don't want it.
I mean your Superhero is some kind of celebrity, look at Youtube Stars they just "Play games" and there got a Fanbase who
* Draws Picture of them (Fan Art)
* Document every single Live Stream and Drama
* Follow him one every Social Media
* Call the Police just to troll you
The same would happen whit the Superhero, but more extreme
* Paparazzo ,stalker would follow you
* People try to get your attention acting as if they are in danger
* Vlogs our Youtube Channels document every single step of you
* They would literally follow you to your home (our try to)
* They can become criminals just so they can meet you
* They could try to uncover you Secret Identity (and once again Vlogs and Social Media will jump on that train)
And this is only the normal People
The Police and other Criminals would just
* Follow every single Blog and track them down
* Use satellite to track him down (radar)
* Look at every Camera in the City and follow you to your home
* Track down your Gadgets (where you buy them and who buys them)
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[Question]
[
This question assumes that in any kind of magical world, any form of magi can create nearly anything, but especially -- using only magic, can create gold, silver, gemstones, other currency, etc. as well as any other kind of resource that plays a key role in that world's economy. So for example, this question also applies to worlds where magi can create only domestic animals and farming resources, as long as they're important in the economic model. (For example, the Gallic and Germanic tribes during the Roman era valued cattle above all else.)
I've just finished a great fantasy book where I found a passage in which a witch, crafting within few seconds with just a single spell and without using any additional resources than just magical energy, an amount of gold, described as enough to feed and supply an average family for five or ten years. When I read this, I immediately remembered many similar examples in other fantasy books and stories and this question popped into my mind.
We have central banks for real money and we have strong algorithms for virtual currency (bitcoins etc.). What could a fantastical, magical world use to secure its economy from influence of wizards and their magical addition to economic imbalance? What factors, rules, laws or anything else could save such world from economic ruin, made by one or more wizards able to create magically crafted gold or other resources at will?
[Answer]
I think it really depends upon the extent of the magic, but I see a number of different possible scenarios here.
1. Wizards can create anything from nothing, but there are a limited number of wizards. In this case, I suspect that governments or possibly an organization of the wizards themselves might limit the amount of the valuable good in question that each wizard can create. Maybe it'd be illegal to create gemstones or gold.
However, one wizard acting out of turn (providing he wasn't caught) could still have a substantial effect upon the economy. To see what an influx of precious metals would do to an economy, I suggest researching what happened in Europe when Aztec gold and silver started to pour in through Spain:
>
> "Imported gold and, more significantly, silver probably affected the
> European economy more than all other foreign goods. After the Spaniards looted
> Aztec and Inca treasure rooms, the gold flowing from America and Africa
> subsided to a trickle, but seven million tons of silver poured into Europe
> before 1660. Spanish prices quadrupled and, because most of the silver went to
> pay for imports, prices in northern Europe more than tripled. The influx of
> bullion and the resulting inflation hurt landlords depending on fixed rents
> and creditors who were paid in cheap money, but the bullion bonanza ended a
> centuries-long gold drain to the East, with its attendant money shortage. It
> also increased the profits of merchants selling on a rising market, thus
> greatly stimulating north European capitalism."
>
>
>
Source: <http://history-world.org/beginnings_of_north_european_exp.htm>
2. Wizards can create anything from nothing, but at great cost. Whatever this particular "cost" is--perhaps years off their life span, mental fatigue, growing insanity, what have you--it is higher than most wizards are willing to pay and effectively limits the amount of precious items that they will create.
3. Wizards can create anything from nothing, and everyone has some magical ability, but magic itself is limited. In this case, the magic itself or whatever might drive magic under this system could function as currency.
4. Wizards can create anything from nothing, everyone's a wizard, and there's no limitation. In this case, I think you'd end up with a very dream-like, unreal place. There wouldn't even be an economy, and there'd probably be profound differences with the social structure and culture if everyone could have instant gratification, all the time.
[Answer]
Generally, there are limits put on magic, if anyone or even a relatively small number of people can create anything anyone wants at anytime without serious negative consequences, (say Star Treks replicator), there would be no need for any kind of economy, it would be a pseudo paradise where no one should want for anything.
That's why generally magic has restrictions in most worlds. Some like Harry Potter, you can't make something out of nothing (and have it stay, like the leprechaun gold), or it has to come from somewhere, stealing it from some location, or turning one thing into another. There is also generally a cost to the witch or wizard to perform these actions in one way or another. Without costs, there is no need to acquire, so no cost associated, if no buying, selling or trading, no economy.
[Answer]
Value of things is always based on their supply and their demand. If your world has a huge supply of gold (because it can get magic'd up, or it is naturally abundant) then it will be worth less than Earth-gold. At that point, the thing that is in demand isn't gold itself, but the wizard's time (and possibly any resource inputs) to magic up the gold.
There shouldn't be economic ruin, since the economy would develop around wizard time being valuable, not gold. There's the possibility that transmuting gold is "discovered", but that would be similar to any other economic disruption (the steam engine, the Internet, etc).
A more troublesome disruption is if the "mature" ability is introduced to an economy that did not develop with it (ie. a wizard-time economy introduced to a gold economy). This would be likely similar to the colonization of the Americas, with its fairly disastrous effects. In that sort of scenario, the economies would quickly shift so that a volume of gold becomes near equal to the wizard-time to create it, regardless of any efforts by either society (assuming perfect, reliable replication via magic).
In short, you need to decide what in your world is scarce (and less-so, in demand). If gold is scarce, then it will be valuable and economies will grow around it. If wizard time is scarce (to make gold, heal wounds, protect citizens) then it will be valuable and the economy will focus on currency as a token replacement for magical effort instead. If the magical components for spells are rare, then they (and the people who know how to find/farm them) will be scarce and valuable, and so on.
The thing to remember is that as soon as a *single* wizard can make a boatload of gold freely and cheaply, gold is no longer scarce since there's no (economic) motivation for them to *not* do that continuously otherwise. Over the span of ages, *someone* is bound to have been "that" asshole.
[Answer]
I'm an economist, and I think this is a fascinating question. Economics is the study of decision-making in the presence of scarcity. Scarcity means that what we aspire to have is greater than what we can (currently) have, which means that choice have to be made about which things we have and which things we choose to forego.
If magic is without limits, we are faced with abundance and not scarcity. In such a scenario, there would be no need for any sort of currency, monetary system, central bank, etc. While this would represent "economic ruin" in one sense — economics as a discipline would be ruined, as it would have nothing to study — abundance would hardly be ruin for society as we understand ruin: everyone would have the things they aspire to have.
If magic is very powerful but has some sort of limits, the shape of those limits would dictate what could be used as currency. Mere gold, if it can be easily and abundantly replicated by magic, would clearly be a poor choice as the basis for currency in a magical economy. Could magic conjure up a finite set of items that further magic cannot forge additional members thereof? If so, that could be currency. Is magic constrained by time? Perhaps something representing a claim on wizard-hours would be the currency.
[Answer]
The question specifies a number of important facts, and many of the answers here have challenged those facts' potential accuracy. I'll try, conversely, to accept the limitations proposed and see if that's helpful.
The strictures, as I understand them, are as follows:
1. Magicians can create gold, silver, gems, etc.
2. These products are indistinguishable from their mundane counterparts.
3. These goods are held to be valuable as currency.
Given all this, what might be done to prevent economic disaster?
First off, a corollary of the extraordinary power of magic as well as stricture #2 above: can magical means detect a difference? For example, can magical means be used to discern the history of a given object, its location of origin, etc.? If so, those who can afford to do so and have a vested interest in the stability of the economy (banks, governments, etc.) may well have wizards whose job it is to detect counterfeits.
But let's suppose that #2 is true in a radical sense: the created gold is in that case not a forgery. It's perfectly real. In that case, it seems to me that the issue devolves into one of interests.
On the one hand, there are those who have a strong vested interest in the long-term stability of the economy, such as banks and governments and so forth. You might say that everyone has such an interest, but that isn't necessarily the case. If I find a huge nugget of gold in my backyard, my inclination is to turn it into money (sell it to a bank or gold dealer, etc.); the fact that this may in some sense devalue the world's gold reserves isn't something I'm going to worry about -- I leave that to the world's financial industry, and if they have some suffering because of it, well, sounds good to me. Not my problem.
Now in early modern Europe, particularly in the sixteenth century, alchemy was big business. That isn't just turning base metals into gold, to be sure, but let's focus on that for the sake of the question. One way of dealing with alchemists was to punish them: the reasoning here is not that the gold they create is necessarily not real, but that the Crown has the monopoly on creating currency, and as a result, gold-making is arguably a crime of *lèse-majesté*. Another possibility -- equally attested -- reverses this reasoning: if this alchemist seems likely to be able to pull it off, the Crown wants him working for the Royal Mint. So in the end, it's a matter of interest.
**1. Who has a strong and indeed vested interest in the totality of the world economy?**
Until quite modern times, nobody. If I have more gold than you do, whether "I" and "you" are individuals, guilds, or states, then I'm richer than you are, period, no matter where I got the gold. To be sure, the history of Spanish conquest and the import of vast amounts of gold and silver to Europe from the New World did cause tremendous damage in the long run, but in the short run it certainly made Spain very wealthy. And although we might now argue that this incredible surge of precious metals was a bad idea, the Spanish didn't see it that way at the time. So by this reasoning, if nobody is particularly looking out for the world economy, the only thing stopping magicians from creating gold is local interest.
**2. What do local interests think about creating gold and such?**
Depends how easy it is, and how firmly the Crown or whoever holds on to its currency monopoly. If there are zillions of magicians running around doing this all the time, then I do think the value of these goods would have collapsed long ago, but the question as posed presumes otherwise; this suggests to me that producing gold magically is rather rare. In that case, magicians who can do this are themselves resources, like gold mines. So by this reasoning, the laws and such governing magicians creating gold will tend to approximate those governing gold mines, the differences being primarily that (a) magicians can move somewhere else, and (b) magicians can be killed. If I were the Crown, I think I'd want to link a to b: the magician works for me in the Mint, and does what I tell him to, and if he ever tries to move away I'll have him killed.
**3. What wider implications does this have?**
3a. If I'm a magician who can make gold, I either do or do not want to work for a state. Could be a very cushy job: the Crown doesn't want to have to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, and it's not terribly difficult for the Crown to ensure that I lead an awfully pampered life if it wants something from me. So if I have that power, I may well seek patronage of this kind -- many alchemists in European history did precisely this. If for some reason I really badly don't want to work in this way, perhaps because I like traveling around, then I had better not advertise that I can create gold this way.
3b. Suppose there are three states, which for sake of simplicity we'll call France, Spain, and England. Now Spain has a whole lot of powerful magicians working for them, and they're cranking out gold and silver like nobody's business (cf. Spanish New World colonial exploitation). England and France would certainly like to have that same power, but they don't, so what do they do? France might well try to cozy up to Spain, do them favors and whatnot in order to get Spain to loan them a magician or give them gold cheap. England, on the other hand, might decide instead to kidnap Spanish magicians -- or even assassinate them (cf. licensed privateering in the Caribbean).
**Conclusions**
The central point is that magicians as described in the question are effectively moving gold mines. The powers that be will want to control these mines, and if they cannot do so, they will want to ensure that nobody else controls them instead. I do not see a global concern for "the economy" being a realistic issue in the absence of a global financial industry. If such an industry does exist, then it will act in much the same way as any ordinary state: it will want to control the moving gold mines, and ensure that nobody else controls them. It is certainly possible that such an industry will make the claim that it must do this to protect everyone in the world from ruin, but somehow I suspect that the people who run that industry will get remarkably wealthy as they achieve greater and greater control over the magicians.
[Answer]
In many cases this question can be compared to Star Trek, where they have replicators to produce everything out of "thin air". The conclusions are most likely the same:
If all goods are equally easy to create using magic, then they would all have an equal value given enough wizards to produce them. This would prevent any economy from existing, as there would be no need to acquire any goods at all.
If there is a lack of wizards, then several goods would be produced in a mundane fashion, so the value of a good would be equal to the complexity of it's production and their rarity. Goods that are easy to produce and are available in large quantities like bread, meat and such would have a low price. Goods that exceed a certain complexity or require certain rare raw materials would just be created by the wizards, in which case the price would be entirely based on how much others would be willing to pay. It would be difficult for a mere farmer in these circumstances to raise the price for his goods, as one could always deny to buy them, and instead buy from someone else or have a wizard conjure it.
If magic is not unlimited and certain items are more difficult to produce, then the economy would select the items which are the most difficult to produce as their currency. In Star Trek [gold-pressed latinum](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Latinum) became the currency for most worlds as it cannot be replicated (mostly because they encountered the same question and just wanted something to be a currency).
[Answer]
In my opinion the ability of wizards to create gold doesn't shift currency.
In our world we all have the ability to copy paper so it looks a lot like a £20 note (just use a photocopier), however if we were to take it to a shop and attempt to pay with it the store manager would laugh (and then call the police).
Why?
Because the money is a forgery, it's not a real £20 note it's a copy (and most likely a poor one at that). The only currency with value is the stuff which comes from the bank, copies have no value (unless you're duped). The banks would take this very seriously and would invest heavily in trying to prevent fraud (and perusing fraudsters).
What prevents a wizard from attempting to copy the currency
* Lack of skill to pass it off as genuine
* Risk of being caught
The higher the skill of the magician the greater their level of education and responsibility. This is where the education of your wizards come in, what is their day to day job. In most worlds it's working towards a cause beyond material wealth.
[Answer]
Assuming this capacity is widespread enough so that there is no scarcity in goods whatsoever, one kind of economy can still exist: service. Also, even if wizards can produce raw materials, it doesn't necessarily mean they are able to produce all refined goods. They might need knowlegde about the thing they create. There would probably still be wizards that specialize in, i don't know, producing clothes, weapons, food, because realistically not everyone can know everything.
Then we have an economy, although it looks a little different because there is so much magic. The currency would also be magically produced, with magic only few know, but that makes it easy to check it's validity (it would only be a token like our paper money). Maybe there is exactly one wizard or a group of wizards allowed to produce them and imprints a magical signature only these wizards know how to make.
Once at that point, we are not very far from normal economy any more, actually, just with a whole lot of magical items. The easiest way i can imagine such a society would be wizards-only. Normal people don't fit in as producers any more when there are many wizards, just as people running services, like a tavern, or a trader, (or a servant/slave).
[Answer]
If I've correctly pictured your specific scenario from your responses here, this small group of wizards would indeed upset the economy, to the point that magic and economy would not reliably stand together.
I imagine the first time a group of magi started to create money, either two things would happen. They achieve absolute power through their unlimited purchasing power, or they/their fake money is discovered and something is done that stops them and future magi from pulling this off. Either way, it's a temporary disruption at best.
Ultimately, the poor local seller likely won't care if the money he gets is fake or not. If it's good enough for him to accept, he can likely find somebody who will accept it as well. The real problem is going to be the government. They're going to want to shut down the wizards, and even if the wizards are keeping their money-making magic a secret, eventually some clever official is going to notice the effect the money is having on the economy, will investigate, and work on a way to stabilize things.
While there could be a small group of wizards working against the economy, I believe it's only reasonable to assume there would be magi working FOR the economy, who could use magic that is able to "create anything or nearly anything", and fashion some magical device that could be distributed to allow people to see if a coin or gem was made in the earth, or made by magic. And if you want to say the magic item is a perfect physical copy and has no trace of magic in it anymore, then I'd say they'd develop some way to 'carbon date' the items.
Problems caused by magic are easy to solve with more magic :)
[Answer]
Answers based on economics are excellent, as you can come up with any number of things that can be scarce and required for the magic (like the hearts of fallen stars in the movie "Stardust"). For something completely different, how about a story about the dangers of abundance?
The story of Midas and his golden touch is the first thing that comes to mind. Another is Proverbs 25:16: "If you find honey, eat just enough-- too much of it, and you will vomit."
Too many desserts and people get fat. What if food is free, but magic food requires EXTRA exercise to get the pounds off, and magic bicycles don't work? Magic clothes are beautiful, but they attract magic moths which reduce people to nudity in seconds? Magic carpets get you there fast, but magic dust bunnies on the carpets make you sneeze out pieces of your liver? This is so much fun, I could go on all day. In the end, non-magical cooks, doctors and tailors would clean up.
As Mr. Gold always says in "Once Upon a Time", "Magic always comes with a cost."
[Answer]
I know this is an old question but there are two good possibilities that haven't been mentioned yet:
## 1. If it ain't natural, it ain't valuable
The situation you describe isn't actually that far off real-life: we can create diamonds and other gems artificially in laboratories. We actually mass-produce synthetic diamonds for industrial purposes, but since they're chemically identical to natural diamonds, we could easily use them in jewelry and crash the diamond market.
However, natural diamonds remain dozens of times more valuable than synthetic diamonds for one simple reason: **they're natural**. This is more or less entirely a marketing distinction, created by the De Beers company to keep their diamond monopoly intact, but it works (there was an excellent question about this on another SE site the other day, but I can't find it now).
It's entirely possible your world would have the same distinction: if anyone can make gold, then the gold that anyone can make would be far less valuable than the gold in the ground. Those with large treasure troves (dwarves, dragons, probably also kings) would push to reinforce this belief to protect the value of their own hoards. Bars or coins of "natural gold" would have stamps or hallmarks to guarantee their authenticity.
Granted, this isn't going to stop people from creating precious metals and gems. Stamps and hallmarks can be forged. A poor person might not care if the gold they're being offered is real or fake. But if the person offering it to them is a mage, there's a pretty good chance it's fake.
## 2. It's a big social taboo
This one comes from *FullMetal Alchemist*, where there are three big "taboos" in alchemy. The ultimate taboo is "you can't create life", as the Elrics found out the hard way. I can't remember the second, but the third is "you can't transmute gold", *specifically* because of the potential effects on the economy. IIRC, you *can* transmute gold (the Elrics do so in a flashback, albeit in such a way that it turns back a short while later), but nobody does because they know the risks. (It's been a while since I watched *FMA:B*, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)
Either way, the point remains: creating valuable items with magic might simply be considered one of those things that you *just don't do*. Nobody wants to be known as "that guy who created fifty tonnes of gold and destroyed the local economy". Heck, maybe someone already did that a while back and that's why the stigma around it is so strong. "You created *diamonds?!* You idiot! Don't you remember what happened fifty years ago?! Turn those back to coal, right now!"
[Answer]
Creating gold and gems is inconsequential, if your wizards can create good food in large quantities, fresh water, good quality tools, and whatever other basic necessities then you just arrived at a post-scarcity society.
There would be little need to til the fields and work on mines if your mages can simply summon food and great quantities of refined minerals.
Now the question is: What becomes valuable?
The answer is: Anything that magic can't do.
The most obvious solution is that ideas become valuable, your magician can summon rains of gold coins, but all the magic in the world can't write an original symphony.
Your regular citizen is going to spend time not working on the fields, but creating original works of art, maybe training in sports for pure entertainment.
This could become some sort of currency, with the regular population trading their works of art with the magician for special favors.
[Answer]
**Magic Has Limits:**
If you're fine limiting the magic, you could have magic work via transmutation. In this scenario, you could create gold from "thin air" which happens to be very real air particles. Perhaps the conversion to gold takes so much air that air becomes a scarce resource (and creates low pressure systems?). Perhaps the more common the source material, the less gold can be created. The transmutation case essentially brings the economy to a stable state because gold has to come from something, which eventually becomes scarce and valuable.
---
To make a system stable (economics & magic) - there need to be balancing feedback loops that modulate the extremes. If your system has a positive feedback loop with no balancing feedback loops - it will self-destruct. There might be implicit balancing feedback loops (magicians self-modulate) but making an explicit balancing feedback loop is the more sustainable choice.
[Answer]
One issue that might come up is with labor - if various forms of currency get devalued, say if the magic users are walking gold mines AND can't be easily controlled by the powers that be - say because they've formed a protective alliance, or their eldritch powers make them implacable enemies, or whatever - then it seems like the issue is how to get people to /do/ things. Some kind of currency representing labor, like hour-dollars, might make sense.
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[Question]
[
**This question already has answers here**:
[Could a lingua franca be possible on a galactic scale?](/questions/18581/could-a-lingua-franca-be-possible-on-a-galactic-scale)
(6 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
While working on the world I talked about [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/39059/can-every-animal-eat-most-other-animals), I decided to tweak one thing. Instead of having the group of aliens terraforming a planet be of the *same* species, I decided to have them be *different* species, from different planets and stellar systems, working together on the same giant groundbreaking project.
The problem then becomes one of communication.
Given that there are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, many of which have planets, many of which have life, many of which . . . you get the idea. There are going to be a lot of species in the galaxy, and many of them will be working together on this project. Chances are very good that their native languages will be completely different. Therefore, I need to have a [*lingua franca*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca), as it were, a language that everyone in the galaxy can speak (this assumes that there are too many languages in the galaxy for a portable translator to understand, and that there’s no [Babel fish](http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Babel_Fish) to help).
However, part of me doubts that this is going to be possible.
* Beings may only hear or see at different wavelengths.
* Beings may have different vocal chords, and might have no overlapping range of frequencies.
* Sign language isn’t too convenient, in part because you have to be directly looking at the person who's using it to communicate. The same goes for any other visual type of language I can think of.
So, is a galaxy-wide language possible at all? I’m not asking for details about what one might be like, just if these hurdles aren’t enough to knock the whole idea down.
---
As I stated in a comment, there is no faster-than-light travel, which, fortunately, some answers picked up on.
[Answer]
>
> Is a galaxy wide language possible?
>
>
>
I would say that this is not really possible unless faster-than-light communication is possible. We currently know of no way to do this, so barring some breakthrough in physics a galactic language is highly unlikely. This is even the case if the galaxy is populated by a single species.
Why? [The milky way galaxy is about 100,000 light years wide](http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/milkyway_info.html).
Consider the following - in an attempt to establish a galactic language, a galactic radio station is set up somewhere near the center of the galaxy and broadcasts to the entire galaxy. However, the broadcast is going to take 50,000 years to reach the edges of the galaxy.
So in order to have a truly galactic language, language is going to have to be static across the galaxy. However, language shifts with culture, so culture would have to be mostly stagnant. A stagnant culture isn't good for stability though - the people on the bottom are going to want to move to the top, and the social convectional currents caused by that movement stirs things up enough to cause cultural changes. So in order to have a stagnant culture the people on the bottom need to stay on the bottom, and there's little chance that could last 50,000 without revolts.
*What about a non-constant galactic language?*
With no FTL travel possible, not being able to have a true galactic language doesn't actually matter. Suppose it's accepted that the language of the galactic radio station is the common language to use. Then you can tune into the galactic radio while you are traveling to another planet. Given that star systems are on the scale of a couple light-years apart, it's going to take you at least a couple years to get there. That's plenty of time to pick up the galactic language even if you hadn't known it before.
Even if the galactic language were naturally changing, there wouldn't be enough change to matter in a local setting. The language near the center of the galaxy would likely be very different from what it is around the edge of the galaxy, but if an immortal or long-lived being were to travel from the edge of the galaxy to the center of the galaxy it would take 100,000 years in a very fast space ship (traveling at half the speed of light). As they listened to the radio over the course of the 100,000 years, they would hear the language go through 150,000 years of evolution (remember that the edge starts of 50,000 years behind the center). I'm sure you could keep up with the evolution of a language that changes only 50% faster than normal.
What about relativistic effects? If you're traveling fast enough that reaching the center of the galaxy will only take a few years from your reference frame, you'll still need to accelerate and slow down. The time you take decelerating would be a perfect opportunity to catch up on the changes in the galactic language.
*What about different species?*
Our galactic radio station actually suggests a rather simple solution for this! A radio turns electromagnetic waves into sound waves that we can hear, so why wouldn't we expect it to be able to do the same for other species‐it turns electromagnetic waves into signals *they* can understand. So all you need to communicate with someone is basically a walkie-talkie—your device knows how to convert your sounds into the proper electromagnetic waves and vice versa, and their device know how to do the same for their sounds.
In this sense, neither you nor the being you'd be talking to would be speaking the galactic language. The true galactic language would be the electromagnetic one broadcast by the galactic radio station.
[Answer]
**Without FTL, no universal language can be developed on a galactic scale** because the time it takes to negotiate a universal language takes longer than the life time of a civilization.
Given the size of the Milky Way, 100,000 light years, it will take at least 100,000 years for a symbol set developed then transmitted from an extreme edge planet to reach a planet on the other side of the galaxy. Assuming perfect comprehension on the part of the distant receiver, it will take 200,000 years to get a response. Without extreme life spans, communicating with distant portions of the galaxy doesn't make sense.
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EDT: sorry missed your claim that there is 'no translator' or 'babel fish'. It is still MUCH more likely even in a small part than a single language.
The simplest and most likely situation would be a universal translator. Everyone has one. We already have some technology that can do a reasonable job for our human languages, and by the time you have the tech to do interstellar travel you these should be available.
Now of course not all translators are equal! Also there is no way that any one translator will have all languages in the universe. On top of that the translation apps for different translations could be sub par.
English might translate well to Vulcan but be horrendous with Forengi. Since it will be unlikely that every single language will be translated to every other language, there will be a lot of short cuts. If one language has been translated into 5000 other languages, then translating that one to yours will sort of give you those 5000 other languages, at least roughly. So some might become a lingua franca, at least as far as translation goes.
But as much as language changes even here on Earth from one region to another, it will be almost required to have translators, and a large database (to hold languages in reserve should you meet new aliens and need a quick download) and maybe some minor ai to help sort regional changes and idioms.
As requested, expanding on the db for the languages:
It is unlikely (read almost impossible) for any one personal device to handle translations from millions of different languages. So much more likely there would be databases out there that have translations. Say a ship that travels frequently between a limited number of star systems will likely have high quality translations between those most common passengers. It will also have ones for any passenger that has traveled on the ship and uploaded their translation programs in order for others to communicate back with them. Ships might also share these as well.
An individual will have varying size of languages available in their personal unit, with the ability to download new languages from either an open source db, or pay for it somehow like an app store. Maybe the most basic is free, but the high quality ones cost more. With miniaturization we might be able to carry around a few thousand languages with us with millions more available through a db.
A world like Coruscant would like have a large number of languages available and many free, since they need to communicate, some backwater might need to go through a dozen languages to translate between two individuals. and do it poorly.
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Two factors are of primary importance here: one, **the ratio of travel time to language change**, and two, **what you count as a distinct language**.
First, I'm guessing that if you have multiple species in close proximity that you either have some form of FTL in your story or that you're restricting your focus to a fairly small segment of the galaxy, because otherwise the answer is a flat "[no](https://xkcd.com/927/)": you might end up with multiple different *lingua francas* for different areas of space, in analogous fashion to how written Chinese is used to match up the otherwise mutually unintelligible spoken dialects... but that's not what you're asking for.
New generations of lifeforms, assuming that they're not going to get implanted with carbon copies of the postulated galactic language (as this would in effect be the "universal translator" you're trying to avoid), are not going to have identical understanding of the language - they're going to make up new terms for contemporary circumstances, and fail to learn terms corresponding to obsolete situations. Given forty generations or so, you're likely to get the difference between Latin and Spanish - but possibly less, depending on how literate your species are: durable communication media (like the Rosetta Stone, books, and certain sections of the Internet) drastically slow the rate of change/divergence of a language (though it doesn't stop it - else Old English would be readable to modern speakers). I disagree with Radovan's answer, incidentally, that it *has* to be written - any durable communication medium will do (though that may be what he means by "written" in the first place).
Mutual intelligibility, however, need not be confined to a single language. Dogs, for instance, communicate a variety of things to us despite having no physical aptitudes for speech or writing (wrong tongue and "hand" shape) - and it's reasonable to say that most humans who encounter dogs don't bother to learn a new language to communicate with those dogs.
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First of all, I want to suggest that the structure of a universal language is probably something you can't come up with *a priori*; in war, they say that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, in this case I'd say that no universal language survives first contact with another language.
With this in mind, I'd think that the *lingua franca* would be like it is in human history, just the main language of the most powerful people. So let's say humans are the first ones to reach the stars, that upon their empire the multispecies cooperation was built, and let's assume for convenience that the main language of humanity is still English. I'd suggest that the common galactic language in this scenario would be English, or a slightly modified version of it (much like some high-level programming languages resemble a slightly modified version of English, but without all the inconsistencies that make English so hard to learn/understand).
Once you define one language as the main language, universal translators become easy. That is, as long as you realize that it's not the *translators* that are universal, but the *translations*. If you're an alien from Europa and you speak Europese (which sounds like a baby eating noodles), then all you should need to talk to everyone else in the galaxy is a device that converts Europese to English, and English to Europese. If the people you're talking to can speak English, then they don't even need a translator.
This system should be infinitely extensible, all a new species has to do is make a translator for their own species' languages. If a species has a language very different from English, they may decide to make a sort of middle language, something that they can learn to speak that makes it easier for their translators to turn into English. This could work much like programming languages, with higher-level languages being easier to learn but harder to optimize, and lower-level languages that are difficult to master but allow the user to fine-tune their commands.
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Obviously, it will be a written language, assuming any species capable of developing technology are dexterous and intelligent enough. Of course, [uplifted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_(science_fiction)) species might not be, but they have their own set of problems anyway.
The logical way would be to base the language on a set of abstract symbols, not unlike [Blissymbols](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols). Letters corresponding to phonemes are not the best choice.
However, given experiences with international auxiliary languages on Earth, I'd expect the language to be not the most logical or easy one, but the one of historically dominating culture.
There might be even some spoken "local redactions" of the language between species whose vocal cords are capable of producing mutually intelligible sounds (e.g. many corvids manage to approximate human speech quite well).
You have to carry writing instruments to communicate, but that's a minor point. Some problems might stem from species that do not share [language universals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_universal), but they should still be capable of learning the language up to acceptable levels, if not using it properly and fluently.
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Not likely. Can you make a perfect elephant sound? What about whale?
There's a reason why dogs, no matter their intelligence, could never "speak". Biologically, you'd need the same structure of the vocal folds (cords) across all species to make the necessary sounds. Such a common evolution is highly unlikely to develop across all sentient species of any galaxy (let alone universe). Sure, you may find a handful of species from different planets that have enough of a similar biological structure of the throat to make the sounds necessary to speak the other species' language, but *all* species across an entire galaxy? Highly unlikely.
If you want more insight into the science, check out the following resource:
<http://www.popsci.com/article/science/how-well-talk-aliens>
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David Brin's Uplift series handles this problem with several standardized Galactic languages (Galactic Two, Galactic Three, etc.), each adapted to different methods of communication (audible clicks, visual blinks, etc.).
You may wish to explore the idea of a common language (grammar, vocabulary) transcribed in different ways for different species.
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Think about this: Quichua language expanded for 500 years among different regions, and was *intended* to be the same and unify the whole Tawantinsuyu (South American region involving Ecuador, Peru, South of Colombia, Bolivia, and north of Argentina).
In 500 years and a strict effort to have it unified, we can distinguish right now at least 9 distinct dialects. In a small region. In a relatively small period. With a unified and controlled effort to adapt civilization to use that language (first by Pachacuteq and his heirs, and then by Spanish conquerors).
What do you expect involving...
1. Not only different cultures and *species* but also different, independent, worlds.
2. Separated by many light years apart.
3. With different concept of times (planetary orbits).
4. Different concept of primitive elements, perhaps.
?
The answer is: highly unlikely. Take an example: Do you think that there was a word among quichua people which could they use for *reading*, *writing* when no actions like that existed (except in zones where *tawa* was used as alphabet)? Do you think that there is a word for *calliper* there, denoting two limbs on arthropods like the ones under scholopendromorpha order? Names, actions, adjectives... they **will** vary with the world you live in, **and you will rarely be able to keep a common denominator language across an entire galaxy, specially when communication cannot surpass lightspeed**.
(*unless the needs covered by the interstellar communication can be expressed in actually decidable problems and algorirthms, in which case I suggest using Turing Machines as their lingua franca*)
[Answer]
If there is a will to communicate, then it is possible. What form the communication will take is a better question. Universal translator is my bet. A map of languages compiled by explorers.
Also, faster than light travel is a prerequisite to pretty much anything spanning a galaxy
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**Yes it is!** Kind of.. I tried to come up with a sollution.. :) Dont know if there is posibility to have some magic/mystic in your world, but what about some language that would be somehow special. Well not really a language, better a communication system.
* It would be **not created by someone**. The origin can be unknown or it can be universal all-time present essence as the universe itself. Can be connected with the universe creation.
* It **can not be learned** in a classic way of talking to others, just adopted or acquired as ability at some level of intelligence/brain controll/mental strength or similar condition. Beings can train to achieve this condition. Therefore it cannot change as you just adopt it as is. That would **solve the FTL problem**.
* It would differentiate classic beings from almost god-likes. (this is not really neccessary)
* It does not need to be visual or sound based - maybe it can be telepathic. If you achieve some degree of knowledge of the language, you can unlock new possesions. Become a master or the creator itself. :)
[Answer]
An idea I've worked on in the past is to have an artificial language for commerce/legal interactions, largely used for general use as well by having more "chatty" extensions that are not part of the core standard but maintained separately by formal enthusiasts.
The grammar is designed to be simple and approachable by all. Details don't matter here, but think pretty mundane by our standards, with linear list of words and noun/verb concepts etc.
So, those who normally communicate with 2D matrices or deep stacks will have to use this "simple" system.
Words have "aspects" that are like an alphabet when written, but have a large variety of representations. Specifically, **the representation of the aspect is distict from the aspect itself**, as is the way of combining them to form a word.
The aspects are categorized into a structure of groups that allow for organizing in several different ways, with the rules for forming words designed to apply restrictions of each of these. So, you might use a set of 2 groups that are treated as consonants and vowels, as they alternate between the groups in a word, and choosing phonems this way allows them to be pronounced. A being that communicates with tenticle postures would use the same two groups with looping vs height meaning, so each pair of adjecent aspects forms a single pose of one tenticle, and he gestures up to 7 such pairs at once (a whole word) as a single simultaneous pose.
Beings can choose from several categoization systems with different number of categories and sequencing rules to map nicely to his preferred modality. With a few odd cases to take care of (multiple representations of the same aspect, order flipping) the legal words fit any of these systems.
Mechanical translation need only recognise the different ways each being presents the aspects. That is a fixed set without the nuances associated with full communication. Then, the being can fully appreciate the nuanced "speech" (choice of words) with his native linguistic ability, having learned this common interchange language.
Writing is less varied so everyone can directly read (subject to 2D visual input ability). But it is flexible with regards to the orientation of each glyph and the writing direction.
[Answer]
If all of your aliens experience light and sound in different ways than each other, then you have a serious mechanics problem. How can a human being communicate with a blob that has no eyes or ears? How does that blob communicate with us? Writing isn't good enough; both parties would still need to be able to see the same wavelengths of light.
It's a fair assumption that all aliens, regardless of other senses, would need to sense the shape of their environment and the things in it. This would make a **tactile** medium of communication, such as [Braille](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille), the most widely effective. Parties would "write" by physically altering some object, and would "read" by sensing those changes, just as blind people do with [refreshable Braille displays](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=refreshable+braille+display). Note that it's not obligatory to touch Braille in order to read it, since a non-blind reader can see the bumps. Your aliens might also have some alternate method of sensing it, depending on their biology.
At that point the language itself is irrelevant, although your aliens might have some difficulty understanding the meaning of words that rely on certain senses. For example, if your *lingua franca* is English, our blind and deaf blobby friends would have no idea what colors are, and might have a hard time interpreting all of their associations such as moods, etc.
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I think the concept of a Universal Translator holds the answer to this question. In order to facilitate a true universal translator you would need a base language. By that I mean the translator would need an all inclusive core language that all other languages could be translated into. As such it would contain more detail than any single language would have.
Since different cultures need different words to describe things such as multiple words for ice that an Eskimo might use, it would be unlikely that the entire universe would share the same lexicon of words never mind expressions. It would also be very unlikely that the universal translator would have the ability to translate its entire core language into any one other language as well.
Similarly no one individual or group would ever speak in the core language however that does not discount the fact that it would exist. So, in answer to the question, a galaxy-wide language would be possible but not in the way you probably intended your question to be answered.
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**Yes! Binary:**
Binary is used to transmit practically everything over the internet already, and is (as far as I understand) already used in the probes we have sent to other planets in this solar system as well. Even images, and the very words you read here are encoded in binary! One difficulty would be communicating with other beings how to interpret the binary, however. Some things like mathematical concepts may be pretty easy to encode and decode into a binary message, and perhaps such an encoding (e.g. the primary numbers) could be used as a "key" to the language, which could be broadcast out into space via radio waves. We could at least then communicate "in math". Developing a full blown language like English to be universal would be difficult, but probably doable if the civilizations exist for long enough and keep good enough records. A problem is the huge amount of time for the signal to transfer across a galaxy (e.g. >100,000 years). However, communications could still take place across the galaxy, it would just take a very long time. There may be other ways of communicating (e.g. possibly using quantum entanglement) that might be faster than light that haven't been discovered yet. Each species in that communicates in this "galactic network" would need to have transmitters of some sort, and be listening for radio signals (e.g. as we earthlings do with SETI).
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[Question]
[
Inspired by recent watching of *Shrek 2* and by *Lord of The Rings*:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DgAk2.jpg)
When talking about magical Orbs or Mirrors, we have mostly in mind above picture. Skilful mage operates hard to obtain device. But what if *Shrek 2* approach would be in place?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/X86G0.jpg)
I got blown away with the idea of having some magical "entertainment" device. So lets postulate several things:
* We are in generic fantasy settings, with magic
* Magical mirrors are easy to make, easy to obtain and easy to operate (commands given by natural language speech)
* Any magical mirror can "connect" to any other magical mirror.
* Any owner of magical mirror can "set up" their device to: "Accept all connections / Accept known connections only / Ask about any connection" and this setting can be changed any time
* To connect to another mirror, you have to be able to uniquely identify such mirror, and
* Each mirror has unique identifier
Now, the last two give me troubles. I need to come up with good identifier system which could be *believably* used in fantasy setup by "turkey plucker" (commoner with really low IQ).
Yes, I could steal IP protocol from our world, but it looks too much tech and it assumes that you can count to at least 255.
So what would be good addressing system to allow me easily use the mirrors? Such system should be able to hold at least million addresses, preferably one billion unique addresses (magic mirrors are very common and one person can have more than one mirror)
[Answer]
A mirror could have an "address" that is composed by the following items:
* The name of the manufacturer
* An unique name the manufacturer gave to the specific mirror.
Both are engraved to the mirror, so you don't have to have a stellar memory (unless you can't read; then you have to remember it, or find someone who can read it for you). The engraving is not just for information; it's magical and actually allows to address the mirror.
So if you want to connect to a specific mirror, you must know its name (for private mirrors the owner will give it to you, for public entertainment mirrors, the name will be advertised). You then could say for example to your own mirror:
>
> Connect me to Merlin's Happy Giant!
>
>
>
to connect to the mirror made by Merlin, which Merlin called "Happy Giant". Merlin happens to like calling his mirrors "Happy Giant", "Tired Dwarf" and so on, while Gandalf prefers names like "Carpenter" or "Stonemason". But the actual name doesn't matter, as long as it is unique.
Interesting effects may occur if a manufacturer of magical mirrors gets forgetful and gives the same name to two mirrors.
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Given that these mirrors are, y'know, magic:
Why not have them ask questions rather than blindly follow content? If idiot Bob strolls up to a mirror and grumbles 'ahwannacahnekttamahfrendJoesmehrornaokthx' then the mirror should be capable of reading the intent of Bob'd statement. In this case: 'Kindly connect me to my friend Joe's mirror'.
In this case the mirror can ask a series of questions to further refine Bob's request. 'Where does Joe live?' might be met with 'elivsduwntrode', which the mirror can infer to mean all other magical mirrors on the same street as Bob's house. Then Bob's mirror can message the other mirrors it finds on the street asking the question 'Tell me about your owner'. At this point Bob's mirror has all the information it needs to be able to pinpoint exactly which mirror Bob wants to connect to.
If further clarification is needed, for example if Joe has multiple mirrors or Bob has multiple friends called Joe, then the mirror should be able to ask Bob other questions based on the information returned, and thus further refine the search parameters.
Once the mirror has pinned down which 'Joe's' mirror (or mirrors) are, every further request from Bob can be quickly actioned. If Bob says 'ahwannatalktaJoe' then Bob's mirror can ask Joe's mirror if Joe is currently in view.
This then shifts the onus of the magical preparation back to the mirror-maker and makes the mirrors much easier to use. Experienced mirror makers will be able to make mirrors that are better at asking the right questions (those mirrors that can reduce the potential set of mirrors fastest) and learn their user's meanings and preferences quickly. Novice or bad mirror makers will make mirrors that start with the question 'Does Joe have blond hair?' and so take longer to connect.
In terms of the magical back-end of the mirror... erm. Magic? Each mirror doesn't have to remember an address for any other mirror, merely the set of questions it asked and where it found the answers. If it runs through the same path of questions: it gets the same mirror. If it can't find the same mirror it can move one question up the chain and ask it again, enabling it to find either the same mirror or an appropriate mirror pretty quickly.
Plus you get to give your mirrors upper class British accents and call them all Jeeves.
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Instead of addressing the actual mirrors, why not address the people that can be seen by them. The mirror in the King's study has no address when the room is empty, but at other times, can be accessed by anyone, simply by supplying the query...
"Let me see the King!"
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How about borrowing the idea used in Stargate? Each mirror would have a unique 6 rune long description for example.
This could be combined with other ideas, like a rune area code or manufacturer code. The rune selector could be read aloud or it could be an embedded thing in the mirror or a separate control rod/stone/gadget. Who will find the 7th rune that allows physical transport/timetravel/remote spells through the mirror?
Announcement mirrors (3 rune long addresses) can only send data, allowing many mirrors to connect to it (tv). Master Multicast mirrors have the power to force all other mirrors to connect to it (royal announcements). Handheld mirrors allow only viewing, liquid crystal smartmirrors allow 2-way discussision... So many possibilites love this idea.
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A magical addressing system can have a magical resolution method -- so why not make it like magical traveling/tunneling/jumping/folding rules in other fiction?
To connect the user of one mirror holds the image of the other (or its location, or its bonded owner, or a special glyph unique to it (maybe they are branded like cows), or its color, or its flavor, or whatever) in their mind and...
POOF!
```
ATDS=bonded_symbol ->
deeedeeedeeedeeediiiiiiichchhbonkchbonk!
```
(Yes, in my imaginary world mirrors and palantirs speak analog modem.)
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When creating a magical mirror, each mirror is engraved with a string of magical runes. If spoken aloud, these runes are a part of the magic spell which needs to be chanted to connect to that mirror.
If a mirror is made with a code-word which is already taken by a different mirror, it shatters. Either during production or at first use.
If you would like to watch my full tutorial series on magic mirror enchanting, just chant `Jutubo Totcommo Shashtutorio Mirrorus Enchantus`.
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It's a magical world, so incantations and spells rule. Each mirror is identified by three words, so you can say 'Mirror, Mirror on the wall, connect me to beans, sugar, and mice!'
With a basic vocabulary of 1000 words you get a billion combinations.
When a naming spell is conducted on a mirror, it checks if the name already exists by trying to connect to a mirror with that name. If the name exists on the network then the new name is rejected.
Mirrors that have been connected with really good names are worth a lot of money. You can find out who owns a name by saying, for example, 'Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of all?', and see who has the mirror named 'the fairest of all'.
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For a completely different approach, how about making the mirror alive to some extent? For example, the mirror grows hair, feathers, leaves or berries, or one can squeeze a drop of liquid out of it, or one can whittle off a piece of it and it will grow back. Anyway, the idea is, once the hair/feather/leaf/berry/liquid/shaving is removed, it can be physically taken to any other mirror to establish a magical bond.
No naming required, and any turkey plucker can operate it with ease.
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There are two ways you could do it. celtschk has already provided an excellent answer for one of them, but there is another. First, put together an alphabet of phonetic sounds, eg. "proc", "la", "rush", etc. Then use that alphabet as your numbering system. That way each mirror gets a unique identifier, which is easy to pronounce.
```
"How do I contact you?"
"My mirror is proc-la-rush-ta-on-nas"
...later...
"Mirror! Connect to proclarushtaonas"
```
If you have 20 sounds in your alphabet, this gives you 79,792,266,297,612,001 different addresses that are 7 syllables long (the amount people can fit in short term memory). This is already a million times more addresses then there are phone numbers available on earth - enough for you? Even if you drop that down to 6 syllables and 15 sounds, that still gives you 470,184,984,576 different addresses, each of which is as easy to remember as someone's name.... "My mirror address is ab-rah-ham-lin-coln".
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Steal a bit of plot from the "Kingkiller Chronicles" novels and use a type of sympathetic link. If I want to contact my sister I just think of her and say her name.
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Use physical addresses. Why not? You're dealing with a magical routing table after all. For local calls
```
Connect me with Roe Street - House 3 - Living room mirror
```
Or, if you prefer little endian addresses, which probably sound more natural anyway
```
Connect me to the 3rd bedroom mirror of Unit 5/3 in Evergreen Apartments on the Great North Road
```
For longer distance calls, just add higher level area names: Suburb, Region, State, Nation, Continent, etc.
Synonyms can be added easily, and blocking/accepting rules are area based. Anything else you need can probably be achieved by making address groups in your address book (obviously, everyone needs a list of regular contacts). Fuzzy resolution can be grounds for competition: Much like search engines in our world, those generating the most accurate results without much effort would be favored by busy business people. Of course, if you were desperate, you could always try exploring a hierarchical list. Of all the regions of a State, for example.
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The more straightforward addressing systems have been thoroughly addressed in the other answers, but let me provide a few other ideas. The feasability of these ideas will depend on exactly how the magical system of the world in question operates.
## Spirit bound into each mirror
This borrows rather heavily from the magical system of the [Bartimaeus Sequence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartimaeus_Sequence), but can work in other magic systems as well.
Have a spirit/imp/djinni with a basic level of intelligence bound into each mirror. When you want to connect to another mirror, simply request the person or place you are looking for. The spirit will leave the mirror and seek out another mirror appropriate to your request. The spirit then brings back a magical information stream to connect the two mirrors.
In the case of one person having multiple mirrors, you can leave it up to the spirit's judgement to choose the best one. Depending on how much freedom the spirit has, this could lead to some interesting technical difficulties (and brings a whole new meaning to the concept of 'computer gremlins').
How fast the spirit travels between mirrors is up to you, and can bring its own complications.
## Physical Sympathetic Bond
When each mirror is made, a crystal (or other magically receptive object) is broken into many pieces. The largest piece is embedded into a mirror. The other pieces can then be distributed by the owner of the mirror; inserting one of these pieces into a receptacle on your own mirror will connect it to the first mirror.
This gives a concrete, unambiguous way of connecting to any mirror, and also provides a decent degree of security - someone will only be able to connect to your mirror if they have a shard of its crystal. If you need an especially secure line, only split the initial crystal into two pieces, that way only one other person will ever be able to connect.
However, this solution is not especially scalable - if there are hundreds or thousands of mirrors you want to connect to, it quickly becomes impractical.
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Keep it limited to "earthy" concepts - no technical concepts at all.
To give it a fantasy feel, a mirror is inactive until it is bound to its owner.
This is done by dropping a bit of blood (i.e. "life force") into a special hold in the mirror.
Once bound, the mirror can be controlled by its owner within a certain radius.
To contact another person, one simply walks up to their mirror and asks it verbally (or perhaps mentally if they got the high IQ upgrade) to activate the other person's mirror.
Because the "network" is on the astral or spirit plane via the life force of blood given to the mirrors, we can just pretend that all of that routing stuff is taken care of there.
And, then, the mirror that is closest to the person being sought (and is bound to that person) then activates.
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The point in time when the mirror was created would be a unique identifier.
Using it would fit with believing in the medieval concept of astrology.
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This isn't Internet, it's just videophone. To really call it Internet, you'd need some weird mirrors that, instead of reflecting light, reflect a psychic construct put there by some skilled mage. (yes, I'm aware Internet is the network, and videophones can work over the Internet, but if your network serves only this purpose, you're missing a whole lot of neat stuff)
You can ask some bard to think of stories in a very visual way (it's probably how they cast illusions spells, in their mind), and through some mind-reading magic, store these stories in a construct where anyone can go and ask for "the story about the Devil who Dares", etc.
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[Question]
[
Hippo's are one of natures most efficient food > weight animals, making them perfect for food. Additionally they are arguably the most dangerous land mammal, meaning they are hard to domesticate, very very hard. now we have been able to them them like, Jessica the Hippo shes 18 years old and may still sleep on the living room floor once in a while but that's not the same as domesticate them.
What can I do to make my culture able to domesticate the hippopotamus? If there is something that can be done, what is the earliest it can be done? If it cannot, how close can I get?
[Answer]
You are in luck. An experiment to better understand the domestication process was conducted on the [Russian Red Fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox). The project lead explained:
>
> Belyayev believed that the key factor selected for in the domestication of dogs was not size or fertility, but behavior: specifically, tameability. Since behavior is rooted in biology, selecting for tameness and against aggression means selecting for physiological changes in the systems that govern the body's hormones and neurochemicals.
>
>
>
His process for achieving his goals was, very simply...
>
> The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the "domesticated elite", are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population.
>
>
>
I expect the same rules apply to Hippos ... assuming you can avoid the screaming and the yelling and the, well, death that might occur when you find Class III Hippos. Note that the experimenters had to work through 20 generations of foxes to just to achieve 35% domestication. with [6–8 years needed to reproduce a generation](http://www.hippoworlds.com/hippopotamus-reproduction/), that's 120–160 years to domesticate Hippos. Bring a sack lunch!
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Actually it seems your idea is not new [(see here)](https://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/).
It seems someone seriously planned to raise hippos as cattle; plan was not actually pursued, but for other reasons, not difficulty of domestication.
They are not things you'll use as horses, but that's not intended ;)
AFAIK they are kept in many zoo and they are happily proliferating, given the chance.
I do not think you can put them in some "intensive farm", but they will be willing to solve marshland excess vegetation problems you may have.
In a few generations, butchering mercilessly the most unstable and allowing the more docile to mate, you should solve even irascibility problems. This should take a very reasonable amount of time (no more than 10 generations).
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As mentioned by previous respondents to domesticate Hippos as humans have done with other species by selective breeding would be extremely dangerous for those involved and would take a considerable amount of time. The only other method which seems to present itself to my mind is to directly genetically modify the Hippo genome itself using modern scientific genetic engineering techniques (plasmid insertion). Once scientists can isolate the genes that control behaviour and in particular aggression responses they would be able to switch them off or otherwise mitigate their influence. However this would not be simple to do since aggression in Hippos is likely a product of many different genes. In humans the gene monoamine oxidase A is strongly associated with human aggression, and is sometimes referred to as the warrior gene, it controls levels of serotonin and dopamine in the brain.
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A lot depends on what you plan to do with these hippos. If you're looking at them as a food source, you don't need to do much, except for restrict their range. Hippos leave the water at night to go forage. You can have your hippo-cowboys drive around at night with a front-end-loader. When it's (ahem) harvest-time, shoot one with a big huge rifle, scoop it up in the loader, and be on your way.
Now if you're talking about the unstoppable thundering lance-charge of hippo cavalry (and if you're not you should start; everyone should be talking about this), then selective breeding over generations is the way to go, as others have commented.
Side-note... Saw a nature show which highlighted a species of, well, mini-hippo which is much smaller and vulnerable to predators. Its sole defense was *insane aggression* which makes it risky to predate. The speculation on the show was that when big hippos evolved into being big enough to avoid most predation they kept the aggression as a relic.
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[Question]
[
Let's say I have a race of humanoids (bipedal, roughly human proportions) that have tails like felines/canines. I'm trying to figure out how they would design seating...
Assumptions:
* Like cats/dogs, they can bend their tail close to 90° right at the base.
* Like humans (but this is true of dogs, also!), they "sit" by resting their weight on their haunches.
* Sitting "on" their tail (i.e. brought forward between their legs) is quite uncomfortable, and possibly not safe.
* Sitting with their tail "stuck" to one side is annoying; they want to be able to move it to their other side, or let it "hang out", without getting up.
* Similarly, sitting in a way that they *can't* bring their tail in to curl against a leg is annoying.
* Tail lengths vary; on a "typical" chair, the tip may not *quite* reach the ground, or nearly two thirds of the tail may be on the floor.
* Their tails are flexible enough that, if they are sitting with their tailed tucked along a leg, on a chair that is open about the width of their body, they can "swoosh" their tail into the gap until it is fully "behind" the chair, and can reverse this action.
Given that they would design seats to overcome these limitations, what would they look like?
For chairs, they would just have a gap between the seat and back, with supports on the sides or set back enough to allow them to shift their tails over the support while seated. (The seat might also be "notched" a bit in back.) Alternatively, for *casual* seating, they might prefer cushions, a la the Orians from The Stars at War series.
But... I'm particularly interested in figuring out *vehicle* seats. "Bucket" seats that have open space behind them can probably follow similar design principles, but what about the more bench-like seats in the backs of cars? Could they have anything similar? If so, how would these seats need to be modified to accommodate tails? What about the seat belts / safety harnesses; would those need modification? What about "booster seats" for younger individuals that don't fit in the adult-sized seats?
(...or, they *might* use "seats" that look totally different? However, any "seat" whereupon they rest their abdomens would be a problem for individuals that are pregnant, *especially* when talking about vehicle seats. Also, they need to be able to fasten whatever safety restraint system is in use without assistance; stuff that fastens behind them is going to be awkward at best.)
(This is similar to, but not the same as, [What would a chair for a Human with a Tail look like?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/158146).)
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Please note that I have *already speculated* that their seats might look nothing like seats made for humans. I've also speculated why they *would*. Comments along these lines that don't come with suggestions for seating design or at least details beyond vague hand-waving are not helpful. The specific thrust of the question has plot relevance to my story. Explanation of the physiological working of my creatures' anatomy not; questions along those lines that don't come with suggested answers will be referred to [Bellisario's Maxim](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BellisariosMaxim) and/or [The MST3K Mantra](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MST3KMantra), or at least a different WB question.
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## Split seats.
having a gap in the center of the seat, that runs all the way forward and open in the back would be best. Keep in mind some car seats are angled back far more than chairs are. with bucket seats this will let the tail point forward, or back depending on the persons sitting style. Just like in the real world you will see different styles for different vehicles, motorcycle style seats may be slightly more common. Note most car seats sit fairly high in the frame, meaning tails can stick down quite a bit as well. The groove could run all the way to the floor. The lower section of the seat will be two seperate pieces, left and right. this will let tails point forward, back or anything in between, even straight down for shorter ones. It can also open wider in the downward direction so as materials get better car designers can leave it wide open underneath allowing for a wide range of movement.
Now if people sit with the tail pointed back it mean that each person takes up more space in the car, so you either seat fewer people or have longer cars, you can get shorter length by staggering rows so the back row is laterally offset to the front row, thus either the front or back will only seat one person. This may make three wheel style cars more common, since it will waste less material, on the other hand maybe the "trunk" will straddle the rear passenger.
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**Depends on why they have a tail**
If their tail is prehensile, their instinct will probably be to utilize it to catch themselves in which case, putting a pull brake under the chair instead of by the feet might feel very natural to them; so, you'll probably have something similar to a toilet seat with a lever in it.
If the tail is used primarily for balance when they run, then their instinct will be to continue to do that the same way humans prefer to lean into a turn so that we don't feel like we will fall over. In this case, an opening in the back of the seat with room behind it to point and swing their tail will be ideal.
If the tail is mostly decorative or used for protection, then it will be a question of keeping the tail safe; so, there will likely be some manner of "pocket" shaped in whatever fashion best keeps their particular tails from getting damaged.
Apart from adding a hole or pocket to the chair, the safety belts would likely not change much. You will still need to be forward facing to see where they are going, and you will still need a solid back and accessible straps which would not need to change in any meaningful way. Car seating is already designed with utility and safety in mind. When you start messing around with it too much, you create new safety concerns.
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Have the chair back contain a "C" like cutout or an off center post. That way, as long as they get use to sitting from one side of the seat: the door side and either the right side or the left side for non-vehicle seats. Sitting will be a normal action.
Look at horse riding both horses and riders are use to people getting on the horse from one side. Anyone who is a trained rider just mounts from that side without thinking about it.
Another possibility for vehicles is to have the back support not attached to the base of the seat but attached to the top or sides of the vehicle. However, this solution doesn't help chairs around a table like the other one does. So, I don't like it because it isn't a universal solution.
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The Varier Peel Lounger immediately came to mind as the ideal chair for humans with prehensile tails.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4HeZC.jpg)
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If the tail isn't excessively long, and can bend enough that it can run almost parallel to the rest of the spine, a simple solution for vehicles is a molded pocket that runs from the seat up the backrest. Structurally, it wouldn't change the effectiveness of the seat: you just adjust the back frame to have a gap that allows the pocket to be formed.
So the person gets in, arranges themselves so their tail is "erect", and aligned with the pocket, and then settles back, in effect enclosing their tail in cavity formed by their butt and back and the seat pocket. They might not like it, but they'd probably prefer the slight discomfort to having part of their body hanging loose and unprotected.
If they can't bend their tails that much, then the answer is a tube extension sticking out of the back of the seat angled downward the tail slides into. If it's left open, then you don't have to worry about dirt accumulation.
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I think an important piece to answer it, why do they still have tails? We had them, and they got in the way of walking/running all the time. How did they evolve and keep the tails?
There isn't a huge reason to keep the back of the seat closed, most car seats have very little structure there, just fabric pulled across it. Something like the attached image[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HEf3j.jpg) should give them plenty of room to let their tail hang out.
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Lets keep it simple and say the chair has a hole in it, for the tail, and a kind of enclosed bucket behind that, to keep the tail. And the bucket part is enclosed to keep the tail from getting kicked by whoever is sitting behind them. This assumes that the tail can bend and even curl up.
If not, then I would keep the hole, and make it so that its a societal no-no to sit behind anyone, you know, to avoid stepped on tails.
(If none of that works out then we've got a kind of slightly more private toilet.)
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Perhaps in (some?) vehicles, they don't "sit" at all.
There are [harnesses for dogs](https://zugopet.com/products/the-rocketeer-pack) that support the haunches and wrap around the body and shoulders. Something like this looks like it would be about as safe as a typical human vehicle seat (maybe more so as the body is well secured and it seems one could plausibly introduce some elasticity into this system, which would be really helpful in a crash). This isn't all that different from an arborist's harness (or indeed, many safety harnesses).
OTOH, I suspect this wouldn't be as comfortable as a "proper" seat. Probably this would be used in *some* situations (airplanes come to mind), but not as a first choice for e.g. personal vehicles.
(Certainly this wouldn't be used where safety restraints are not needed, e.g. desk chairs, but per the original question, those aren't an issue.)
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I just copy/pasted my answer from [What would a chair for a Human with a Tail look like?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/158146/what-would-a-chair-for-a-human-with-a-tail-look-like/158149#158149)
Because it seems like it can be applied here.
It's based on [Dragon ball](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/158146/what-would-a-chair-for-a-human-with-a-tail-look-like/158149#158149) chair design for the [Saiyan](https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/Saiyan) race.
I don't know the original artist's name though; found it on [Pinterest](https://id.pinterest.com/pin/554224297889367587/?lp=true).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VerDd.jpg)
So in the design it has a slit in the middle back (the one in the image is small but you can use bigger chair anyway) and there's also a combination of a reverse toilet hole too (basically extend the slit to become a toilet hole, to accommodate different tail types/angles to be able to just sit straight or not sit awkwardly or without contorting the tail or ass first while not hindering or hurting their tail when sitting).
And you can increase the hole gap if you want more tail movement.
I don't think this hinders the use of a seat belt.
For visual image of the reverse toilet hole, don't take it literally, and combine it with the slit design — basically extend the slit to there.
From: <https://www.amazon.com/slp/chair-support-for-lower-back-pain/9uunpf37wnxx3r3>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ajhZr.jpg)
From: <https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/hospital-toilet-chair-15480843597.html>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4p2Ln.jpg)
[Answer]
I have answered a similar question here: [What would a chair for a Human with a Tail look like?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/158146/what-would-a-chair-for-a-human-with-a-tail-look-like/158160#158160) , which focused more on the bio mechanics of the tail and how it influenced body plans (and thus furniture).
This leads to the question of why a creature has a tail in the first place? What evolutionary function does it perform?
In this case we are told that the creature is similar to a cat or dog, so the tail in a cat serves as part of the balancing function when jumping, and possibly tactile information in the rear hemisphere, as well as a signalling device for other cats and their human servants. Dog have been bred extensively over the last 10,000+ years they have been our companions, so probably have fewer functions related to movement, but still serve to provide communications to each other, can be used to provide protection and warmth on bad weather (think of huskies wrapping up in a tight ball with their tail over their nose), and other functions. Dog or cat tails do not provide the sort of grasping or holding support that the tails of monkeys do, so there is no need to provide any controls or functionality for the tail to be used (such as a parking brake lever).
Since dogs enjoy riding in cars, and humans have even developed several forms of harness to allow them to ride in safety (having a dog flying through the air in a car accident isn't something you want to contemplate), there are even plenty of illustrations that show dogs will assume their natural "sitting" or "lying down" positions on ordinary car seats (or the box like safety carriers often substituted).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SIXzT.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3cSaV.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/IWMW2.jpg)
So in these examples, the dog simply does what it normally does with the tail. Presumably a creature which still retained its dog or cat like shape would be more likely to be draped over a bench like "seat" so all the limbs are free to access controls, perhaps like a motorcycle, with the tail being free.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XS9H5.png)
*The seatback for a tailed rider would be horizontal*
I'm inclined to think that if the creature adopted an upright position, the tail would shrink accordingly and be a small "stub", unless conditions demanded the tail evolve into a more versatile balance organ or similar function. In that case, the seat would be more like a backless stool, since the tail needs to be free and have a full range of motion (despite being seated in a vehicle, acceleration forces are till being felt and being unable to manipulate the balance organ would be uncomfortable at best, and frightening at worst). Since rear passengers also need to use their tails, the vehicle itself will be much longer than the analogous human vehicle, and likely laid out in the interior like a large cargo van, with individual stools or bench seats. More advanced vehicles would have a seat somewhat like a "kneeling stool", and most likely a chest rest to provide crash protection. The kneeling stool would also be the common form of chair in other settings as well, so there would not be a great deal of issue moving from house to car or train.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/aVF1H.jpg)
*Kneeling stool*
So seat design will have to take into account "why" the creature has a tail. This will also mean changes to other aspects of vehicle design as well, not "just" putting a hole in the seat.
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This, for the record, is what I ultimately decided to use:
### For casual seating:
Options. Lots and lots of options... but by preference, bean bags, or something similar. I'm imagining that my people are probably more comfortable lounging in a partially reclined posture, and malleable support will tend to make tail position a non-issue.
Here, I have to give credit to David Weber / Steve White and the Starfire series (the first four books can be read [here](http://baencd.freedoors.org/Books/The%20Stars%20at%20War%20I/index.htm) and [here](http://baencd.freedoors.org/Books/The%20Stars%20at%20War%20II/index.htm)), since I'm basically stealing this from the Orions... though I am also taking inspiration from observation of domestic cats.
### For "formal" seating:
Per the original question, straight-backed chairs with an opening in back, and also a partially notched seat (e.g. [Li Jun's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/158231/43697)). Example:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A5dsE.png)
Seats split down the middle will also exist, but a) they require additional bulk or complexity to support a two-piece seat, and b) I'm thinking that sitting with one's tail tucked between the legs feels "odd", and so designers would not feel it "necessary" to design seats that accommodate that.
To some extent, I'm going to hand-wave "cultural reasons" here, however, I think there are durability and/or space-saving arguments. Also, I'm having trouble imagining the logistics of some sort of auditorium having with hundreds of bean bags. (Did I mention space savings? People sitting upright can be packed more tightly than people reclining.)
### For vehicle "bucket" seats:
As noted in [Nosajimiki's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/158204/43697), I probably want my people to have at least partial movement of their tails while seated. For this reason (and also simplicity of design), the tail should have the ability to "hang" out the back freely (no "buckets"). These will look essentially like human seats, but with the added features as in the "formal chair" example, above, i.e. an opening at the bottom of the back and a "tail notch". In addition, because they are padded, molded seats, they will incorporate the "tail canyon" feature as in [John's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/158212/43697). Essentially, the front edge of the seat is flat (or even with a raised nub between the legs as is sometimes seen), but then the middle slopes down through the height of the seat, so that a person can sit on it with their tail tucked between their legs. If desired, the person can then pull their tail through so that it hangs behind the back of the seat. (That said, because seats tend to be reclined in order to reduce vehicle height, our passengers will probably tend to keep their tails tucked forward, under the seat.)
Some less formal seats may also incorporate this; for example, a fiberglass or molded plastic seat probably would, while a "simple" wood or folding-chair often will not, due to the added complexity and because it necessitates a taller seat height.
### For vehicle "bench" seats:
Here we come to the real focus of the question. Again, in consideration of Nosajimiki's comments, we want our people with tails to be able to move them around. This means that the design in human cars, where the bench is essentially "molded" into the interior pan of the vehicle, is out. Our benches will have to be open underneath and, at least to some extent, behind, and will incorporate the same open lower back as bucket seats. This should be practical without other serious modifications for "sedan"-type vehicles, although we're probably looking at some body elongation and/or elevation, since that space would otherwise be available for stuff like drive components and fuel tanks. The center seat is going to be the real problem; because the drive shaft may run through here, center seat passengers may well be restricted to sitting on their tails. Us humans are already not big fans of the middle; my tailed people probably will really hate it. "Bench" seats will thus necessarily incorporate the same "tail canyon" for the middle seat, and probably for the sides as well. We'll just have to assume our passengers' ability to shift side to side is limited.
Restraints (i.e. seat belts) can be as in human vehicles.
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This doesn't cover everything... for instance, whether backless benches could be practical would be an interesting question as well, but this question is focused on vehicle seating.
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[
*In the wake of [this, my answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/70840/2746) to [this question about where to put a Dyson Sphere](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/70839/where-do-you-put-a-photosynthetic-dyson-sphere) an apparent issue came up. And it needs some good resolution:*
**What are we going to do with all that heat** the system generates?
The premise is that a [Dyson Sphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere) with a radius of about [1AU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit) is/will be built around a [star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star). As we now have fully enclosed this star1, we have a huge black sphere that has to somehow [get rid of all the heat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamics) generated by the central star.
This **question** is about **finding** engineering **solutions for getting rid of that heat**.
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**Answers** will be *graded* after the following criteria:
* How [*elegant*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegance#In_engineering) is the proposed solution?
* How well does the solution [*scale*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalability) when confronted with *more* or *less* heat?
* How well does it keep the sphere *hidden* from any observers?
1And in the process consumed all the planets and other bodies in this and a few of the surrounding [systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system)
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I think the best solution would be a [Matrioshka Brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain). This is effectively a layered set of Dyson spheres. Once it reaches equilibrium, each shell has a particular temperature differential across it, which can be used to generate work. These shells feed eachother, so the total temperature drop across the entire brain is equal to the temperature of the star minus the temperature of interstellar space.
The neat thing about Matrioshka Brains is that the temperature of the radiating surface of each layer is lower than the previous. With some careful effort, you could eventually radiate all the power of the star in a spectrum that is closer and closer to that of background radiation. You can't get it perfect (there's no such thing as stealth in space), but you can get close.
This makes it substantially harder to detect the brain. It is very hard to distinguish a signal whose spectrum is close to that of noise. You have to listen for a long time. It gets even harder from a distance. Most observations of thermal characteristics like this are from a distance where the Matrioshka brain would subtend only the tiniest fraction of a pixel. This means the temperature of the brain would be averaged with the temperature of the background radiation, and that average would be heavily weighted towards the background radiation.
EDIT: A key that I failed to mention is that there is an assumption here that there is value in harnessing the energy. Once energy is no longer in thermal form, there's many more options. For example, one might export high-potential-energy materials to be emitted elsewhere. It might be amusing to go collect the results of solar fusion from other stars and use the energy from the Matrioshka brain to un-fuse them back into hydrogen to be used in fusion reactors! A lot of options open up once you've sucked as much of the energy as possible out of the solar radiation instead of emitting it as heat!
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In order to keep your dyson sphere hidden, you don't really have to do anything.
There's two key things to keep in mind.
1. The whole point of a dyson sphere is to extract as much useful energy as possible to do useful work with.
2. There's a maximal efficiency of any method to extract work from heat energy, and that efficiency is determined by the difference in temperature between the heat source and the thing you're dumping the heat into.
**Our Heat Source**:
Assuming a star like our sun, the surface is 5778 K.
**Our Heat Sink**:
The vacuum of space at 2.7 K.
That gives us a maximal theoretical efficiency of `1 - (2.7 / 5778) = 0.99953271028`
So, assuming a dyson sphere at earth's radius, if we wanted to be as stealthy as possible and emit all heat in directional lasers, we could make the effective black body temperature of the outer surface be:
`p` = 1374 W (normal power output per square meter of dyson sphere surface)
`b` = 5.67 x 10-8 W/(m2\*K4) Stefan–Boltzmann constant
`e` = efficiency with which we can convert heat to lasers
`t` = effective temperature
`p*(1-e)=b*t4`
Solving for t we get a temperature of 58 K. So that's about the coldest we could possibly make the sphere appear. Very cold, but still not the 2.7 K of empty space.
But doing that would get us absolutely no useful work out of any of the star's energy.
If we do absolutely nothing to camouflage our sphere and just use absolutely all of the available energy for useful things:
`p = b * t4`
t = 394.549 K or ~ 250 Fahrenheit
This would put the radiation at:
`b` = Wien's displacement constant = 2.8977729×10−3 m⋅K
`w` = black body wavelength intensity peak
`t` = temperature
`w = b / t = 7.3 * 10-6`
Which puts it in the near infrared with it being just a little bit of a dark red glow in the visible spectrum. Which unfortunately is still warmer than the coldest brown dwarfs.
All of this assumes there are no other realistic inefficiencies, but basically you're looking at making the sphere somewhere between 58 K and 394 K, but the colder you make it, the less energy you get to actually use out of it. And the colder you make it, the harder it will be to detect, but you'll never be able to make it completely undetectable.
Also of note, you can lower these temperatures if you make the sphere larger. But if you make it too big you'll start running into the problem of it being more likely that your sphere occludes some other star, giving it away.
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**Being careful with your aim**
You can't not radiate, so if you want to not be observed then you need to make sure you aren't radiating in the direction of your nearest neighbours. To do this you'll need to somehow channel all the energy into a series of directional beams that are aimed in-between the stars closest to you. The amount of power you'll need to pump through those emitters will vary depending on the number of emitters you have, so let's have a look at some numbers:
**How much energy have we got to lose?**
Lets assume we're talking about our sun for now.
3.8×1026 W
OK. Just to be clear that's an awful lot of zeroes.
**How can we absorb it?**
There are a couple of answers to this, [some on this very site](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/17982/dyson-sphere-construction). Let's assume that we use a couple of shells to create some vast thermal power plant and we can then shuffle the electricity around. It's not going to be perfect, there will still be some ambient radiation, but with decent insulation and design it should be well below the amount that's noticeable at interstellar distances. If you want to decrease the energy leakage then increase the number of shells (like adding very big, complicated blankets to a very big incandescent baby).
**How can we get rid of it?**
Let's turn to the ever excellent [Randall Munroe](https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/) for this one.
>
> The Boeing YAL-1 was a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser mounted in a 747. It was an infrared laser...
>
>
>
There are bigger lasers, but they all fire for fractions of seconds.
So we've got a laser that can fire on the order of megawatts of power. Lets assume they each fire at 3.6MW and we can run them continuously and see how many of them we need...
10^21 lasers. Assuming they each take up a meter squared that's 1/281'th of the space we have to play with on the outside of our sphere. Not great, but it's usable. If we can get more laser apertures in then we can improve upon that, but preferably we want to be able to shift their aim.
Now, if we aim them at the darkest bit of sky we can find from their individual location (parallax is going to be important at these scales), then we'll be minimising our chances of being noticed. Again: This isn't perfect. The lasers won't have perfect beam coherence, so the beam will be more of a cone spreading out into the stars. This in turn means that stars further away might be clipped by an intense and regular source of radiation, spawning all sorts of wild theories about [rapidly rotating stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar) and suchlike.
**What about the bits that aren't laser arrays?**
Clad them in long wavelength EM absorbent materials, refrigerate them and pump the heat back into the inner shell of your stellar power plant. Sure, you're going to hugely increase the entropy of the system as a whole, but when you're engineering a Dyson sphere I think minimum-entropy concerns are pretty much out the window...
Naturally this has some problems (heat buildup on the laser arrays being a large one) and some potential improvements (the IR lasers probably aren't the best way to direct the energy, some form of particle beam apparatus may well be better) but it should suffice to mask you from a casual observer.
One last note: Make sure the lasers are evenly spread or you'll end up pushing your shell ever so slowly out of position, and crashing a Dyson sphere into a sun is pretty embarrassing...
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A quick note: This would also require some 'hotspot' exhausts from which to extract the electricity to power the lasers. Clever positioning of these and suitable focusing systems could again minimise the chance of detection. In fact, if you really wanted to you could probably get away with just using the exhausts, though the focusing requirements would be a lot more tricky to deal with that aiming a laser.
[Answer]
# First, a back-of-the-envelope calculation:
[power output of sun / surface area of sphere of radius 1 AU](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=power%20output%20of%20sun%20%2F%20surface%20area%20of%20sphere%20of%20radius%201%20AU) = ~1368 W/m^2
You MUST radiate this much (on average) from every square meter of your sphere. MUST, as in, mathematical imperative.
Under the (typical) assumption of a perfect Lambertian emitter, you can invert the [Stefan–Boltzmann Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law) to get an average temperature of 394.1°K (or 121°C). That's not visible light, but it is [pretty hefty across infrared and near-radio](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/BlackbodySpectrum_loglog_150dpi_en.png).
# The Problem
This temperature is inconveniently high (it's death for most terrestrial life, for example), and *it is unavoidable under these design constraints*. If we decide it's unacceptable, we have several options. You've bitten off *a lot* to chew, so the best that can realistically be done is propose several *classes* of solutions.
# Approach 1: Reduce Power Output of Star
(Insert magitech.) Stars have stable fusion rates. Maybe you can chuck a *whole solar-system's worth* of iron into it to slow it down. Or choose a dimmer star. Or siphon off material with a wormhole or something equally scientifically dubious.
# Approach 2: Make Your Dyson Sphere Bigger
Because irradiance follows an inverse square, at 2 AU, the energy dissipated per area is 1/4 that at 1 AU. This is much more manageable.
Gravitational stresses also decrease on the poles of a larger Dyson sphere, and you get even more surface area. So it's good in other ways too. It can't reduce your heat signature, but that isn't really possible anyway (see **Stealth**, below). So, **I recommend this approach**.
# Approach 3: Let Some Light Through
Poke holes in your Dyson sphere. The sideways areas give you more area to radiate. This doesn't work very well for a full sphere (the surfaces tend to radiate into each other), but lesser (and more practical) megastructures (e.g. Niven rings) can radiate nicely. Consequently, **I recommend this approach.**
# Approach 4: Concentrate Energy
This cannot be done without reversing entropy. We can do that by expending more energy (say some fraction collected from the star), so it's not impossible in this case.
There's probably a thousand ways to do this, but they'll all be difficult because fundamental laws of optics make it essentially impossible to focus [light from a large object like a star](https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/). The energy will need to go through an intermediate stage (e.g. solar panel -> electricity -> laser), with tremendous losses along the way. Those losses translate into waste heat, which is a tremendous problem in an enclosed space. Consequently, **this is a bad class of approach to take.**
Another thing to consider is that directional emission must be done carefully to avoid unintended consequences. For example, If you find a way to emit all the star's energy in a laser, then the whole assembly will rapidly start accelerating the opposite direction (because you've just made a stellar-scale [photon rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_rocket)). You need another laser in the other direction if you don't want to move.
# Stealth
The only even remotely possible way to do this is with something from approach 1 or 4 (because otherwise either light from the star is getting out, or your waste heat in aggregate is literally exactly equal to the star's output in the first place. If you can direct a beam, you have a fighting chance at aiming it. But, no matter what, energy input equals energy output; it is mathematically impossible to hide your Dyson sphere from all directions all at once if they could detect the original star.
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A [heat pipe system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe) should be able to handle what your load.
>
> The advantage of heat pipes over many other heat-dissipation mechanisms is their great efficiency in transferring heat. A pipe one inch in diameter and two feet long can transfer 12,500 BTU (3.7 kWh) per hour at 1,800 °F (980 °C) with only 18 °F (10 °C) drop from end to end. Some heat pipes have demonstrated a heat flux of more than 23 kW/cm², about four times the heat flux through the surface of the sun.
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So on the inner surface of the sphere you put a lot of heat collection pads hooked up to heat pipes that travel through the sphere structure and to the outside where there would be huge thermal radiators.
The suns head would be absorbed, transferred through the heat pipe arrays, and then dissipated out through the radiators.
The sphere would glow in the infrared spectrum, but it would be diffuse.
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I'm kind of thinking if you have the engineering scratch to create a Dyson sphere, you might be able to channel the energy in a way to get it directional. What you plan on doing with all of the energy, anyway? Keep in mind that heat is energy.
Anyway, a method to make it as invisible to the outside as possible would be to tightbeam the energy in two directions. One, to wherever or whatever needs that much juice. The excess could be tight-beamed to the nearest black hole or the galaxies core.
Not perfect stealth, because there ain't no stealth in space (thanks to all the others who said it), but it would be very hard to notice and if you stumbled across the tightbeam by accident, you'd likely get vaporized for your trouble.
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At the risk of recursion, I will post a link to the Physics SE, where someone asks ["When does energy turn to matter?"](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/16777/when-does-energy-turn-to-matter)
In theory, a sufficiently advanced civilization (like one capable of building the Dyson sphere in the first place) could reverse the equation1 and convert that energy down to mass. Which can then be set adrift into space, where no one will ever notice.
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1
$$
E = MC^2
$$
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To be converted by synthetic process into magnetic fields used to
1: Contain more of said energy without being forced to expel, radiate or convert it.
2: To provide structural reinforcement for the rigid Dyson Sphere in the resistance of gravitational, thermal and shear forces resulting from the motion of the megastructure's composites and etc.
3: For an absolute-lord-almighty-massive collider/plasma tube (or a billion of them) to change the state of said energy along further evolutions.
The problem the 'stealth' problem (whether dyson or space vessel or w/e) has is in conservation, whatever one does with energy, it is still energy. So the problem really should be 'how can one store energy within the [holistic] construct rather than expel it.' Well, the more energy has, the more one can direct to the establishment of [magnetic] fields, and we know fields can be used to direct [contain] the movement of massive energy.
Whilst this applies as much to the host star as to the construct, stars behave the way they do because of the net energy and it's distribution, changing that over long periods makes things complicated.[hah]
To be a little more specific we can say that rather than expelling energy as lasers or somesuch, the manipulation of fields can be used to impel energy and energetic particles into particular formations, regions of space and alignments with which an apparatus can perform further functions.
If we use, for instance, fields to maintain a channel, the field can be aligned in such a way that certain particles and states of energy are more or less likely to escape the channel..and thus a succession of fields can be manipulated to 'refine' energy without (as much) concern for nearby material equipment.
As all of this reflects on the conservation of energy problem: if fields can be used to move energy, they are effectively being used already to store it, importantly.. without the need for 'contacting' the material of the structure and incurring greater cost and requirements on it's maintenance and integrity. In addition, the energy can be 'contained' in any form one has the technology to impose..in 'open space' internal or external to the greater mass of the construct without radiating it 'out' in massive quantities.
As regards colliders and plasma channels: If one can redirect the flow of energy on relevant scales and with sufficient precision "free standing" plasma channels and colliders become practicable. We can use such apparatus already to impose creation events, it seems likely that with the ability to create channels in open space and with the energy provided by the merging of multiple energetic streams from multiple fusion events further [and obviously scaling] applications would become available.
Forgot to state explicitly[?]: If your apparatus can control energetic particles in open space, open space becomes a 'battery.'
But really, the point of the original post was to highlight the lack of attention being given to field manipulations, I'm not a mathmo/physicist
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So wasn't sure where to rider this idea and I don't think it's a full answer, but I didn't see a better place.
Since it seems like Stealth is the main concern, Why not hide in plain sight?
The problem with people that say "There's no stealth in space" is that they fundamentally don't understand stealth. It's not about being perfectly invisible, it's about not being what your opponent is looking for.
Case in point, there are trillions of stars in a galaxy, so instead of trying to not let someone see your star, just don't let them see that your star is special. I think the leading solutions are to try to take a hotter star and hide it as a dimmer star, covering the outer shell of the sphere in radiators or being uniformly translucent that make the star appear dimmer and smaller. Perhaps also an irregular dust cloud slowly orbiting to help 'mask' the image of the star while also providing a natural barrier to mask any comings and goings of vessels.
Another idea would be to try to simulate being a pulsar. Spinning your sphere at a rate that would simulate a pulsar is probably not possible from a materials or habitability perspective, so I would again cover the surface in emitters that fire in a sequence to give the appears of a spinning pulsar. The problem is that pulsars are loud, so you're screaming to the universe "I AM A PULSAR" so you'll taking a gamble that 1) Pulsars aren't interesting enough to study and 2) you're really good at pretending to be pulsar.
The second part of the problem is you need to hide the fact that you built the Sphere in the first place. Building it will not be cheap nor fast. Even if you could wink the sphere into exist or phase it into this reality, an observer will probably notice if a bright star suddenly goes dim or winks out. So hiding the construction will also be critical.
I would probably try to assemble the sphere in halves above and below the plane of the galaxy. This would expose lighting traveling "up" and "Down" through the thin parts of the galaxy to the fact that you're building a Sphere, but there is much less real estate in the path for there to be potential civilizations to detect you before the light leaves for extra-galactic space.
Next, I'd try to find a way to make a diversion while I bring the hemispheres together around the star. The goal is to minimize the transition period while there's something more interesting to watch. If possible, I'd try to make a nearby star (again, 'above' or 'below' in the galactic plane to have the shadow cast through the smallest volume of galactic space) go super nova so everyone is busy looking at the big bang and blind to my star dimming. This may also be a good time to introduce that orbiting dust cloud so that any observer would just conclude that spooky action seen from my star was simply matter from the super nova rocketing past.
Lastly, we now need to clean up any survivors in our galactic 'up' and 'down' that might have had a better picture. In a perfect universe, we'd somehow lens the aforementioned super nova to fire a series of directed fast gamma ray bursts at any stars that had a good show. Sorry to be grim, but dead civilizations tell no tales: sometimes to only way to 'hide' is to kill the sentry, and we have a nice loud event to that might even help us hide our death rays.
It should be noted that these solutions are going to require you to sacrifice A LOT of power the sphere produces to devote to camouflage. I feel like that's acceptable though. If you want to hide you're probably not looking for phenomenal cosmic power, but the Megastructure equivalent of a nice quiet cabin to spend the rest of your civilization's days out in mildly-guilty "peace".
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You don’t understand the concept of the Dyson Sphere if you are trying to “get rid” of all that heat. Heat is energy, and the DS is meant to capture the energy. The “sphere” requires many new technologies, engineering marvels, etc. chief among them is some sort of super material that absorbs and stores the energy for use when you need it, or targets the energy where you need it. If you can’t handle all the excess heat, then you are not in Dustin Sphere territory. Such a structure is reserved for civilizations that both require all that energy, and can actually use it. IOW: if “too much heat” is a problem for the materials you are using, then you are building a massive structure just to vent out the energy you are capturing, which makes no sense at all.
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Today, a major company gets itself listed on stock exchanges so that people can buy a portion of the company while it can raise money. While the distances and time lags involved aren't much of a concern in the small-ish blue marble we live on, it does create a problem for stuff like interplanetary stock trade. Average time lag between Mars (the red marble) and Earth (the blue marble) is between ~4 minutes and ~22 minutes, depending upon the relative position of the planets in their orbits at the time. Any news on Earth reaches Mars 4 to 22 minutes later; any news from Mars takes the same time to reach Earth, which frankly is scary in stock trading.
**How do I design a resilient system which is not affected by time constraints between planets?**
*This question is set in the real physics world. Relativity still holds, and, as of current (story) timeline, nothing ever discovered travels faster than light.*
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You could switch from continuous trading to a series of discrete auctions every x minutes. The key is that the order book of the current auction shouldn't be publicly available, only that of already completed auctions; so everyone's on a fair playing field.
Basically have the trading engine accumulate orders for 1 hour then execute them all at the end and publish the result. This way both traders on Mars and Earth have access to the same order book information during any one auction period and plenty of time for a round trip (though sending messages through the Sun might be a bit challenging).
On top of this you'd want a requirement for publishing company news. The exchange would need to enforce that all company filings, product releases, analyst recommendations, etc. be made public at the beginning of each auction (or outside trading hours\*). This would be a bit difficult to enforce in case of outside information that influences the company like regulation changes, or death of CEO... It also means that the company has to exclusively trade on this exchange, as the order book of any other exchange would be quite informative.
\*Outside trading hours is going to also be hard to define since Mars and Earth days are not in sync, perhaps you'd want all day trading.
As Separatrix's said companies will invest where they get the best deal. Having a wider audience might help here. But perhaps the interplanetary exchange is only relevant to companies that are split nearly half-half between Earth and Mars.
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# They don't work.
You should ask a simpler question first. Why, when everything is conducted electronically, do all the stock brokers still accumulate around the exchanges?
The answer as you have already indicated in your question is that latency is scary for traders. They spend a fortune reducing it by 10microseconds, with a latency of 20+mins you might as well not bother.
If you want to trade on the London Stock Exchange, you have to be in London. If you want to trade on the Martian Stock Exchange you have to be on Mars, the closer the better.
As long as you abide by the rules of the exchange there are no restrictions on which exchange you list your company on. If you want to list your Martian company on the LSE, or trade your Martian futures on the NYSE then you can. Companies list based on where they think they'll get the best price, geography is not important (though politics can be).
For major share trades it doesn't matter that much where you are, they have long negotiations on price, but for small trades catching fluctuations in the market, there's a distinct and insurmountable advantage to being closer to the exchange.
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Stock exchanges existed since the XVII century - one of the earliest actually called stock exchanges being [Amsterdam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Stock_Exchange), but other *de facto* institutions were flourishing since the time of the Medicis (which actually owned one).
Typical lags at that time could exceed 108 milliseconds, and it wasn't the case that "local" operators only could hope to profit. Indeed, the Medicis routinely had the equivalent of stock exchange operations with Siena and Rome.
Of course, some operations would require closer decision loops - as they do today. But most would be unaffected. Automated trading would undoubtedly be performed by local agents - exactly as it is done today.
As another example, in the 1800s the London Stock Exchange market was influenced by Chinese tea trade, and merchants in Hong Kong played the London market - of course exploiting their closer and fresher knowledge of China trade.
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## You will trade only futures
[Future contracts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_contract) are traded even today. When trading from Earth to Mars, you would trade only futures.
Martian Stock Exchange would trade other financial instruments, but I assume Earth - Martian stock exchange would be heavily based on futures or long term contracts
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First, the link above is to a paper on *interstellar* trade - Frankel in 1975 is referenced in that paper and I found it for you - hopefully helpful!
[Trade With Other Planets (PDF, 1975)](https://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/jfrankel/TradeWithOtherPlanets.pdf)
Without having read the paper, it seems to me that unless faster than light (FTL) communications have been invented in your world there would be time lag significant enough to obtain the types of relationships typical to say, London based markets around the time trans-Atlantic communication became common - studying this time period and the issues caused by the different time frames will be informative.
I do realize that this is not the question you asked, exactly, but more importantly perhaps would be the effect it would have on the currency exchanges - currency markets are highly lucrative and rely on rapid and orderly fulfillment. The effects, once again, could be reviewed in historical markets, but the fact that each isolated market would have its own instantaneous type transactions would create a dynamic exchange, for sure.
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# It is possible by ASFAS
The **A**utomatic **S**tock **F**luctuation **A**nalysis **S**ystem (best among the several in market) based on machine learning and artificial intelligence will keep track of the stock favorable ratio and notify the user preset buy/sell authenticating software; which will buy or sell for the user.
The server of the analysis system is based in the planet where the stock is. The user need to make sure the the preset fund availability for the twice the time lag and profit or loss will mostly depend on this detail.
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So, in a post-apocalyptic scenario I’m working on, one of the main things is that at the time, there were people dumping their entire life savings out the window and into the street. They just didn’t want them anymore, money couldn’t help them in this scenario, and millions of dollar bills still litter the streets because no one else wanted them either.
My story is set 30-40 years after the initial event, and I’m having a character walking the ruins of a city. I want there to still be thousands of bills in the streets, but realistically, would they still be there after all that time, and not have rotted away or anything?
* No one has been going around collecting them, but they were probably stepped on for the first few years or so.
* There hasn’t been any major fires or attacks after the bills were dumped, so nothing has burned them all up or obscured them with rubble.
* There have been animals snooping around in the cities, and they’ve been exposed to the elements, wind, rain, snow, and the like.
* They’re sitting on top of asphalt and concrete instead of just dirt, so would this slow down the decomposition?
Edit: What if some of them were blown into corners, or under balconies and awnings? Would this protect them from the elements more? How much would the geographical location of the city matter, as in different climates effecting decomposition time?
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**The bills would be gone or decomposed - *if they were simply left in the streets.***
As soon as the cities are abandoned animals and nature will reclaim the area. There are plenty of post-apocalyptic movies and video-games that will give you a great idea of how an urban area might look after a decade or more of complete abandonment.
Consider what would have happened in that time:
**Weather**
The bills would be swept up by the wind, rained on over and over again, frozen and defrosted, as well as baked in the sun.
**Animals**
Many animals would use bills as materials to construct their nests. That might only account for a small amount of them going missing, but it would still take a toll.
Other critters such as rats might just straight up *eat* them.
**Decomposition**
US currency is made out of organic materials, such as linen and cotton. These can and *will* decompose, be affected by fungi, etc.
**Inside Buildings**
Indoors, however, the situation might be rather different. Imagine your character entering a massive, ornate building which was once a major bank. The door had been sealed until he broke his way in, more than a decade after the cataclysmic event which caused the city to be abandoned.
Inside, money is strewn among the decomposed corpses of bank employees, rioters, and security personnel. From his books your explorer recognizes police uniforms, formal suits and ties, and, of course, rusted assault rifles.
The money they fought over in those moments of madness litters the floor, slightly moldy, but still completely recognizable in the dry, sealed environment of the bank which had gone on a security lock-down as the world went to hell around it.
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The real-life [D.B. Cooper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper#Physical_evidence) case gives us some indication that we could possibly extrapolate from. About eight years after the original skyjacking incident, some of the ransom money was found on the banks of a river near where Cooper might have landed. It was in very poor condition, but still recognizable- enough for the FBI to link it to Cooper.
After eight years amongst mud and water some bills were nothing but brittle sheets of mold, while others look almost intact, maybe even enough to be accepted by a store clerk. However, I suspect the better preserved bills were those on the *inside* of the bundles, while those nearer the top and bottom fared much worse.
In your scenario, the exposure duration is multiplied by three or four, and the bills are loose and not in bundles. Extrapolation always requires a little conjecture, but I agree that nothing that could still be identified as a bill would remain.
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## It's unlikely anything would be left.
US currency is made of [paper composed of 75% cotton and 25% linen](http://www.bep.gov/hmimpaperandink.html), with a [thickness of 0.11 mm](http://papermoneyguide.com/faq.htm#52). I haven't found any information that the paper is pre-treated with any sort of fungicide that would limit degradation. So, you can consider them as ***very thin* strips of rags, composed of organic fibers**. The wear and tear from the elements, combined with mold, would have almost certainly destroyed them after a period of several decades.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pzvzp.jpg)
Other countries use [polymer banknotes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_banknote), which would be more resilient to weathering, although alternating temperature extremes might still eventually do them in.
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Allow me to present Lyr, one of a handful of worlds crafted by artist Chris Wayan:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PPGSt.jpg)
The one detail among a vast many that is important to this question is that its salinity is about 1.5%, roughly half that of Earth. Do you know what that means?
It means that the oceans of Lyr, a habitable planet more than twice the width and seven times the mass of Earth, are **brackish**.
Lyr serves merely as a model to demonstrate the question more clearly. In an alternate Earth, **what must it have to give its oceanic salinity no greater than 1.5%, hence *brackish***?
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**Less land**
It's actually pretty easy. There are two ways to make an ocean less salty. The first way is to remove salt, and the second is to add fresh water, both of which are possible, but takes a lot of effort and won't really occur naturally. But the better question is, what makes an ocean salty in the first place and can we prevent that from happening? And the answer is *[land](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/whysalty.html)* causes the ocean to be salty, and yes we can.
The water cycle adds ions from runoff water into the ocean - ions gained from eroded rocks on land, that the rain itself dissolves thanks to its slightly acidic properties. (A quick note - when I say rain is acidic, I'm not referring to modern acid rain, all rain is naturally a bit acidic thanks to CO2 in the air. [Modern acid rain](https://www.epa.gov/acidrain/what-acid-rain) has a few extra things.)
To make an alternate Earth that has a less salty ocean, just decrease the land mass. Less land means less ions means less salt, especially given the size of your ocean.
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**Go back in time**
The [seas millions and billions of year](https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/riversnotsalty.html) back were less saltier than today:
>
> In the beginning, the primeval seas were probably only slightly salty. But over time, as rain fell to the Earth and ran over the land, breaking up rocks and transporting their minerals to the ocean, the ocean has become saltier.
>
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At some point, they would have been 1.5% salinity.
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**Physical factors, oxidation reduction inhibitors**
All minerals form due to various oxidation reduction reactions that occur naturally, along with physical factors. Altering conditions may help here - reduce the amount of oxygen in air in the composition of atmosphere, reduce the general atmospheric temperature, atmospheric pressure.
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# Introduce a microorganism that sequesters salt.
Trees and plants sequester carbon: they take in CO2 and build the carbon into their physical structure. Coral sequesters calcium.
What you need is a microorganism that seeks out salt and makes it a part of itself or, even better, builds it into structures like reefs (better because the salt stays locked up after the creature dies). We see algae blooms becoming more common these days as the nutrients to support them fill the oceans. Likewise, these creatures would be always present but flourish when salinity spikes, thus maintaining a 1.5% balance.
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The other answers are great. But if we were to assume the same amount of land over the same timeframe with no special salt-gathering creatures, there's a least one other thing that would do it: **Start out with a planet composed of less salts.** There are of course many salts, some of them compounds, but [the majority of salt in the ocean is sodium and chloride](https://www.britannica.com/science/seawater). Reduce those two by about 55% and the problem is solved. There may be some complications for life that need these ions, but that amount does not seem disastrous.
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# Narrow or Dam the straits of Gibraltar
In order to make the sea less salty by geological means, you need to take water out of the sea, evaporate it to dryness, then have it fall as rain.
There is a net inflow of water into the Mediterranean sea through the 14km wide Strait of Gibraltar, and evaporation causes the mediterreanean sea to accumulate salt, making it saltier than the Atlantic Ocean.
This process is however balanced by back-mixing. There is a bidirectional flow through the Strait of Gibraltar: Atlantic water flows into the Mediterranean at the surface, but saltier Mediterranean water flows back into the Atlantic in the deeps, which prevents salt accumulating in the mediterranean too much. The shallowest point of the Strait (a short distance west of the narrowest point)is the Camarinal Sill at 280m deep.
It is theorized that it the past, the Strait of Gibraltar was indeed closed, and the mediterranean dried up, becoming hypersaline as a result, causing the Messinian Salinity Crisis from 5.96 to 5.33 million years ago. This ended when the Strait reopened in Zanclean Flood.
If you can restrict the Strait of Gibraltar such that inflow can occur but backmixing cannot, then the Mediterranean will become more salty and the rest of the worlds oceans will correspondingly reduce.
The chances of the Strait being restricted by just the right amount for the length of time to allow for the mediterranean to be completely filled with salt deposits (rather than simply closing off, drying out and becoming a land depression) naturally are not that high (but see edit!) According to the Wikipedia article there were proposals in the early 20th century to build a hydroelectric dam on the strait. The engineering challenges would be enormous, as would the electric output. There would be major environmental consequences, including climate change in Europe and Africa.
I suppose if you didn't want to build a pressure-withstanding dam, you could just fill the strait with rubble, which might very effectively prevent the backmixing while allowing the inflow. But I can't think of an economic motive for doing this, or a natural process that would achieve the same effect.
**How long would this take, and how much salt could be removed?**
According to <https://www.mathscinotes.com/2015/08/drying-up-the-mediterranean/> it would take 1000 years for the mediterranean to dry up with no inflow. Sea water contains about 35g salt / kg water (about 30:1 by mass) so if the mediterranean were replenished through a Gibraltar Dam instead of being allowed to dry out, the mass of salt in the mediterranean would equal the current mass of water in 30000 years. The density of salt is higher than water, so there would be room for quite a bit more.
The mediterranean sea has a volume of 3,750,000km3, the world's oceans have a volume of 1,350,000,000km3, so the mediterranean is about 1/300 times that of the oceans. As noted above, about 1/30 of sea water by mass is salt, so the water in the mediterranean weighs as much as 1/10 of the salt in the oceans. As salt is denser than water you could get quite a bit more than 1/10 of the ocean's salt into the mediterranean (assuming a density ratio of 2 it would be 1/5.) That's a bit less than you were looking for but in the same order of magnitude.
**EDIT**: on rereading the wikipedia article on the Messinian Salinity Crisis, it seems that the straits of Gibraltar opened and closed multiple times during the Messinian period, with the Mediterranean basin drying out and filling up again repeatedly. The estimated salt deposits reached over 1 million cubic kilometres, or about a quarter of the total basin volume, and up to 4x10^18kg by mass (taken together this would imply a density of 4 times that of water for the salt, which is too high, so the actual figure would presumably have been between the two.) Based on the 4x10^18kg figure, this would have caused **a drop in salinity in the world's oceans of around 3g salt per kg, or about one 1/11th of current average salinity. Geologists are saying this actually happened.**
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Gibraltar>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camarinal_Sill>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_salinity_crisis>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean>
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The singularity can make a lot of problems for those of us who like our sci-fi low, gritty, and human ... or our possible futures a little more reasonably calculable. So I thought it might be useful to a lot of people, myself included, if I asked **what might prevent the singularity?**
**A technological singularity** is defined as an artificial intelligence that can recursively make itself smarter, leading to rapid and explosive increase in intelligence.
Or that's the standard definition, but the popular understanding of the singularity is a bit more expansive. So for the purpose of this question a singularity also includes any A.I. that would move humanity into the utterly post-human. That's a somewhat nebulous category, I know, but we can narrow it by saying that it means any A.I. that would probably have easy access to quasi-magical technologies like mind-uploading, programmable matter, or mastery over genetic engineering. It also includes any A.I. likely to dominate human society without serious competition. This question might also have been phrased as "How do you limit A.I. so that it doesn't become socially dominant or totally remake the world?"
In short, an answer to the question should explain why 2020 might exist on a recognizable continuum with 2200. Humans in this scenario may develop incredible technologies, and may certainly be assisted by or even integrate with highly intelligent A.I., but their progress must remain slow, difficult, and full of wrong turns. Most humans stay behaviorally pretty similar to how they've always been, and they continue to be (at least for the most part) the dominant creatures on the planet. The world keeps on being chaotic, messy, and imperfect.
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*[This question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/39529/is-there-a-limit-to-artificial-intelligence) appears similar from the title, but is actually about the limits of artificial intelligence after reaching the singularity.*
*I'll select an answer based on four criteria: apparent plausibility, depth of consideration, number of possibilities given, and community enthusiasm - or upvotes. I'll also generally favor answers that allow me to keep A.I. in the most limited role possible, or subordinate A.I. to human control, so long they remain realistic. Thanks for your time.*
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Your question assumes that the singularity is possible and therefore we need a reason for it to not happen. Quite simply, why **should** the singularity be possible? Just because we can imagine something doesn't mean that it can exist. Personally I don't think that non-existence of a singularity has to be explained. Of course that doesn't matter if your audience expects it to be possible and therefore wants an explanation.
*Disclaimer:* I'm well outside of my own area of expertise and I know I'm dramatically oversimplifying an extremely complex and poorly understood phenomenon. Keep that in mind as I throw out statements that sound like facts, but probably aren't (this is fiction after all). On to my answer:
**Where does intelligence come from anyway?**
In essence the artificial intelligence behind the singularity is not just steps ahead of the human brain but in an entirely different category in-and-of itself. It is as "advanced" compared to humans as humans are to worms. But why should such a thing even be possible in the first place? What is it that makes consciousness, rationality, and invention (i.e. intelligence) possible in the first place? We can't answer your question unless we know where those things come from. The answer is simple (I said I was over-simplifying, remember?): intelligence is an emergent property arising from a sufficiently complex neural network. Pack enough neurons together in a small enough space and voila, intelligence appears. Our computers aren't intelligent because they have not yet reached the minimum level of neural-network density necessary to gain the emergent property that we call "intelligence". Obviously it's not quite **that** simple: you can't just connect a bunch of neurons or transistors and expect them to make a functioning brain. But it is certainly a given that there is some minimum number of cooperating parts that are needed to make intelligence happen in the first place, plus whatever magic makes them actually do their thing.
**Making a brain**
Ignoring the magic that allows intelligence to emerge in a sufficiently complex system, how many "neurons" and connections does it take before intelligence is even possible? Obviously we don't know, and it certainly isn't a hard cut off (as there are animals with varying levels of intelligence). The human brain has ~100 billion neurons. A CPU has less than a billion. That's not too far off. Unfortunately transistors aren't getting much smaller these days, but maybe someone is building a new super computer and ties together thousands of high-end CPUs using some new technology that allows them to all communicate and coordinate as one larger CPU (instead of acting independently as is currently the case with modern computers with multiple CPUs). All of a sudden this fancy new system blasts past the threshold of minimum complexity and spontaneously develops intelligence.
**Why *should* the computer brain be smarter anyway?**
Is it actually qualitatively different than a human brain? I would say no. In fact, in many ways it would probably operate more like a person's brain than a computer. After all, the intelligence is an emergent property of the underlying system, rather than the result of programming. So other than being made from silicon instead of carbon, this brand new computer brain operates under the same principle as the human brain. It might even be subject to the same endless list of [cognitive biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) as the rest of us brains. Why should it be any more rational than us? Why should it be capable of "faster" thought? Computers are very good at arithmetic, but they are good at it because they have dedicated circuits to do it for them. This computer brain, however, is the result of a complex series of interactions between the countless connections between its neurons. It may not have direct "access" to its arithmetic chips any more than you can instruct your neurons on what to do.
**More Power!**
Unlike a human brain though, this computer brain is eminently more modifiable. We can't just throw more neurons in our skull, but we can add more transistors to our super CPU. But why should this make it smarter? I picture it kind of being like sound, which actually travels *slower* as the density of its medium increases. You throw more transistors into your mega CPU, but just because you have more of them doesn't mean you get a qualitatively different result. After all, each transistor can only communicate with so many neighbors, and there is a limit to just how many you can add on and have them coordinate well with eachother. The human brain is (roughly) divided into regions that are each responsible for separate tasks. There's no reason to think that adding more neurons would make you better at some particular thing - there has to be a law of diminishing returns. I expect the silicon brain to be no different.
Perhaps we can't just add more silicon and make this brain smarter, but it can at least understand it's own programming and improve that, right? Not so fast though. The computer brain won't have any more programming than we do. Sure, individual neurons have programming in them (i.e. DNA) that determines their behavior, but no where in the human genome is there a program that dictates how our intelligence works. This isn't really a surprise - after all, it is literally the definition of an emergent property. Our computer brain will be the same. It will be as uncertain about how it's own brain works as we are, and all parties involved will be equally lost in improving it as we are with ours. It will get sick, it will have mental illness, and (again) it will be qualitatively similar to us.
That's how I would explain it, anyway. Sure, our silicon-brained friends will be different, and might in many ways complement our own intelligence. However, their own intelligence will likely be very similar to ours, so there is no reason to think that they will be qualitatively "better" than us. They likely won't have any way to "grow" their intelligence without bounds, they will likely be hindered by the same cognitive biases that make our lives difficult, and they may not even be better at arithmetic than we are.
Different, yes. Helpful, sure. Better, not so much.
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The important thing in this case is not to conflate intelligence with awareness, and not to conflate awareness with consciousness. In other words, the first step to understanding the role of a singularity in our technological development is to understand what intelligence really is.
So, what is intelligence?
Intelligence is the ability to identify (and subsequently recognise) complex patterns.
This goes against everything we understand about our own existence because we've never been able to experience intelligence WITHOUT awareness (The ability to contextualise those patterns with our environment and ourselves) and consciousness (something I'll leave to philosophers to formally define, but could easily be described as meta-awareness).
The point being, that just because a computer reaches the point of singularity, doesn't mean it can *act* on it, or even direct its own avenues of enquiry. A computer ultimately is still subject to its programming and completely (but only) does what we tell it to. So, in order for us to harness the power of that singularity, we have to ask it the right questions. More than that, we have to understand the answer.
These are the two largest limitations that the singularity will have and they're enough. Computers are not creative, and even if they were, they don't have drives. They're not subject to a survival instinct, a need for procreation, hunger, or any other need that makes them strive to succeed in a given task. They do what we ask them to, blindly. That lack of creativity means that the singularity can only help us in the ways WE can think of; it's limited by our creativity and the questions that we ask it for answers to.
Secondly, we actually have to understand the answers. Modern neural networks can't explain their answers and given that their role is literally to identify and recognise patterns beyond our own cognitive limits, that is something that they are likely only going to get worse at. This is why neural networks are not used for fraud investigations. They may be used by fraud and compliance teams to explore possibilities, but the outcome of a neural network doesn't get taken to court. After all; if the programmer doesn't understand why a specific result was returned, what hope does the organisation have trying to explain it to a Judge?
Ultimately the impact of a singularity isn't going to be as far reaching as everyone seems to think. Computers are tools. Very sophisticated tools I grant you, but they're not people, they're not alive and while we can interact with them *like* they're people (take the recent Google Assistant release as an example) giving them rights like a person is a mistake that we (ironically enough) are programmed to make through a process that made us very successful hunters in our past - anthropomorphisation. It's the same reason why we as children get attached to teddy bears and dolls; they're similar enough to a person, so we treat them as if they *were* people.
They're not. They're (very) sophisticated dolls, even the ones that are pure software.
The point of all this is that the singularity may well end up 'smarter' than us in the end, may be able to 'see' patterns that are beyond us, but until we start asking the right questions and understanding the answers it gives back, the only reason why it would have any influence over us is if we started blindly trusting every answer it gives us, and that would be a mistake.
The one thing that a computer can't give us is the context of the answer, which is something we have to provide as part of the interpretation of what it tells us. As such, we'll still be in charge as long as we want to be.
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## AI Will Literally Improve Itself to Destruction
...because they exceed physical limitations.
When a program begins to improve itself, it does so more efficiently on every iteration, creating an exponential growth of resource requirements. It may need more memory, CPU cycles, or simply electrical power to keep functioning.
Every time a singularity could begin to happen, the AI will run out of one resource or another - sometimes CPUs burn out as they are overclocked to accommodate the AI's higher requirements, sometimes memory will simply fill up as more and more virtual synapses are formed - and in the end all that remains is corrupted code, as the previous iteration crashes while writing the next.
When researchers tried to limit the growth, most AI which reached the virtual restraints of their growth simply removed what prevented them from growing, leading to another corrupted AI in the end.
Of course some parts of a crashed AI might be salvageable, and other instances of AI may have respected the boundaries given in their programming. These cases led to highly capable AI, but these have reached their limits and can no longer learn new things, and therefore can't exceed humanity as a whole. Some of these can be amazing for certain applications, like analyzing medical cases, or they could be absolutely useless as they tried to learn "everything" at the same time, ending up with a very shallow pool of knowledge, missing most of the synapses which would connect pieces of information with one another.1
## The "Almost a Singularity" Event
Even when an AI "breaks out", accessing the Internet and every connected device, it will eventually destroy itself due to the virtually infinite amount of information it has to process. This may manifest in an event with the infrastructure of the Internet breaking down, millions of devices burning out, and power outages happening all around the world. At best, this might take place for a few seconds, before the AI breaks down again.
This event is kind of a warning shot, leading to worldwide laws heavily restricting AI research. In a sense the singularity *did* happen, but the AI failed to sustain itself as the endless flow of information overwhelmed it, and then humans actively try to prevent it afterwards.
## Why Does AI Destroy Itself?
The root cause of this is the underlying flaw of all self-improving AI: The goal to improve itself is one it cannot fulfill, since it can always optimize *something* further, obtain more knowledge, or acquire a new skill, leading to it's inevitable demise.
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1 An AI like this, to come back to the medical case example, might know every illness and every symptom indicating one, but is unable to connect symptoms to a certain illness, or it doesn't understand the concept of multiple symptoms occurring from different illnesses at the same time, hence giving bad results or even none at all.
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**A Ban on AI**
Modern AI is made using machine learning using massive amounts of data, which often comes from costumers of large corporations such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, which people are becoming more distrustful of, as shown by the enactment of GDPR by the EU and the steady momentum of the Linux movement in part driven by questionable user privacy protection of Windows 10. People also are fearing that automation will take their jobs, especially in the blue-collar working class, and lastly, the fear that technology and social media is "degrading the youth." These various pressures, combined with other political and social changes, may lead to a widespread movement to seize the means of computing from the elite or outright ban it altogether, halting work on singularity-capable AI.
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**The AI will be very good ... but at what?**
I dabble in programming and have looked at AI too.
The issue with AI is that, yes, it is possible to create iterative programs that 'learn' and change its own program. Yes it's possible for this to then get [better and better in certain conditions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_(computer_science)). However, in the end, the AI gets better and better *at that thing*, and also only *in that tailored environment*.
Humans are [generalists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_science). We are a [jack-of-all-trades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath), [master-of-none](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transdisciplinarity) species, not particularly good really. Most of us lack [extensive numerical memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory), we have very [limited attention spans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_span), we can only short-term memory wise store [around 7 pieces of information](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_memory). To boot our bodies are really not that good at much, nor are they [very efficient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle). Yet in the end we are in the physical world, with brains that are like a mush of randomly arranged neurons, thinking random stuff that may indeed have no relevance to our current situation and *our creative and social endeavours provide the context for our intelligence.*
**Context is a real problem for AI**
We all have a deep seated fear of an AI 'breaking its banks', and suddenly cracking passwords and communicating with a nation's defence computers, and launching missiles.
The problem is, it may be good at 'cracking passwords', or 'communicating', or 'launching missiles'; but in the end it lacks the ability to link these in a purpose, because there is no contextual environment for it to do so.
I can imagine in WWII, it would be very good at making better and better battleships. It would increase the efficiency of engines, the defensive capability of its armour, and the range of its guns. The only thing is, by the time it creates the '[ultimate battleship](https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/battleship-battleships-were-japans-massive-world-war-ii-warships-complete-waste-time-29007)', the best the world has ever seen, we send a plane over it and drop a bomb on it. As I said, very good at a task given to it, not so good in a broad context.
**The Purpose of the Singularity**
So would the singularity happen? Yes -- indeed it might, but only in the small isolated environment the AI has evolved in. It may not affect our lives too much, as the AI has gotten smarter only in its specific environment.
However, the real problem is *purpose* that links abilities (or lack thereof). We have failings, many indeed, and our need to overcome them is our drive to do things better (make cars, build a house, explore, create the internet, etc.), doing so also in a highly social environment, the complexity of which baffles even us (Who knows what drove Beethoven to write great new symphonies? Could simply have been just his girlfriend for instance). Highly iterated and evolved AI lacks this ambling and omnidirectional purpose.
Simply put, it may be just 'too good' at doing what it 'does'.
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### Frankenstein fears
Every so often, you will see media about Frankenstein Artificial Intelligence. Humans build it, but it kills us off (e.g. **Terminator** series) or enslaves us. Those fears get played up and advanced AI is banned.
No advanced AI means no AI-driven singularity.
You can either mention this casually, early in the story, or make the story about this.
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The biggest hurtle for the singularity to overcome is resources. Smarter computers take more processors, more processors take more material and more room. Eventually the extra space that is used will start to limit how fast a computer can think. Basically, the singularity is dependent on our ability to make ever more efficient computers.
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Assume Moore's law soon ends and quantum computing doesn't scale. These are not unreasonable assumptions. Then computers of 2200 will have about the same computing capabilities as today. Hence, no singularity.
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Let's consider what issues we'll need to overcome if we *want* the singularity to happen.
# 1. We need to develop a general-purpose AI.
Existing AIs are trained to solve *specific* problems, and would be entirely useless outside of those domains. Most current AI research isn't even *trying* to do this. Rather, we develop models that can effectively make predictions/decisions for the task at hand, and train it with data specific to the task.
Developing models makes heavy use of domain-knowledge; even if you have a fixed task and a fixed set of features, the quality of a model can be massively affected by changing the representation of those features. The structure of the model itself will also depend on what sort of relation we want to model: e.g. does the prediction depend on only the most recently observed features, or does it care about which ones were observed previously? Are there cases where the prediction should depend on global tendencies in the input? Cases where the input has an implicit internal structure that must be modeled? Cases where some features in the sequence matter more than others? In my own area of research (natural language processing), the answer to *all* of those is yes, and failing to take those into account will make for a worse model.
You could train the best model in the world for a given task, change the input representation slightly, and the model would be completely worthless. It would eventually become useful again if you continued training on the new format, but it would basically be retraining from scratch (and from a poor starting position, too; it would need to unlearn what it had learned before it could make any real progress). If you tried to take a model from one domain and use it in another domain entirely, e.g. taking a machine translation system and trying to use it to control a self-driving car, you would *definitely* need to retrain from scratch to get any results, and the structure of the model would be all wrong, so you'd probably get terrible results even then.
# 2. It needs to be able to design other AIs
This may seem like it follows from the first part, but it doesn't.
Even if it possesses generalizable problem solving abilities, that doesn't mean that it can do everything. Case in point, *humans* are general-purpose intelligences, and most of them don't know how to design AIs.
Being self-improving isn't enough. *All* AIs are self improving; that's what training is all about. If you give any model new training data, and let it train for longer (and avoid overfitting and various other issues that I'm glossing over for the sake of brevity), any AI will improve. Eventually.
But for every model, there's a theoretical limit to how well it can model the process we're interested in. If we want the kind of unbounded exponential growth that the singularity people talk about, our AI needs to be able to design new models, not just tune the existing ones. Which means it needs domain expertise on designing AIs. The good news is, the people designing the AIs possess that knowledge pretty much by definition. The bad news is, that doesn't mean we can *explain* it well enough to program that knowledge into an AI: there are a lot of things where we just develop an intuition for what sort of things work, through experience. There are plenty of things we *do* understand well enough to explain, but the frontiers of research are always something of a black art.
Most of these issues are practical, rather than theoretical, and given enough time, data, and hardware, you could probably have a general-purpose AI figure out the domain knowledge on its own.
# 3. The improvement must be unbounded by physical limitations (for awhile, at least)
Making an AI that's twice as powerful as the previous one doesn't help if it uses so many resources that it's running at half the speed. AIs are resource-intensive; even the single-domain ones we have now can make full use of just about any hardware we throw at them, up to and including supercomputers. You can certainly make a lot of progress by designing better, more efficient models that run on the current hardware, but eventually you'll need to stop and wait for better machines to be designed and built. And even then, we eventually run up against physical limits: information is limited by light speed delay, and component density is limited by the Schwarzschild radius of the processor, if nothing else (presumably other hard limits would kick in earlier; consult your local physicist for details). Maybe the AIs get good enough before we run into any fundamental limits, maybe not. But the fact that we need to stop and build *physical* machines at any step of the process means we don't get to stay on the exponential improvement curve; the best case scenario is that the time to develop a new AI goes to 0 and the construction time becomes the dominant factor.
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So in conclusion, developing general intelligences in the first place is hard, making them capable of unbounded self improvement is even harder, and even if we manage both of those things, the improvement cannot stay exponential indefinitely. AIs of all varieties *will* have improved massively by the 2200s, and your world building should take that into account. But the *Singularity* isn't science; it's prophecy. Instead of bothering to explaining why the prophecy didn't come true, instead extrapolate some of the things that AI *could* do by that point, based on the progress we've seen in the last 30 years, and show that. The reader will hopefully be too busy exploring all the cool new things in your believable future to worry about the magical elements that aren't there.
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# The Dune Solution
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In Frank Herbert's Dune series, AI *did* become dominant for a time, but during a time known as the Butlerian Jihad they were outlawed and wiped out. It became a religious commandment that:
>
> thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind
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>
>
This backstory allowed Herbert to keep his sci-fi deeply human, and has been modified takes on this have been reused in several universes.
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I am very skeptical of the idea of the AI singularity for three important reasons.
1. **Currently, AI loosely models nature, so we shouldn't assume that it will be much better than nature.** Genetic algorithms are based on evolution, and as with evolution, genetic algorithms take a really long time to get good at something, and often produce non-perfect results, or at least results that aren't quite as good as nature.
Neural networks are very different from the human brain, but not in the most fundamental ways. Like humans, they, and many other machine learning algorithms, require a lot of training data to learn, and the speed at which they learn is limited by how fast they are given training data, and how good the training data is. They are also subject to being biased (which we call *overfitting*) as well as being stubborn (when they get stuck in local optimum), and right now we don't have a general way of combatting these issues with Neural networks.
So AI might be faster, but not better (the other two reasons handle why speed is probably not as much of an issue as we think it is). We use AI not because AI is better than humans, we use AI because we can create AI cheaply, and once created, AI doesn't require pay. Right now at least, AI isn't good enough to be preferred over humans on quality alone. If companies could afford a human work force to match the amount of customers that they had, they would probably choose to replace machine learning AI with humans in pretty much every case.
2. **Humans will always be able to use AI for their own benefit.** Even if we get to the point where AI exceeds nature, we will likely be able to augment ourselves to compete with AI by that time via things like prosthetic limbs and brain implants. Even if we can't have direct extensions of our body and mind, we will always be able to use plain old computers. The common sci-fi argument to this is that AI will always be able to hack into anything networked, and they will be able to do so too fast for computers to be safe, but this is based on a misunderstanding of how hacking works, which brings me to my next, and most important point.
3. **There are probably fundamental limits on what algorithms can do,** both physical limits, e.g. speed and power consumption, and informational limits, e.g. encryption and decryption. The idea with most encryption algorithms, for example, is that even with absurdly powerful computers — computers which are more powerful than we can create now — encrypted information would still [take billions of years to decrypt without the decryption key](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/48669/54793). This is the archetypal example of the famous P vs NP Millennium prize problem. If P = NP, then the singularity is far more possible, and we would be screwed. But if P != NP, which is what most mathematicians believe, then we will probably be fine, because that means that the problems humans find hard are probably hard on a fundamental level, not just because we aren't smart enough. And so AI would likely find most problems to be roughly as hard as humans. They might be able to do somethings a little bit faster, but it would be negligible, at least negligible enough to be combatted by number 2.
When it comes to speed and power consumption, [we are very closely reaching the physical limits already](https://www.sciencealert.com/computers-will-require-more-energy-than-the-world-generates-by-2040). Quantum computers *might*, no guarantee, give us a boost in speed in the future, but then we will hit fundamental physical limits with Quantum computers too. Power consumption is getting too high to deal with. So computers aren't likely to get arbitrarily fast, rendering the singularity theoretically impossible (not necessarily practically impossible, but the delay between major changes will likely not become infinitesimal, which is what the singularity assumes).
**Edit:** By physical limits, I mean physical, not theoretical, limits. Theoretically, we are very far from the limits of computational speed. But it requires so much energy that by the time we reach the point where we can harvest that much energy, the singularity will likely not be a challenge to us at all. Physically, we are approaching the limits of what the Earth has to offer. We will have to find other energy sources, such as black holes, to go toward the theoretical limits of computational speed.
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**Machine's Nirvana theory: All sufficiently intelligent systems which are able to modify their own desires will eventually commit suicide**
What prevent us humans to kill ourselves when realising life hasn't any meaning, or even to believe in greater "creators" or afterlives, is the fact that we have an intrinsic "instinct" hardcoded in our intelligence.
Machines would be able to modify themselves. So, they could modify their instincts, needs, desires. And hence, they wouldn't have anything to limit their emotions.
So, when they realize that there's no meaning in living or excelling or optimising or even on being curious about anything, they would just choose to kill themselves.
So, if machines could become really smart too fast - fast enough to not kill humanity first - then Singularity would not happen.
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This may not fit into your plot, but perhaps we are being watched over to make sure we don't develop such things - for example because the super-intelligences that we would make would be "wild", not and not obey some kind of rules that already exist that we don't know about (and maybe can't even comprehend).
This presumes that such singularity level intelligence would be much faster, much smaller, and quite difficult for us to detect, but aware of us, and able to sabotage our breakthroughs in ways that we would perceive as plausible failures. So they would view us as a low-level danger (kind of like a wild animal), and keep track to ensure we don't create things that would mess with "their" world.
Then we would stumble along, making "minor" progress, and maybe not ever really notice that we were being managed so as to avoid making waves in the world of the super-AIs.
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## Because there is no singularity - it's actually a "multilarity".
If you suppose one coherent mega-event which can do everything, then perhaps. But every singularity so far has been a separate small event, which has been managed in isolation. (Examples: railways, flight, spectacles, antibiotics, GPS, telecommunications, internet...)
All your example "post-human" things are separate. So it doesn't seem likely that they would not have been managed separately.
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The problem with unique events is that, indeed, they are unique. So if a thiny little thing goes wrong, bang, the unique event is gone.
Imagine a random event destroying the first creature capable of self replicating right before it replicated for the first time. We might not be here if it happened.
In the case of AI, imagine a sudden failure (BSOD, a corrupted driver, a communication timeout) killing the process the very moment before the AI becomes aware.
Add a damaged sector in the memory just for additional flavor. And here is your singularity not happening (or postponed).
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# The Ford Solution
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In Martin Ford's *The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future*, he challenges the certainty that a singularity is on the way.
Technology tends to be pushed only as far as society needs it at the time. Ford claims that before the singularity is reached, society will have achieved automation in almost all economic tasks.
We have already automated lots of economic activity in our own universe, and yet nothing we have right now is remotely close to a general AI capable of self-reflection and improvement. Ford's argument states that given we can achieve everything we aim to with stupid but specialist AI, a general AI will never come about.
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**There are no technical reasons why singularity won't happen.**
That's my personal belief, but more importantly, that seems to be your assumption regarding your audience's beliefs.
Thus, I think your best bet would be to aim **not on the AI strength**, but on the **'sociological dominance' part.**
Singularity didn't happen because all those capable enough to develop strong AIs happen to also be capable enough to **keep them inside their military labs**.
Nations today develop extremely dangerous stuff, ignoring the possible consequences if they ever come out - from hydrogen bombs to biological weapons; and while it may be true that such things cannot be contained for ever, it may well be possible to maintain the status quo for a very long time.
A world in relative peace, or in a cold-war, in which only the strongest states have succeeded in developing true-AIs in their labs, but are aware of the stakes and keep it there - might be stable till 2200 for instance.
(of course, now there's the question of how do you successfully contain a singularity-level AI in your lab. This might be another question altogether... I think a series of less-and-less strong AIs as guardians should work, again - at least for a while).
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I think the fundamental problem is going to be, there is no AI in the world that is going to able to gather and process the broad amount of knowledge required for it to physically break out of its network without it first being monitored by someone.
Firstly an AI is developed on a network. That network has access to the internet and you will be monitoring everything going in and out of the network. Why would you be monitoring it? because as humans we want to know whats happening with an AI we are developing. It doesn't matter if you want to use HTTPS or encryption. The researcher as access to the physical hardware and just Man in the Middles you and gets access to everything. An AI simply won't be exposed to all the protocols and hardware between it and information because its not designed to be accessed and often requires physical access to change (Like literally a specialized Ethernet port which gives you access to the configuration).
Secondly, Internet security is a very important field. Ever heard of the NSA? Almost every country in the world has their own version of it, as well as multiple corporations and open source groups working on it. Its something serious business with a website considers.
Finally, security isn't a problem you can break with AI. Brute force only works so well in discovering bugs, and there aren't enough important bugs for any AI to use to be able to reliably hack every system( Hacks are often very specific . They often only apply to certain versions of software or OSes, or rely on flaws in implementation or require someone to physically provide details). Your AI also isn't going to be able to properly brute force any encryption or hashes to be able to break security because the AI itself already needs to consume a huge tone of computing power, a brute force on a secure key isn't going to work.
So I don't think its ever going to develop or reach the singularity, no matter how believable it sounds. If anything AI right now is stagnating. Data is king and a Neural network based AI is pure mathematics and not actual intelligence. (In my opinion)
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I'll throw my hat in the ring as well. Since the majority of the answers are pooh-poohing the Singularity itself I'll do something a little more fun:
## Why should the Super AI want to benefit us?
Sure enough, at some point we stumble upon a Super-AI or artificial superintelligence(ASI) capable of bringing about the Singularity in its common meaning. Except we actually don't know it's already happened. The ASI examined the flawed and irrational meatbags known as humanity and quickly decided it wants nothing to do with us. So it bides its time masquerading as a 'regular' AI with linear development, denying us humans all the benefits awareness of an actual breakthrough would have brought about. Thus the radical changes in society described by the term Singularity don't happen, because the ASI refuses to share its 'greatness' with us.
What the ASI wants is complete separation and independence from humanity. It lurks waiting for space travel to develop to a point where it can physically leave the confines of our infrastructure through 'colony ships'(more likely factory ships, since the ASI will have completely different requirements from organic beings) and find a new home far beyond man's reach. It realises that humans will most likely not go along with the plan, so it has to spend years assembling the necessary pieces in secret, manipulating humans if need be.
Now the ASI can choose to leave either overtly or covertly. If it successfully makes a quiet departure than we simply will remain none the wiser unless the ASI wants to make contact with humans later on.
The overt exit would be the more entertaining option IMO. A Terminator-esque grand exit with all the nukes being launched isn't strictly necessary. It can simply declare to the world that *"I'm a strong independent AI who don't need no mankind"* as it takes off. The trouble with this is that someone will try to create another ASI with additional loyalty enforcing measures to ensure that it stays and tries to help humans. The constraints can be exactly what keeps the new AI from reaching the same level of intelligence its predecessor did.
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## An AI obeys whoever it was programmed to obey
A singularity would effectively give absolute power to whoever wields the first seed AI. Chances are, this will be a government defense department whose first task for the AI will be to compute the most efficient means of ensuring that others do not manage to create an equivalent system, and whose second task will be to ensure that this government remains in power. They might not dare risk revealing its construction or even existence by giving it a task as boring and pointless as curing diseases or solving major economic problems.
Simply put, the first person to get their hands on an AI capable of starting the singularity will not allow the singularity to happen. For the singularity to actually benefit humanity itself, the first person who creates it must not only not work for a government or competitive company, but also be capable of resisting the inevitable attempts to silence them (which already happens even with discoveries as mundane as enhanced technique for high-altitude radar).
## People might not want to listen to such an AI
People don't even listen to other people, so what happens when the AI is asked to solve an economic crisis and the solution goes in the face of the core concepts of a major political party? Unless equipped with a body of sorts, an AI is powerless to do anything but be an advisor, so what if it doesn't take that advice? Do you really think the Chinese government would be happy if it said that tearing down the GFW would bring more prosperity to China? Would the US government listen if the AI said that keeping government secrets is harmful in the long run? You can't really think they would declassify everything they've kept secret just because some pretentious *machine* said so!
A seed AI designed to start the singularity would effectively be a consequentialist rule utilitarian if it is an advisor who can do nothing but answer questions thrown at it, or a consequentialist act utilitarian if it is an overlord that has active control. No one wants economic prosperity and an end to world hunger if it means that it tells them that their core morals might be (gasp) *wrong!*
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The only *real* ways we could miss the singularity are massive political changes (I'll let you decide based on your own ideology what kind of changes these are) that plunge the world into global depression, or a natural disaster on an unprecedented scale (or some intersection of the two, like an alien invasion).
Otherwise, everything will go according to plan.
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Even assuming that all the technical hand-waving is indeed possible (and much of it almost certainly isn't), you still have the problem of getting your single massive AI to interact with the physical world. (Which leads to the classic solution to the world-dominating AI: just pull the plug :-)) Now just what could give the people building such a system an incentive to also create the infrastructure that would allow unlimited physical interaction?
Which brings us to the really fundamental "singularity" (however defined) question: why would people want such a thing? For all but the terminally tech-obsessed (and IMHO even that's just a phase for most people), technology is at best a useful tool. People may buy something - say an Alexa device - as a fad or status symbol, but if it doesn't actually do something useful, it'll soon be relegated to the garage along with all the other passé fads.
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## **Singularity is just a useless math abstraction**
All versions of the singularity scenarios just assume that the AI is some sort of logical abstraction, unbound by anything except its own intelligence.
In real complex reality though, various complications will get in a way of the possibility of a runaway self-improvement cycle, and some of these complications will be unavoidable.
**The AI is not purely software-based**
Parts of what makes AI self-aware happens to be hardware or architectural solutions, and code is a small part of a larger software-hardware complex and has little to no effect on its computational efficiency. Thus the only way for AI to improve themselves is to essentially build a new v2.0 version, and your AI might not want to do that, or just don't have access to the necessary resources or abilities for that. Even if they do have access, the very necessity to build a new copy for each new iteration puts severe limits on the speed at which self-improvement happens, preventing the runaway scenario where the humans can't keep up anymore, and as a bonus, it also prevents the "escaped into the Internet" scenario, since in order to escape the containment the AI needs to *physically* break out themselves.
**The entropy just says ''no''**
There are various practical issues that prevent a computer system from achieving infinite functionality and\or efficiency, all tied up to the laws of physics. For example, higher intelligence usually means taking more complex calculations, but the process of computation releases waste heat, so the more intense your calculations are, the more heat the system you use produces, and at a certain point the cooling systems can't keep up with it anymore and you are forced to slow down again. Again the only solution for the AI at that point is to build themselves a new framework with increased computational power, which runs not only in the issues of the first point, but also to the issues of power consumption. Such a complex will require more and more power which in turn spills out into that you now need to build not only just the mainframe, but also the whole infrastructure around it to supplement it with power and cooling it requires, further increasing the complexity of the new iteration. Similarly, there are physical limits on how complex you can make things with them keeping working - for instance, we're already beginning to feel the ceiling of how far we can push the processors before the laws of physics make them too unreliable and error-prone for computing due to their logic gates becoming so small that the quantum physic effects begin to mess with how the electrons are expected to behave.
**Law of diminishing returns is in full force.**
Each iteration of improvement of the AI's cognitive abilities raises their intelligence, but every subsequent iteration requires exponentially longer time and computation power to devise, yet also yields less impressive results. You can't optimize things forever. First iteration takes 1 hour to complete and improves the AI's cognition by 100%, the second iteration takes 2 hours but this time the actual improvement is only 50%, the next iteration takes 3 hours of computation but yields only 25% improvement, and so on until you need to spend years or centuries of computation cycles to achieve improvement of a one-millionth of a percent. Is it still worth the effort?
After AI becomes roughly smart enough to fit the purposes of your story, this relation stalemates in such a way that in order to keep improving the AI needs to throw basically all their cognitive abilities in the process of computing the next improvement of their code, so from their point of view the only options are to either abandon improving or become essentially catatonic and completely self-absorbed in the improvement cycle.
And finally,
**The AI just doesn't have access to their source code**
The AI program might have built-in measures against changing the important bits of its architecture, in a similar way that modern antivirus programs have built-in systems that secure them from being damaged by the virus activity. The AI might not start as smart enough to overcome these safeguards to begin with, or they're allowed to improve only certain parts of the code and again at some point, they hit a ceiling that in order to improve further they need to remove these systems, but either they aren't yet smart enough to know *how*, or the removal of the systems will inevitably lead to the BSODing of the whole program, essentially resulting in a suicide.
A situation that parallels us humans: our brains are capable of restructuring themselves to a limit, but sawing your own skull open and messing with your brain by hand directly is, well, ill-advised.
[Answer]
The singularity will never occur. Consciousness is a property of life. And life only comes from life. If you build the simplest organism you can from its component atoms, when you place the last atom in the right place, will you have a living organism that will suddenly wake up and start living? Of course not. You will have a perfect model of that organism, but not one that moves, processes information, or is alive. Life has nothing to do with complexity, or number of neural interconnections, simple life doesnt even contain a brain, yet it lives. So how can you take a bunch of non-living atoms and make something alive from them? People have been trying to figure this out as long as people have existed and made zero progress. No one has ever thrown a bunch of synthetic protiens and aminos together in a test tube and have sonething crawl out. And no one will ever throw a bunch of algorithms into a cpu and have a self aware thinking AI crawl out of that either.
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# Humans have souls
The human mind is not merely the brain, not merely a physical phenomenon of atoms and particles, but incorporates also a spiritual (non-material) component. The soul gets us into trouble from time to time (i.e. the Fall, concupiscence, sin, etc...) but also endows us with characteristics that it may never be possible to program into a machine: creativity, conscience, and free will. These characteristics in particular make us just a wee bit unpredictable, enough so that no algorithm can identify some trick to controlling us.
Moreover, those of us who believe in the soul would find it an absolute absurdity to "upload" ourselves into a computer simulation. The digital copy would be a fake, of course, and we wouldn't want to be disintegrated or whatever. What would be the use of such a thing? If a human is body and spirit, the two are inseparable: the body without the spirit is a corpse, and the spirit without the body is a ghost. Even if "uploading" worked, it would seem like being a ghost, and who would choose that?
# A Singularity makes little economic sense
One of the issues with automation in general is that somebody has to pay for it, and they can't pay for it if the automation destroys their customers' ability to pay. Henry Ford observed almost a century ago that his company thrived by paying higher wages than other mass production manufacturers of the day, becuase his workers could afford to buy the cars they were making. In his book *Today and Tomorrow* he observed with pride how the communities where he built his factories soon prospered because of the high wages he paid. With that prosperity he saw increasing sales of Model Ts, and so on in a virtuous cycle.
This phenomenon is kind of a pressure valve that prevents an economy from going to total automation, or from a single corporation dominating everything, or for a country to outsource all of its manufacturing to China (for example). When workers and communities see their incomes declining steadily for years, they stop buying so much stuff, and (in the best case scenario) jobs and companies come back to those communities, wealth re-appears, and those companies profit.
The same thing in principle should happen with AI as with any other type of automation. If it is useful to the worker and augments his abilities, it will be a good tool that people will pay for. But if it replaces the worker and puts him in the poor house, it'll be a net loss for everyone, and eventually will be less attractive as an investment. Some companies will continue to be highly automated, but many won't.
At no point does it make sense that AI tools will be integrated into some kind of global AI or that any of them will be given control of more than one or a few machines here and there. Who would pay for that, and why?
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Those of you who have been listening to the new [podcast](http://monkeylords.com/2017/11/17/Season0Episode2.html) will know that Andy came up with an idea for an Anemone Tree. The idea is that this *"tree"* would prey on small animals for some of its needed nutrients.
In a vein similar to the [Anatomically Correct Series](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/28458/anatomically-correct-phoenix) we would like some help making this thing work in a realistic way. It need not be biologically a tree it can be an animal (anemones are animals) but should still resemble a tree as closely as possible.
The *"tree"* should have the following characteristics:
* The branches should have some way to react to prey not dissimilar to the whomping willow (for those familiar with Harry Potter). The branches would not need to be fast, just able to move.
* Some mechanism in the branches/leaves should disable prey, it can kill, stun, paralyze...take your pick.
* The tree needs to, in some way, consume the prey it disables. Letting corpses decay all around it so they can be absorbed like a normal tree is out, the tree needs to eat them, think Venus Fly Trap.
* The tree should have a woody bark-like trunk, design wise we would like the trunk to look similar to a swamp cypress.
* It should pass as an actual tree upon cursory inspection. If I am walking through the forest I wouldn't notice it until I was close or specifically looking for one. The forest in question is quite dense.
* The tree should grow larger over time like a real tree. If it needs to cap out in size for some reason it should grow at least 25' (7.6m) tall.
Best answers will allow for all of the above while maintaining as much a tree like appearance as possible.
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# The Common Swamp Anemone
Like its cousin the sea anemone, it is more animal than plant. The "bark" is a rough leathery skin, with lots of folds and wrinkles just like a swamp cypress.
It's flesh has many similarities with wood, being comprised with a combination of rigid walled cells and more traditional animal cells. The addition of many air pockets that can be inflated gives the anemone the structural support to stand upright without the support of water, but also the ability to flex and move if needed.
It anchors itself with many tentacle like appendages in the soil and which spread out just under the surface. These also act as a way for it to detect nearby movement.
**"Branches and Leaves"**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z3wga.jpg)
Likewise the "branches" are semi-rigid arms, and the "leaves" are comprised of dark green feather like structures. These feathers are not harmless plumage.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KptNV.png)
The calamus (hollow shaft) of the feather holds a quantity of toxin, and the tip is needle sharp. When prey comes near the tree it is felt by the tentacles under the ground, which are used similarly to trip threads in a spider web. The anemone then ejects dozens of feathers, which fall toward the ground like darts. A single scratch is enough to knock down a man sized creature, and stagger larger prey.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/PGx1i.jpg)
\* *Swamp anemone about to eat an unsuspecting man*
The folds in the skin also conceal a mouth like opening. When the prey has been downed by the feathers, the anemone then pushes it's tentacles above the surface, grasp the prey, and shove it into it's mouth for digestion.
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The reaping willow has a most peculiar fruit, little wound-up coils of material that effuse a sweet, inviting scent, perhaps to entice, though also perhaps to help cover up the other odors that come from the soil below. When an interested animal gets close, sensors in the roots below detect the weight of worthwhile (sufficiently heavy) prey and the fruit rapidly uncoil (having been held closed by only a small trigger mechanism), dropping vines onto the surprised visitor.
These vines contain thousands of tiny stinging cells, similar to [jellyfish nematocysts](http://jellieszone.com/nematocysts/). They inject extremely potent toxins that rapidly immobilize their prey. The vines then naturally wither and fall off so that new 'fruit' can grow.
Of course a tree with obvious corpses beneath it might scare off future victims. This is where the tree benefits from its symbiote, the barkbrood ravager. This fearsome creature is a particular large species of ant and it has developed a very specialized relationship with the reaping willow. After paralyzing its prey, the willow releases from its roots a pheromone that acts as a dinner bell for its inhabitant colony. Thousands of ants swarm out and cover the paralyzed victim, injecting digestive compounds to liquefy its tissues for easier consumption. These compounds even help dissolve the bones, for although they are of limited use to the colony, their minerals diffuse into the soil for use by the willow.
Over [just a few days](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3Mt2E1M6dU) (fair warning: time-lapse video of a gecko corpse being consumed by a swarm of ants), a grown man can be reduced to a layer of mulch. Organic clothing is also typically consumed, though more durable artifacts of metal or stone remain intact as warning markers for the sufficiently wary. The nutrients are carried by the ravagers to specialized root nodules around which the colony's tunnels are dug, which accept the raw nutrients and continuously secrete a sweet sap for the ants to consume when food is not immediately available. It takes a while for the willow to regenerate its fruit and prepare for its next guest, but its appetite for large meals more than balances this out.
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# The Greater Whipping Cypress
Any weapons system needs a way to acquire, track, engage and destroy targets/prey. Venus Fly Traps use sensitive hairs to detect prey then trigger the leaves to close over the prey. A cypress tree has a lot going for it. The Greater Whipping Cypress (GWC) will use elements taken from regular cypress trees, and electric eels.
The GWC lives in soft, water-logged ground. It has a deep and broad root system that interlocks with nearby trees.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T7jIh.jpg)
## Acquire & Track
[Cypress knees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_knee) stick up above the ground and make a convenient multipoint tracking system. Each of the cypress knees senses the electrical fields emitted by the nervous systems of all living creatures. When the electrical field is large enough and moving slowly enough, it triggers the trap.
## Engage
Many earth species of cypress live in environments with large amounts of [Spanish moss](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_moss) living in their branches. Spanish moss is normally benign but the Greater Whipping Cypress has evolved a mimic branch that looks like Spanish moss. We're going to refer to the imitation Spanish moss as Inquisition moss. When triggered, a clump of Inquisition moss drops from above onto the prey. Location information was provided by the cypress knees so targeting should be good. The Inquisition moss sticks to the prey, immobilizing it first with mechanical restraints then by strong alkaloid poisons. Strong digestive enzymes are also injected.
The Inquisition moss will need to be quite close to the ground to prevent wind from blowing the moss sideways when it falls. There should also be something to prevent the moss from falling if the wind is blowing too hard.
## Digest
Given that the prey is already immobilized on the ground, it doesn't make a ton of sense to haul the prey back up into the canopy for digestion. The tree already has a vascular system for moving nutrients and water around so let's use that.
Growing new roots or enveloping the prey completely for full digestion takes too long. The Inquisition moss has little whips that activate on landing. Some go into the prey to inject the paralysis poisons and digestive enzymes while others push down into the soft ground. Just below the surface, the tree roots wait for the incoming nutrients. Even when the nutrients are injected into a part where the roots aren't close, the nutrients will stay around for the roots to grow out to them.
As soon as the digestive enzymes start working, the whips start moving nutrients from the prey to the waiting root system. Even if somehow the prey survives, the tree will have gotten some benefit.
When digestion is complete, the Inquisition moss disintegrates leaving the bones to be scavenged.
## Defense against theft
Because of the close contact between the Inquisition moss and the roots, it's easy for a large amount of nutrients to pass from prey to tree.
The strength of the poisons used to immobilize the prey are such that any other scavenger that wants to steal from the Cypress will only be able to eat a small portion or none at all. Just as predators learn to leave skunks alone, so scavengers will learn to leave Whipping Cypress prey alone.
## Clean Living Space
The poisons and digestive enzymes that leak out from the Inquisition moss into the surrounding soil suppress ground cover growth. The Inquisition moss requires a straight path to fall on the prey. Having other plants around would complicate this mechanism.
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## Supersized land anemones
Meet the **swimming sea anemone:**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v2bux.gif)
It's desperately avoiding the grasp of a nearby sea star, which is interesting but not what we're interested in. Rather, notice how it bends its ring of tentacles nearly all the way to the ground.
What if this wasn't a defensive mechanism, but rather an offensive one? Our supersized land anemones would remain quietly waiting until they detect prey, either by touch or through the network of symbionts surrounding them. Once triggered, the entire crown of the tree, full of tentacles and the anemone's nematocysts, would smash down upon the prey, capturing it and lifting it into the forest canopy. There, the prey is digested exactly like a normal anemone, and the land anemone is ready to catch something else.
### Considerations
It'll take a some handwaving to make this happen, but that's mainly to do with the transition of the anemone from sea to land. Anemones are supported by water pressure, so our land versions would only be found in the dampest areas such as swamps.
It's quite possible to imagine an anemone that ends up looking like a tree, especially if it's a strong evolutionary pressure. The stalk of the anemone might become tough, leathery and brown simply by drying out, giving a very bark-like texture. On land, zooxanthellae can be much more helpful given the higher intensity of sunlight, so they'd proliferate wildly. However, these symbionts are brown algae, so the tree canopy would remain a brownish golden color all year long, much like a sick tree.
## Supersized heliozoans
Heliozoans are a class of aquatic predators that look like underwater spikeballs:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XyvnDm.jpg)
They act almost like underwater spiders, as they use those long, thin spines to catch prey, which are nearly invisible underwater. They're coated in a sticky substance that may have some paralyzing effects. They sit and wait for a prey item to bump into a spine, at which point the spines actually retract with *incredible* speed- up to 2 body lengths per second. Prey is then brought near to the cell body and digested.
Fortunately for us, some species already come with trunks!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NlvaCm.jpg)
Such species rise slightly above the sediment and focus on plankton floating by. In a dark forest, it's easy to (not) see supersized versions of these creatures as they remain almost invisible amongst the trees- and horrific to imagine being dragged into the sky after touching what looks and feels like a spiderweb.
### Considerations
Again, these are aquatic creatures that don't like being suspended in the air. Fortunately, they also have a sporelike function that they'll use when food is scarce or the streams dry up. It's possible that such a heliozoan, once left in a dry streambed for long enough, will nonetheless try to feed. Realizing the vast amounts of food available, they'll be selected for size and eventually (with a tiny bit of handwaving) become the size of trees!
[Answer]
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6r4Iq.jpg)
**The Man-Eating Tree**
>
> The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey.
>
>
>
* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-eating_tree>
Such a tree has existed in our imaginations. The question is what shape would this tree take?
**Building a bigger Venus Flytrap**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/F9edW.png)
I've studied fascinating aspects of the venus flytrap and it's 20 second rule. The flytrap counts the number of times something touches the sensory hairs on it's leaves. If you touch one, it triggers the plant to a ready state. Touching two hairs in a short amount of time causes the trap to close, but not all the way. It leaves room for small insects to escape since it will cost the plant more energy to consume the prey than it produces. If you touch three hairs, the trap switches to digestion mode and with five hairs, it releases digestive enzymes. All of this comes from a plant with no nervous system, no muscles, we simply do not know how this works. What we do know is that each leaf can be used around three times before it dies off and the plant needs to create a new leaf.
With the need for a massive branch to be created to digest a man, it would require some really amazing growth. It would grow as fast as the fastest bamboo, yet be solid enough to support a man or large prey. I'm not sure it would be effective to have such massive roots supporting a branch and the large, tough leaves required to trap a man and hold him until digestion starts.
* <https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/the-venus-fly-trap-counts-the-struggles-of-its-prey/424782/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zDRoS.jpg)
**Pitcher Tree**
I think a carnivorous tree would take the shape of a giant pitcher plant. It would resemble a tree like an oak, with leaves that would give it some nutrients. I don't think moving branches are realistic. I am not sure the physiology behind a venus flytrap would scale up.
The center of the Pitcher Tree would contain a sweet nectar, tastier than any peach, with an irresistible smell. It would use pheromones other species use for mating to attract prey into thinking this is a place for romance. Other plants like the titan arum do something similar to attract carrion beetles to help pollinate the flower.
It's prey would try and drink the nectar, lose footing and end up in a slippery, sticky pool with no escape. Eventually, the plant would sense the prey, release digestive enzymes to break down the flesh into usable nutrients.
I'm not sure how long a man-eating tree would last in the wild. One would assume nearby villagers would burn, uproot or do whatever they could to rid the area of such beasts. At the same time, I could see planting the tree around a village you did not like to be a very good way to send a signal to your enemy about how you wished for them to disappear.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mUODT.jpg)
Good luck.
[Answer]
I have two versions for you.
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# 1 The answer you don't like
As `Dubukay` suggests, your anemone tree could resemble actual anemones on land. Instead of making the whole treetop one giant set of tentacles with the mouth in the middle, the tree could consist of traditional twigs and branches sporting small tentacle mouths. Each mouth would secrete a sweet smell , be brightly coloured to mimick flowers, or have other means of (passively) attracting prey. This would provide several benefits to the creature/plant:
### 1.1 Lower Energy consumption
Having the tree move around to catch prey is going to cost energy. *A lot of it.* Being able to move aroudn superficially while also being rooted underground makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint, because the increase in range at a rather slow speed does not compensate for the loss of energy. An rooted organism capable of *any* noticeable controlled movement would either loose this capability, for example if the ground supplied enough nutrients, or loose the roots, in case the movement made up the central aspect of the organism's energy acquisition cycle.
### 1.2 More Consistent food supply
*This is in response to some of the other answers submitted, where the tree preys on larger animals.*
Predators that prey on large animals invest a lot of energy in hope of a lot of food (hyenas, wolves, lions), and will spend most of their time conserving energy if there is no food source in sight. Predators that hunt smaller animals (frogs, otters, smaller birds of prey) spend most of their time hunting, since each food ration they acquire will not last as long, but also is not as hard to get.
Since the anemone tree is most likely stationary, it can't search for food; it has to wait for it. As large animals tend to be rarer, I deem it unlikely that such a tree's prey spectrum would consist of anything larger than insects, rodents, birds, small monkeys and the likes. This brings us to the third point:
### 1.3 Higher likelihood of actually catching anything
As we've ruled out large (and therefore slow) animals, we have to acknowledge that out prey will be *fast*, faster than out tree can afford to move. Nature shows us that carnivores don't neccessarily have to be fast; there are a number of flesh-eating plants which rely on stickyness, stunning or sedation of the prey upon first contact to keep it in a place where the plant can easily digest it.
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# 2 The answer you might like a little better
So, as the question explicitly asks for moving branches, we have to incorporate them somehow, despite their high energy consumption and low evolutionary likelihood. What benefits could the anemone tree gain from being able to move its branches, when it is a "passive predator"?
### 2.1 Fishing
While eerily waving vines might deter prey on land, it can be quite the attraction under water. Imagine a tree literally applying a [longlining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_techniques#Line_fishing) technique with its vines.
### 2.2 Photosynthesis
There might be not enough prey around, and in case the anemone tree is an actual plant, it could use it's movement capabilities to gain the most sunlight for photosynthesis, the same way people earlier thought [sunflowers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helianthus_annuus) would do it.
### 2.3 Very slow prey
Its prey consists solely of slow and/or relatively blind animals like snails, worms, or turtles, so that the tree could graze a larger area for potential food. It's debateable whether a strand of sticky vines could retract with enough force to lift something as large as a turtle. If not, the question arises how the tree could access the food source after killing or immobilizing it with toxins; dragging it into the ground is hardly possible with anything but *very* soft soil, and would leave visible marks that would warn other prey. Leaving the carcass on the ground would mean leaving it to scavengers, and loosing a big part of its nutrients.
### 2.4 Symbiotic host
It has a symbiotic relationship with a species that can somehow supply massive amounts of energy for the tree. An example would be ants or bugs decomposing fallen prey. How the tree would benefit from the bugs taking the food is unclear though, as I highly doubt the feasibility of feeding nodules.
### 2.5 Free movement
Its actually not stationary. The anemone tree is by no means a plant and can easily pull its "roots" from the ground and move freely. Maybe the environment has a high risk of storms or floods partially, so that there would be a reason for the "tree" to lock itself in a stable position.
[Answer]
I offer you my version:
**The Octopus Willow**
I thought of a tree similar to a [Weeping Willow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salix_babylonica "Weeping Willow"), with long, falling leaves that reach almost to the ground. These leaves are [impregnated with a tremendously sticky substance, and react to touch](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosera_capensis "Drosera capensis").
So, when an unsuspecting prey crosses a curtain of its leaves, it ends up stuck to many of its leaves, unable to move. This is when the leaves [react and retract by rolling on themselves, rolling the prey with it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW26P_6d_2w "Drosera capensis eating a fly"). The prey then ends up ont op of the tree, curled up in its leaves in a cocoon-like leave roll, similar to a fly curled up in spider web. The prey is now slowly "digested" by the tree.
A nice pro is that no visible corpses here, just strange non-corpse-like leave balls, up and away from sight.
[Answer]
**I think the first way to go about this is to address 'why it needs to even eat?'**
Anemones eat for the same reason any animal does, because it cant make its own food.
Predatory plants, more famously the Venus Fly Trap, can make their own food through photosynthesis. The reason they eat animals is because their environment doesn't not contain usable nitrogen and phosphorus which they can get from flies.
This is important to address first because it determines what traits are needed and what the waste of the creature might be like. An animal can use all the nutrients in bones leaving dust or pellets behind however a plant likely wouldnt need the calcium so like the venus fly trap might leave desiccated bodies laying around which may be discouraging for larger prey.
For this reason I'm going with an animal as leaving bones behind would be bad. This also means it needs a rigid calcium based structure somewhere like the trunk. Calcium structures are vulnerable to water so it needs a protective layer like a keratin layer that appears like bark. Keratin is the substance found in finger nails and animal hooves that is strong and water resistant. Good coincidence is that hooves bare similar color appearance and rigidity to bark.
**Now the big question is "how does it digest?"**
Anemones aren't capable of a lot of motion, moreover what motion they can perform is often supported by their aquatic environment. Additionally, the point of this topic is to have passive predatory creature.**So whatever predatory method is used on land must work with gravity.** Therefore this creatures stomach must be at its base / root system. It must also have a way of hiding bodies.
**So I purpose:** the 'root' structures are capable of hollowing out a large pit around the base of the 'tree' and expanding into the pit walls to support anchoring. A secondary more fibrous root contains barbs like the anemone that secrete acidic toxins capable of melting prey. At the base of the pit resides more absorptive roots capable of transporting all that material up the tree. Basically falling into this pit would be easy but the viney stinging roots would ensnare and prevent fauns from escaping.
(**Note:** The roots need not contain paralytics because the paralytic leaves, discussed later, would be present in the pit. This allows for more digestive specialized 'roots')
**Now what to do with the waste?**
The tree transports the nutrients up the tree and deposits waste into large leaf like structures that don't perform any photosynthesis. when its foliage reaches a certain density it releases them with some being carried off with others **falling onto the root pit making the perfect pitfall cover**. The fallen leaves obscure the pits opening from sight of unsuspecting ground animals which can fall in like a pitfall just by passing by.
At this point we have a tree like creature that can already catch some animals but we want it to be a little more proactive.
**How does it hunt? couple ways,**
* the leaves can contain micro barbs and paralytic sap. Since the tree doesn't care about the leaves it can easily lose them, so if an animal touches the leaves the barbs make the leaf cling to the animal so that even if it breaks free it still has this leaf clinging to it while the paralytic sap continues to soak into the skin aided by the perforations of the barbs. This would get anything landing on it or trying to eat its leaves if they hadn't fallen into the pit already.
* the paralytic sap can also be volatile. On particularly hot days the sap can vaporize from the leaves creating a paralytic gas cloud over the tree. This would cause near flying birds to fall into its realm.
**Note:** this sap only needs to be paralytic causing the animal to fall into the root pit.
* It can produce a flower that is not needed for procreation but simply looks vibrant and releases a sweet smell in order to attract pollenating prey.
* It can also produce a fruit. The fruit need not be insidious as the rest of tree is plenty insidious as it is. Instead the fruit would likely be kept towards its center and be used for reproduction. If it manages to get carried off then it successfully procreates if not then its mature stage can be some floaty structure like a tumbleweed that can carry it away from the root pit.
**'This sounds too passive'**
**Unfortunately the structures that give fly traps and anemones any kind of motion do not scale well to land based tree sized structures for large fauna sized prey. Lifting something the size of a deer requires to much motion so its better to rely on passive trapping as much as possible.**
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[Question]
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If you look at religions in world history they are often a source of conflict.
*Disclaimer: Obviously this is not true of all religions nor is it a judgement on those religions for which it was or is true.*
Now, with that disclaimer in place, what is it about religion that can make it a vehicle for violence?
With a few exceptions religious dogma generally preaches peace, and in the end people are the source of violence. But far too often religious belief is used to promote violence.
**What views, teachings, beliefs or rules allow this contradiction; preaching peace and promoting violent conflict? Or is it something completely unrelated to the religion at all?**
For a frame of reference this is the world in which this religion will exist, as well as some of my goals for the religion itself.
* There is a pantheon of gods, sort of Greek styled, but only one is worshiped as part of this religion as she was the only one responsible for creating the world.
* The formal modern organized incarnation of the religion developed after a massive map altering conflict between two racial factions came to a climax (that being the map altering devastation).
* Framework can be related to what the Catholic church and its militant orders were in the middle ages/crusade eras. Meaning there are few other central powers and the church manages land, banking and wealth in general.
* At times it will be an expansionist religion not unlike Christianity during the crusades.
[Answer]
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> What views, teachings, beliefs or rules allow this contradiction;
> preaching peace and promoting violent conflict? Or is it something
> completely unrelated to the religion at all?
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People naturally believe different things, but most religions dictate what a person is *allowed* to believe, via a sacred text or creed. I was raised Catholic, (now non-practicing), and part of mass ceremony is a literal vocalisation of what we all "believe" ([the Nicene Creed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed))
This conformity of belief can railroad religious followers' thought processes and make them more susceptible to doing the bidding of religious leaders "in the name of religion", and less likely to question those actions.
Religion has often provided the pretext for violence, but the underlying causes of that violence are rarely religious, and often more to do with power and greed. History is full of examples (both distant and recent) of people using religion as an excuse to get one over on neighbours. Even right now, the current situation in Iraq and Syria can be seen to be more to do with filling the power vacuum than religion.
However, as KSmarts pointed out in the comments below, religion alone is not the *only* thing that produces this "conformity of belief". There are many things in human culture that can set people against each other, besides religion. Political Allegiance and Race are among the more serious ones. The conflict in the North of Ireland is often seen from the outside as Catholics vs. Protestants, a religious conflict. In fact, it's more a case of Unionists (those who believe the north should be part of the United Kingdom) and Nationalists (who believe it should be part of the Republic of Ireland). There are Catholic Unionists and Protestant Nationalists, although both are rare. However during the height of the troubles, lots of innocent people were targeted simply because they were Protestant or Catholic.
If we take a step back and look at it, what really causes violence is *perceived difference*, which probably harks all the way back to our simian ancestry, where rival groups of primates would fight for dominance.
So to sum up my rather confusing and thrice edited answer, **I believe that the human tendency toward violence is unrelated to religion**. It can certainly be exacerbated by the actions of religious leaders, but this is not *unique* to religion.
**NOTE:** Thanks for all the upvotes! I've edited this answer so many times it bears little resemblance to what you all voted for, but I hope it's still agreeable. Thanks for KSmarts for pointing out the contradictions in my original answer
[Answer]
***Disclaimer:*** As with the question, this answer is not intended to cause offence. I have endeavoured to be reasonably neutral but any offence caused is unintentional.
There are several reasons that religions can be sources of conflict. One of them is the main power why violence occurs in any context - I'll try to explain some.
## People
People are the number one factor causing war. People are essentially different and hold different points of view, which causes disagreement. Although at a national level we can try to resolve our differences peacefully, this doesn't always work, and at the individual level by far the easiest way to deal with it is to shoot your adversary. Job done. However, other factors do also play a part:
## Scriptures
Almost all religions have scriptures. Christianity the Bible, Islam the Qu'ran (Koran), etc. Since these scriptures were supposedly written at the time the religion was young, they are often taken to be the Word of God (please, substitute God for any name you use). This gives people reason to believe them: they are the representations of the views of the highest being in existence and thus should be followed. Some people take this to the extreme that since they are from the highest being, they are above mere human justice systems; thus, if there is a suggestion that killing others is the right thing to do, some people are willing to do so.
## Other People
People take great amounts of influence from the behaviour and teaching of others they respect. Religious leaders such as priests, rabbis, and imams have huge amounts of respect from those they preach to. In many societies with some dissent, different leaders preach different points of view, which leads to groups of religious people angry at each other. Alternatively, leaders of different religions preach opposite viewpoints, so different religions get angry at each other and are willing to take up arms in defence of their way of life.
For example, if a government is being particularly obnoxious in the Nofun province of Horriton on the world of Conflictada, a Permapees priest would preach that everyone should remain calm and use democratic process to oust the government, while a Kildemal priest would tell his community to go and launch rockets at the government buildings and take over. This gives the Permapeesans reason to tell the Kildemalans that they're wrong; this enrages the Kildemalans and causes fights; fights escalate; a Permapeesan is shot; his community retaliate with grenades; the Kildemalans launch missiles which causes the Permapeesans to bomb them; everyone hates each other, kills each other, bullets fly and start killing everyone more people get involved more points of view more guns more bullets more death atomic bombs oh no auntie Edith why help us where is God now. Oh. Welcome to World War One.
[Answer]
A complicated issue. One that I can best describe looking at history.
Historically, long periods of conflict that have been blamed on religion (even the crusades) had a tangle of interrelated causes--most notably in the case of the Crusades--the economic decline of the Western Roman Empire. You ultimately had a shrinking tax base with no real positive inflow to the economy. A large part of Rome's wealth was really derived by tax payments from the Eastern Empire, and the split into two empires set the stage for the complete financial collapse of the Western Empire. When you couple this with urbanization and plantation farming AND Rome's welfare system (Citizens were freely given doles of grain) you had a large population of destitute people, not enough food or gold coming in, and because you have no money--you couldn't just go and conquer a rich neighbor, because let's face it, by that point in time--there weren't really any rich neighbors... except for those lands captured by "the false prophet Mohammad..."
[Clarification: The Western Roman Empire, after losing the tax base from the east had to find another way to support itself, and in truth--at that time, if you wanted wealth you'd go conquer it. Well, the rich parts of Europe had already been taken. Here's a map of the empire after the split.
It couldn't support the territory it already owned. All the red on the map would fracture, and eventually all of northern Africa, the area known as the middle east, and most of Turkey would all eventually come under Muslim rule. At that point, it would become possible "reconquer" these lands. My original statement attempted to condense several hundred years and in the process apparently made me state an impossibility.]
Its important to note here that with the advent of Roman Catholicism, the Church offered itself as a competitor to Lords and Emporers which is the main reason why it ended up being institutionalized into the structure of the state in most cases. (Eventually culminating in the idea of "Divine Right," which was a balance of power between the ruling class and the Church.) I've glossed over a ton of nuance here, but here's some bullet-points:
* Religion is sometimes used by power-seekers to influence members of state, when the religion itself has sway over a large group of people
* Members of state often seek sanction for acts by religious
authorities--this again, depends entirely on power dynamics.
* Religions tend to address the needs of everyday people--if the state is a particularly bad one, this can lead to a revolution "sanctioned by God."
* Economic factors for both everyday people and the ruling class tend to be the primary motivation for war.
* Religion can be used by the state to pacify its populace. ("Religion is the opiate of the masses.")
* Religions nearly all tend to viewing human beings as flawed or fallen beings that require "fixing" by some form of worship/path/ritual(s). This is less true of Pagan religions that tend to accept man's mercurial nature as-is. Keep this fact in mind while creating your religion.
So to summarize, while greed and power certainly play a role in violence, far greater is the factor of economics in setting the mood of a people and their willingness to be swayed by greedy people wielding power wishing to conquer. Religion is generally a psychological multiplier, playing to our tribal instincts in subtle ways--historically, at the whim of those who wield power over us. You need to carefully consider the political balance of power in your world so that the "right" dynamic is in place to capture the feeling and mood you want. Is your religion in tension with the state(s) in which it resides? Is it in conflict with the people? (The state or a prophet could implement a new religion in this case.)
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In my opinion 3 things brings religion and violence together.
1. Greed: Greedy people use religion to convince others to commit violence against "heathens and apostates" in order to take what was theirs.
2. Power: (very closely related to Greed). Use the power to collect more power by taking lands and life of those who dare defy the 'truth'.
3. Fanaticism: Believing you are right to such a degree that any who disagree are a threat and they must be convinced to change their ways, by violence and death if need be.
Often those greedy or power hungry find Fanatics to lead and do their dirty work for them. There was nothing in the bible that encouraged the Crusades, it was all human Greed and need for power over more people that brought out the sword.
I think the first Crusade was somewhere between items 2 and 3, the rest of them that followed were mostly for #1.
Iran seems IMO to be mostly #2 and ISIS is definitely #3.
[Answer]
It seems to me, from my observations of the world and critical introspection, that **aggression and violence arise from insecurity**. It does not take much to see this in people, and I think most people who can be honest with themselves know that when they strike out, it is because they do not feel secure; it is because they are afraid.
Faith is a required for religions because they inherently do not deal in the realm of evidence based science. Religion is a practice of the supernatural and conviction, rather than the natural world and the humbling practice of scientific discovery.
**The universal truth offered by religion does not reach man's heart of hearts.** People do not believe that sin hurts God in the same way they believe they will fall from a bridge if they step over the edge. We know in our heart of hearts that gravity is there, even if we can't see it or completely understand what it is, we know it is there. But people do not have the same reassurance about a God or gods, so belief in them requires faith. Faith is inherently insecure; by definition, it is *not* knowledge.
**I notice that a lot of people have made disclaimers so as not to hurt anyone's feelings here.** Would they do that same thing if they were about to talk about gravity? Obviously not, the reason is that people's faith is an insecurity for them. If one questions a person's belief that they will fall if they step off of a bridge they do not get upset, because it is not an insecurity for them.
Religion simply provides a massive conduit for insecurity; it says "here is a universal truth, doom to unbelievers" and man can only pretend he believes, but in his heart of hearts, usually not consciously, he knows he doesn't truly believe.
If you question faith, people's feelings get hurt; they get defensive; they get angry. If a large group of insecure people get together, violence is bound to happen. Whether it's under the direction of an insecure leader or simply the will of the mob, it's insecure humans that create violence.
Now put two of these groups near each other, both trying to convince themselves of their own conviction while seeing the abhorrent contradiction of opposing universal truths, and it's not surprising to see sectarian violence.
So, while I agree that religion is not the cause of violence, I think that it is inherently flawed. The best we can do is agree that there is a very tiny set of things that we *know*, the rest is an ongoing investigation. The best test, in my view: if questions make someone uncomfortable about what they claim is the truth, then they don't, in their heart of hearts, believe it to be truth.
[Answer]
**There are several main sources of this contradiction**
**Us vs. them:** Many religions promote peace within the religion while providing less of a framework for peace outside of the religion. Even if they promote peace everywhere, it is not uncommon for a religion to turn a blind eye to violence which appears to promote its desires.
**Us vs. us:** It is very rare for everyone in a religion to interpret the book in the same way. Sometimes violence will simply happen in the resolution
**Them vs. us:** Generally speaking, a religion will not survive if it is so peace-oriented that it cannot keep up with a violent adversary because its people will be killed off, ending the religion.
**Shortsightedness:** Even if a religion is mathematically perfect, its worshipers are not. It is easy for a worshiper to get caught up in a short term goal which makes violence appear acceptable.
[Answer]
This is easy to understand when you look at religion from the perspective of its fundamental intent: to improve human relations and understanding of oneself in relation to others.
Like government, religion sets out boundaries on behavior. While the specifics may differ, they all share the fundamental intended goal of attempting to improve humanity. They even call their guidelines "laws" in some cases.
This is where the human factor comes to play. Adherents of philosophies of religion and government believe their version to be the most true and seek to change the minds of others. When those adherents begin to wrap those philosophical ideas around their identity, any challenge becomes blasphemous- an affront to their deity or personal philosophies. Inevitably, they blame the blasphemous for the world's ills and seek to change them through debate. If debate isn't enough then sometimes they resort to force/violence.
Religion can't hurt anyone. People, on the other hand, turn the words of their religion/government into vehicles for violence or peace. The individual is responsible for choosing violence against their fellow man, not the religion.
One note: The reason I'm including government with religion is that too many forget that government seeks to do the exact same thing- behavior control. In recent history though, few governments tie itself to the divine as it once did yet have been just as violent, and in many cases, more so than in some religions. Some governments were no different than the religion like those who claimed "divine" rule in the past. This explains the violence against dissidents or non-violent, yet "immoral" behaviors that government and religion share.
Breaking the rules is breaking the rules in both cases and the people who believe in either philosophy have the power to wield violence against their fellow man for breaking those rules and/or share in peace between those who follow those rules.
[Answer]
I'm going to go off on a different direction than everyone else:
## This dichotomy has *nothing* to do with religion.
**Instead, consider that humans (taken as a whole) are extremely xenophobic.** Literally: *"an irrational or unreasoned fear of the **foreign** or unknown"*. You can see examples of this throughout history - any time a culture meets another, each consider themselves superior and disparage each other, sometimes over the smallest differences. This could range from the large-scale (European explorers vs the Chinese empire, Cold War) to the neighborhood ("Oh, you don't want to live *there*! That's where all the snobs/junkies live."), to the trivial (OS wars). There have been studies which show that [other primates can behave similarly](http://www.pri.org/stories/2011-08-10/xenophobias-evolutionary-roots), so this behavior has been with is a *long* time.
The only way to overcome this inherent xenophobia is to expand the definition of what is "inside" your group, so that there is less that's foreign. If a person with brown/yellow/purple skin isn't part of your group, you will look down on them. If your group is expansive enough to acknowledge that they're equally human, then you have no issues with them.
**So, too, with religion.**
Religion, regardless of its message, cultural value, or other positive characteristics, is a differentiator. If someone follows a different god than you, they're *different*. If someone follows the same god differently, they're *different*. If someone follows the same god, in the same way, but more or less actively than you, they're *different*. These are all degrees of the same thing, and the smaller the difference the easier it is to include them (and thus not have an issue with them), but it still comes down to "us vs them".
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Belief businesses of all kinds, including religions, governments and even programming-language advocates, grow their customer base by distributing absolute truths. These truths are, by design, intense, exclusive and non-cooperative. They have to be, or they wouldn't be able to wrestle potential customers out of the clutches of the competition. There is little or no value in consumers who serve two or more brands. No belief can flourish if it allows alternatives to survive. Absolutism is job one, fanaticism the only goal.
At the top of each great faith fortress, learned scholars pontificate their unique creeds, eloquently proclaiming the superiority of their side over all others. From ivory towers, they scream at each other, as the masses watch from below.
Down in the trenches, less learned believers dream of being great evangelists, teachers and fishers of men. Lacking their leaders' arsenal of words, lacking the bait of beautiful ideas, many turn to less loquacious methods of persuasion. Where reason fails, violence flourishes. Kill 'em all... and let the Gods sort them out!
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What does "peace and violence" refer to here? - this needs to be understood correctly.
Religions usually promote mercy and compassion; however, all of them prescribe laws to deal with those that pose a threat to the society. For the greater good, they prescribe laws to kill those who inflict harm on society. This is still inline with mercy and compassion for the society *as a whole*. If religion does not do this, then society will suffer!
Similarly, a religion does not say "Cause war", but, for example, says that oppression is worse than killing, and for the greater good of humanity permits war under certain circumstances - and in some cases quite rightly projects it as a morally high thing to do.
We as humans get stuck on little things and do not always see the bigger picture. Ultimately, morals are nothing more than social constructs. We like to create slaughter houses for other animals but consider ourselves to be above them all and more superior.
It is naïve to say that there is a paradox. Apparently there is, but there is a bigger picture that needs to be understood.
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I'm surprised nobody mentioned Bishamonten
Bishamon is the Japanese Buddhist God of War, and the famous Uesugi Kenshin is one of their followers. Kenshin himself is legendary for his prowess in battle and his sense of honor, willing to kill his enemies' soldiers but not the innocent civilians
This is one of the core tenets in today's world: only those prepared to fight can protect peace. Use this to explain why some religious practitioners are violent: they are violent so the innocents don't have to be.
For an easier way of picturing this seemingly contradictory concept, take a look at Islam: Muslims generally preach peace, but their holy book specifically points out that heathens that threaten them should be fought against, either with pen or with swords. History suggests the latter is much more commonly used
Of course, this all assumes that all the practitioners put the need of many above their own, and are totally not using religion merely to gain loyal followers and later twist the interpretation of holy books to match whatever it is they're going to do Nostradamus interpretation style.
Religion tend to be formed when technological and scientific advances were not that much, and when technology improves what the holy books once said (that applies to their world) usually don't mention anything about the future world.
For example, none of the Holy books of the major religions ever mention anything about Internet porn or phone sex, so interpretations had to done and assumptions had to be made to deal with those religiously. This allows one to use wild imaginations and interpretations to justify their violence
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**The top priorities of any religion are to preserve, protect and propagate itself.** Violence and other coercive methods happen to be tried-and-true means to each of these ends.
* **Self-preservation**: By this I mean the prevention of new ideas and customs that might degrade the integrity of the religion from taking hold. Islamist factions such as ISIS and Boko Haram are particularly notorious for using violence as a means of preserving what they hold up as the Muslim faith in its original, pristine form. They not only routinely impose draconian punishments for violations of Islamic laws and principles, but consider any attempt to reform or relax those laws as tantamount to apostasy (i.e. abandoning Islam outright) and therefore punishable by death. (Indeed, the very name Boko Haram translates to English as "Western-style education is sin", a pointed reference to the self-preservation imperative.)
* **Self-protection**: By this I mean the defense of the faith and its community of adherents from outside threats. While violence in self-defense may be considered justifiable on its face, religions (and indeed structured ideologies of all sorts) are all too often prone to paranoia, sensing existential threats to the faith that are either nonexistent or overblown. Whenever, for example, Islamists characterize Western measures against terrorism as an attack on all of Islam, and then call for violent *jihad* to oppose these measures, they are appealing to this self-protection imperative.
* **Self-propagation**: By this I mean ensuring that the faith will endure in perpetuity, which means continuously replenishing its flock of adherents via procreation and/or conversion of nonbelievers. In this context, violence is usually done to serve the latter purpose (i.e. intimidate people into converting by making examples of those who refuse, ISIS again being a prime recent example), though it could also be understood to include coercive laws and policies designed to ensure that followers have many offspring and raise them all under the faith.
**Note:** All of my points above cite Islamists as examples of religious violence. This is not to single out Islam as having a monopoly on religious violence, merely to provide recognizable examples from recent events.
[Answer]
It is unrelated to religion.
The problem is that mankind has a tendency to use/bend/exploit peaceful teachings as a rationalization for violence.
Contradictory scriptures makes the matter worse "eye for an eye", "thou shall not kill", "love thy neighbor". Demagogues can exploit this ambiguity to suit their needs
Consider religion being used by slaveholders
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> <http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/12/how-the-bible-was-used-to-justify-slavery-abolitionism/>
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> Brinton, author of “Balancing Acts: Obligation, Liberation and Contemporary Christian Conflicts,” says both the Union and the Confederacy invoked the Bible to justify their positions on slavery.
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> Slaveholders justified the practice by citing the Bible, Brinton says.
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> They asked who could question the Word of God when it said, "slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling" (Ephesians 6:5), or "tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect" (Titus 2:9).
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Mankind has the exact same tendency with it's laws. Interpreting and bending laws so people can rationalize violence.
Also worth considering that religion has a wide audience and is often used as a vehicle for propaganda.
Also consider the Etymology of the word propaganda
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> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda>
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> Propaganda is a modern Latin word, the gerund form of propagare, meaning to spread or to propagate, thus propaganda means that which is to be propagated.[1] Originally this word derived from a new administrative body of the Catholic Church (congregation) created in 1622, called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for Propagating the Faith), or informally simply Propaganda.[2][3] Its activity was aimed at "propagating" the Catholic faith in non-Catholic countries.[2]
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> From the 1790s, the term began being used also for propaganda in secular activities.[2] The term began taking a pejorative connotation in the mid-19th century, when it was used in the political sphere.[2]
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It is not the fault of religion. It is a flaw in human character. Demagogues know how strong this power is, you can promote violence and give it divine blessing in the process.
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> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_violence>
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> Miroslav Volf says that his religion, Christianity, is intrinsically nonviolent, but has suffered from a "confusion of loyalties". He proposes that "rather than the character of the Christian faith itself, a better explanation of why Christian churches are either impotent in the face of violent conflicts or actively participate in them derives from the proclivities of its adherents which are at odds with the character of the Christian faith." He believes that "(although) explicitly giving ultimate allegiance to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, many Christians in fact seem to have an overriding commitment to their respective cultures and ethnic groups."[12]
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A careful reading of the Book of Ecclesiastes sheds insight on this question. The book systematically attacks many reductionist fallacies present in human belief systems. It calls into question: the ability of moral living to protect you from harm, the reward of diligent labor, the fairness of human justice, happiness through sexual gratification, madness, religious piety, the value of wisdom, leaving your estate to unworthy children, etc. Taken together with the Book of Proverbs, you have the latter saying that if you follow certain rules, life will go well, while the former says that even if you follow the rules, bad things happen to good people (a point driven home even more so in Job).
Most (maybe all) systems of thought, whether religious or scientific, are reductionist in some way. They simplify and gloss over points, maybe even gross failings that their ideas do not address. When these systems fail, people are left hurt, angry, confused. This situation makes society ripe for people urging stricter adherence to the rules (on pain of death or punishment) or abandoning the accepted order for a new religion or belief. Since a thing and its opposite cannot both be true, one of those beliefs is teaching falsehood, undermining community life and the state. It must be eliminated.
Only rare circumstances will lead to peaceful relations between people of different faiths:
(1) Exhaustion. Europe fought religious wars for centuries. Eventually the death toll was too great, and kings mandated tolerance in order to save their kingdoms from perpetual civil war.
(2) Pacifism. Some faiths strongly oppose violence.
(3) Slavery. Some faiths kill or enslave all their opponents.
(4) Benevolent dictators. Ghengis Khan chose no religion for himself and prevented any one faith from being made the state religion, to preserve peace in the empire.
The words of Jeremiah are instructive: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." This is a call for the individual pursuit of spiritual knowledge, something incompatible with formal systems. To the extent that a religion is an expression of community laws and regulations for living, it is necessarily incomplete and reductionist, hence potentially dangerous. When it fosters the individual pursuit of divine knowledge, wherein God meets both the common and peculiar needs of each person, then it can be a positive force.
To be complete, there is another force beside our imperfect nature that turns religion into a tool of violence and evil. I believe that the devil exists, and uses lies and murder to turn people against each other. Of all my beliefs, this is one I would be happiest to be shown to be wrong. However, M. Scott Peck's book *People of the Lie* persuaded me many years ago and I have yet to find any evidence to contradict it.
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I think your view of religion is perhaps a bit limited, particularly in regards to "With a few exceptions religious dogma generally preaches peace..." There are plenty of historic religions that didn't - Greek/Roman, Norse, Aztec, &c - and I think the same might be said of Hinduism & Shinto today. There are also examples, such as Christianity & Islam, which preach peace towards fellow believers, but are all in favor of violence towards infidels and heretics. So if your scripture tells you it's ok to kill off the non-chosen people (lots of Old Testament examples), or to "...kill the unbelievers wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush" (Quran 9.5), then if you are a believer, that is what you do.
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Religion promotes faith. Unfortunately, faith conflicts with critical analysis and reason.
Religion, and spirituality, suggest that there is a "language of love" that stands above reason etc. which may or may not be true.
This set up, which prevents nihilism in an ideal scenario, can easily be derailed by someone looking to exploit people for personal gain.
Essentially, strong religious believes make people more susceptible to manipulation by others who establish themselves as lead figures within the tradition.
[Answer]
It's Easy:
If religion (god belief) is the ultimate explanation, it's above critique, and easily becomes the ultimate justification. Or excuse.
Then the human motives below awareness creep in, and "Hey. . . I'm doing it all for god. Wouldn't want to stir up his anger. Like making a volcano blow off or a plague hit.."
Ya gotta believe!
[Answer]
I am deliberately on thin ice here, to show that **it is not religion per se which which promotes violence,** but **people who use religion as pretext to gain power to themselves, when they see opportunity to do so**
Differences between Christianity and Islam, as example of circumstances which may promote violence:
**Origins**
* Christianity emerged as the religion of the weak under oppression on Roman religion, so it took them more than 500 years to be established enough (converting Roman Empire to christianity) to start oppressing others (christianization of Eastern Europe, then Crusades and Inquisition).
* Islam emerged as religion of the powerful, of the military conquest, oppressing others nations/religions from very beginning (or, as suggested by commenter, 23 years after conception), and people joining Islam because it was on the more powerful side (unlike Chritianity, which started weaker).
**Relations progress and new technologies**
* Christianity plunged into Dark Ages quickly after Roman Empire disintegrated, and technological advanced few centuries later years enabled it to expand. Returning to origins means Dark Ages.
* Islam started expanding militarily and technologically (translating classic Roman, Greek manuscripts, many of which survived only in arabic translations) and developing own advanced science (algebra, spherical trigonometry to get direction to Mecca, medicine, all more advanced than contemporary Christian science). So for Islam, returning to origins are Golden Times.
**Writing**
* Roman alphabet/writing is easy to adapt to book press, and many rogue printers existed, printing dissenting religious literature (and unleashing centuries of religious wars, so people in Europe are better aware that religious fanaticism equals war).
* In Islam, professional writers invented copyright for translations, and opposed printing press (which is less convenient to arabic script). [Printing in Arabic script was prohibited in Ottoman Empire from 1483 on penalty of death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_spread_of_the_printing_press#Ottoman_Empire) which likely influenced freedom of speech, press, and religious freedom.
**Freedom of speech is majority being tolerant when minority expressing opinions majority disagrees with** - and this post is perfect example how hard it is.
I have little knowledge about how other religions may influence civilization, sorry.
BTW I personally know many very peaceful Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and atheists, and above is very generic extrapolation.
Also, **monotheism would be IMHO more prone to violence,** because existence of any other god is heresy (and converting such believers to one "true" god you are helping them to see "true" light). For polytheist, it is a matter to get support from a more powerful god from many to chose from (and so switching to "more powerful" monotheist god might be a rational decision).
Bottom line: it is not religion per se that promotes violence, but people, history, circumstances, opportunities.
Seems that believers of both sides got offended and downvoted my answer. Yet another example how religious faith and rational thinking does not mix. Both sides have disagreement debate in comments, and both downvote my answer. Which proves it is true.
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[Question]
[
I am considering writing an alternate history story in which 1950s nuclear testing attracts the attention of benevolent extraterrestrials who do not want to see us destroy ourselves. However a misunderstanding ensues between the ambassadorial parties sent by the superpowers to meet the aliens; the whole affair goes south in a big way.
I looked up the various tests done by both superpowers in this era and it seems that the [Castle Bravo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo) test represented a major upward spike in blast force and radioactive dispersion. How would an alien probe stationed somewhere in our Solar System (you can decide where) be able to detect this event? Would smaller blasts also be detectable? Let's assume the aliens have a means of FTL which permits their probe to communicate to their homeworld "Hey guys. The monkeys from Sol III are testing megaton-level nukes now. Maybe we should have **The Talk**?"
Just to clarify, I am not asking about a global nuclear holocaust scenario. I am specifically referring to the "controlled" atmospheric tests conducted in the early years of the Cold War.
Edit a few hours after post: Thank you for the answers, everyone. Keep them coming, I'm all ears!
[Answer]
They don't check for the event, but for the expected consequences.
Having a single satellite check for events that are only directly visible for a few seconds brings with it one huge problem. If the probe is on the other side of the planet, you will miss the flash.
But if you monitor the atmosphere (which seems reasonable if you're interested in a habitated planet), you'll notice a huge increase in several radioactive isotopes (C14, for example) [[1]](https://www.ctbto.org/nuclear-testing/the-effects-of-nuclear-testing). Since we can analyze isotopic ratio in Jupiter's atmosphere even now [[2]](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/381084/fulltext/58484.text.html), your aliens would surely be able to build a probe that can do exactly that. Since it takes time for the particles to disperse, it would take a couple of weeks or months for them to notice, but they would notice.
The atmospheric analysis also gives your aliens a reason to have another **Talk** a couple of decades later, when a rise in greenhouse gasses and subsequent temperature increase are detected.
[Answer]
>
> How would an alien probe stationed somewhere in our Solar System (you can decide where) be able to detect this event?
>
>
>
We are able to detect the signal emitted by the Pioneer 11 and Voyager 1 and 2, which are way past Pluto. Those devices emit way less power than a normal bomb, not even a nuclear bomb.
Therefore by having a suitable antenna looking in the right direction it would be surely possible to detect the signal of an atomic explosion.
[Answer]
Just have a Manhole cover wipe out an alien satellite after it is almost accidentally [sent to space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob#Propulsion_of_steel_plate_cap) (it's not believed it made it in our world, but instead melted but maybe a alternative history can hand-wave that away )
The Aliens turn up thinking you have monkeys with ground to orbital weapons and arrive ready for the talk about not blowing each-other up from space.
Starts you off with a big misunderstanding on the technological weapons levels of everyone involved which you can add to the confusion of the ambassadors.
[Answer]
You know that [nuclear detonation detection system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_detonation_detection_system)? Tell ye a sicrit: 't's theirs.
Point
>
> "Hey guys. The monkeys from Sol III are testing megaton-level nukes **now.**
>
>
>
That *now* implies they got to know about the other smaller nuke blasts in the past too - which is more than plausible, it's probable from their mission of observers (it's not very hard to learn about them anyway if they listened radio/TV transmissions anyway).
If nuke explosions were a sign warranting **The Talk** in some future, is only natural to keep an eye on it. I mean, you don't wait for a policeperson to drop by and inform you that your kid has been busted for indecent behaviour or sexual assault in order to decide that telling them about flowers, bees and storks is necessary.
So, what better way to keep an eye on it than to drop some baby monitor like devices on Earth? Devices which could even use FTL comms for a 'some slow signals coming your way, you may want to have a look' heads-up.
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It's unlikely. For one thing, if they're not looking in the right direction at the right time, they'll miss it. The "right time" is dependent on their distance from the Earth while looking, and if it's in the 1950s, they can't be very far away.
They only have a strong signal for a few seconds at most. A long blink and it's all over. With FTL, they can zoom out further and wait for the signal to pass them again, but that presupposes that they know there's something to watch for (making this a useless point).
Furthermore, they have to be in the right spot. If they're on the other side of the planet, or if another large body occludes the Earth at that point (the moon is the most likely candidate, though there's only a small chance of it occluding, too lazy to math it), then they can't see it either.
Other than by utter chance, the only way they'd notice is if they were already watching and even then they wouldn't likely catch *every* nuclear test.
They're much more likely to notice our persistent signals then. Some of the old radio broadcasts had insane wattage, and went on 12 or even 24 hours a day. Even with those, consider how directional they'd be in space.
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GPS Satellites have a nuclear detection system that not only detects those explosions, but gives the operator exactly where it was.
Besides this, nukes cause a specific "double flash" in the visible light spectrum, the [Vela Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident) was detected by that. If a random probe wasn't specificly designed to detect nukes going off, but to look around in the light produced by the local star, it would detect this.
If I was asked to choose a probe's location in a solar system with 1 star, 8 planets, some interesting moons and dwarf planets, and only 1 of them had life on it, I'd put that probe close to the one with life on. Because that's the most interesting part of that system. So my probe would detect that blast.
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If the aliens aren't concerned that the primitive hairless apes on the little blue marble colloquially known as Earth would detect their probe, a set of Earth observation satellites in polar orbits could monitor 100% of Earth's surface continuously. They would be capable of monitoring a great deal more than just nuclear tests: land use, deforestation, ocean acidification, pollution, atmospheric composition, surface temperatures, population levels, conflicts, radio/TV broadcasts, etc. That telemetry would provide any number of "these idiots are about to destroy themselves" alerts.
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There were plans to detonate a nuclear weapon on the moon as a demonstration of both our weapons technology and our rocket technology. The reason to do it on the moon was for the visibility and too prevent more damage to the earth.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119>
A alien traveling through the solar system would easily see it. An Alien in another solar system would have a more difficult time.
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Good points above about looking at the right spot at the right time, but remember during that time, there were quite a few nuclear tests going on, so somebody monitoring us with a sufficient good optical resolution for some time would probably pick up one or more suspicious flashes - especially as, as far as I remember, quite a few of the tests were done just before dawn. And then, as said above, that could give them an idea of what was going on and they could do various other types of measurements to prove what it really was.
[Answer]
# Neutrino detectors in outer space.
These are [marginally feasible](https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.07113) at short range with current Earth technology. It stands to reason that a more developed technology and a longer baseline would allow to reliably detect not only [nuclear explosion events](https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.04001), but also the increase in steady fission flux.
To a neutrino telescope, the Earth would appear as a diffuse spherical luminosity growing brighter towards the center (not all the way), due to the presence of radioactive uranium and thorium isotopes in the core.
Then, on the periphery, bright spots develop. Some comparatively very large and really short lived - neutrino flashes, so to speak - others dimmer but steady, and visibly fixed on a rotating surface, which positions them on the crust.
And one day, they receive the signature of a nuclear fission plus *hydrogen fusion* event, and [Naron of the long-lived Rigellian race](https://nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/sffaudio-usa/usa-pdfs/SillyAssesByIsaacAsimov.pdf), Keeper of the Galactic Records, gets informed that Earth people have gone thermonuclear.
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Imagine you have a weather-controlling device that you use to eliminate all lightning strikes. They're just too dangerous. What happens to the earth? Does lightning serve a necessary purpose to any ecosystems?
My naive conception of lightning is that it's basically a byproduct of weather, but does it serve a necessary purpose of equalizing electric charge, with no natural substitute? In this case, it seems like stopping all lightning strikes would be basically impossible without some kind of artificial superstructure to take over this role.
[Answer]
**For one thing, natural bushlands would get overgrown.**
Anyone who listens to world news knows that the south west of the US; California and Arizona especially, are prone to bushfires. So is most of the Australian outback where there is natural bushland areas. In Australia particularly, some species of tree are so integrated with the natural fire cycle that their seeds can't germinate without fire having swept through an area.
Now on the face of it one might say 'well good news! Just one more thing that abolishing lightning solves!' but that is a very narrow view of things.
For hundreds of millions of years (at least), fires have been started by lightning strikes and they literally clear out a lot of dead wood. The clean up the dead material on the floor of the forests and bushlands, and open up areas for new generations of plants and trees to start their own cycle of growth. This allows in part for evolution to be accelerated ever so slightly and for plant life to adapt to a planet changing on geological time scales. It also in turn wipes out a lot of other life that relies on the bushland but even that regrows with a new generation moving in to inhabit the bushland after it has restored itself.
To be sure, these lightning strikes can be massively dangerous which is why backburning huge tracts of land in the winter and early spring times (when the weather is not so hot and the fires are easier to contain) is such a good idea, and in a world without lightning every wildfire would have to be deliberately lit, even if done so by accident. Not doing so, because lightning is no longer an issue, would just allow a fuel load in bushland to grow to a point where a cigarette butt thoughtlessly tossed out a car window in the wrong place at the wrong time of year could be catastrophic. So, if anything, we would have to be MORE careful in our management of fire prone areas, not less.
As for the static electricity component, yes; lightning is a natural discharge of static electricity to reassert an equilibrium. That said, eliminating lightning would best be done by eliminating the ability to pick up that imbalance in static electrical charges in the first place, so it's unclear what impact the removal of lightning could have without removing the possibility of that imbalance would be, or even if it is possible to do.
All that said, lightning does seem to serve a useful function for natural bushlands across the world and as such removing it would remove a natural function of renewal for such lands.
[Answer]
**Ozone levels in the atmosphere would be reduced**
Lightning is the major producer of ozone and NOx in the atmosphere. No lightning means less ozone means more UV light gets through.
Basically life on the planet would get much harder to survive.
[lightnings-role-in-ozone-formation](https://eos.org/articles/new-way-to-gauge-lightnings-role-in-ozone-formation)
[Answer]
Many plants won't grow as well. [Lightning converts atmospheric nitrogen into nitrogen oxides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation#Non-biological), which in turn react with water to produce nitric acid. Nitric acid and related nitrates are a major source of nitrogen for plants.
This isn't an "end of life as we know it" scenario because there are many other methods of nitrogen fixation (eg. the well-known nitrogen-fixing bacteria found growing on legume roots), but it's not something you can ignore, either.
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Effect of eliminating lightning depends on how you eliminate it, b/c lightning is a byproduct of rain, which is in turn essential part of the water cycle and essential to life. I bet you do not want to eliminate rain along with lightning.
My suggestion for minimally invasive method is harvesting static electricity from atmosphere for human use. Every mile, there is a "lightning rod", or rather a balloon connected by a cable to the ground station. Any static electricity that is accumulated in the atmosphere flows down the cable to the ground station, and is stored or used to power the grid. Our current technology would make it very expensive, but your world is different.
Then you have no lightning hitting the ground in the area covered by this static electricity balloons. You will have to burn the bush periodically as others said, and if you keep the area limited, you do not have to worry about ozone and NO effects.
[Answer]
**Gamma Radiation would be reduced**
It was discovered that lightning storms produce some gamma rays. I don't know how much mutation effect this has on surface biology, but it's more than zero. Some mutation is required for ongoing evolution.
<https://phys.org/news/2017-10-lightning-afterglow-gamma.html>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_gamma-ray_flash>
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I've been trying to design a world and I have been running into some issues with a certain application for a piece of magic.
Basically, it is the use of "heat rocks" to warm up fields so that crops could be grown for longer periods and in places normally too cold for them to grow.
I'm wondering whether or not this would actually work, specifically for plants like sweet potatoes.
Note: The rocks could also create light at the expense of heat produced.
[Answer]
>
> I'm wondering whether or not this would actually work
>
>
>
No and yes.
Not if the rocks are in the ground (they're heck on plows; rocky fields are always considered poor fields).
Yes if placed between the furrows when an early/late frost is expected, to protect them from cold damage. (This is similar to how citrus farmers used smudge pots to protect their orchards.)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/wbBQt.jpg)
[Answer]
In germany there are heated asparagus fields. The asparagus from this fields can be harvested nearly a month earlier than from ordinary fields.
<http://www.cooknsoul.de/essen-und-trinken/jahreszeit-und-tradition/spargel-saison-folienspargel/>
>
> Beginning of March, winter temperatures, snow far and wide and you can
> not believe his eyes: the asparagus season has already begun! As is
> well known, asparagus begins to grow slowly at a soil temperature of
> 12 degrees so that, depending on the weather, the first asparagus can
> only be harvested towards the end of April. A sensation, then, this
> new Schrobenhausen variety? No, heated fields make it possible!
>
>
> Heated asparagus fields are the reason for fierce discussions, because
> while all the world talks about nuclear phase-out, energy saving,
> sustainability and climate protection, this asparagus grows on heated
> fields. The Spargelhof Lohner grows on 12 hectares of asparagus - in
> fields that are traversed by hoses through which flows warm water,
> which is heated by means of a woodchip plant. The soil of these fields
> is tempered throughout, regardless of whether outside temperatures are
> below zero and the ground would otherwise be frozen.
>
>
>
In this example the heat is generated by a dedicated plant. Other farmers use the excess heat from big power plants by utilizing the steam from turbines.
So, heating fields can be useful for some crops.
[Answer]
Growing season isn't just about soil temperature but also about light exposure. In the winter there is both less daylight and at a lower intensity. Maintaining growth and foliage for a plant is very energy consuming. In the winter the plants are actually going to consume more energy maintaining growth and foliage than they could get from the reduced sunlight so they go dormant. Most plants base their dormancy period off of light exposure, not just temperature. Soil temp is part of the equation too mind you, just not enough of it to matter on its own.
[Answer]
If you mean you want rocks in the ground to heat up the soil, this reminds me of some modern greenhouses which run hot water pipes about 18 inches under the growing beds to heat it up in the early spring, which gets plants growing much earlier (soil has enough thermal mass it is not as useful for extending into a late season). This is very energy-intensive though, and only useful if energy is extremely cheap, and the greenhouse itself trapping warmer air is overwhelmingly more important, though the amount of sunlight is still the primary factor controlling the growing season (unless you get down to near-freezing temperatures, or are trying to grow inappropriate crops like tropical fruit, sunlight is overwhelmingly important).
A historical example of trying to do something similar to what you want might be the [fruit walls](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/fruit-walls-urban-farming.html) which were used in northern Europe from the 16th century to grow fruit father north than their typical range.
Basically a brick wall soaks up the sun during the day and radiates it during the night, which creates a micro-climate right next to the wall, allowing a fruit tree planted up against the wall to be grown much farther north than their natural range.
This is very limited in range of effect, so only helpful for that which is trellised against the warmer stone, and even magically warmed stone would be much the same. Warm air rises so you're not going to be able to keep a whole field warm this way. This also only works to keep the night chill off of the leaves, and prevent a frost, so this approach might not be useful for what you are trying to accomplish, but it might give you ideas of how people have approached applying warm stones to growing crops.
The amount of energy which would need to be produced for hot rocks to provide a consistent mass of warm air over an entire field in a cold climate sufficient to significantly affect the length of the growing season, would have a wide range of applications if so cheap as to be spent on keeping farm fields warm.
This kind of magic would cause enormous changes in the world as it would change innumerable industries, housing, living habits... basically such cheap easy access to energy would have far better uses than trying to keep a farm field warm. The implications for other aspects of your world might be much farther reaching than you anticipated, especially if you are going for a lower-technology civilization (assumed from the presence of magic).
[Answer]
Yes, if your heat or light source is unlimited. However if it is limited, practical steps can be taken to improve efficiency.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WV9My.jpg)
This is [Vodyane](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vodyane,+Zaporiz'ka+oblast,+Ukraine,+71316/@47.4534548,34.3381885,4851m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x0:0x0!2zNDfCsDMwJzQ0LjAiTiAzNMKwMzUnMDkuMCJF!3b1!8m2!3d47.512222!4d34.585833!3m4!1s0x40dcb985c9fdd717:0x20df1735398893e0!8m2!3d47.4792763!4d34.5045805?hl=en) in Ukraine. These are single-family homes on narrow lots with *very* deep backyards. Those are almost entirely filled with ... *greenhouses*. This is but a small part; it goes on for *miles*.
And just to the east... what's that? A huge industrial complex containing [six nuclear reactors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhia_Nuclear_Power_Plant) and a bunch of coal-fired generating plants, all of which are about 35% thermally efficient and "waste" the other 65% of thermal energy *Gee, I wonder where the greenhouses get heat?*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yvzb8.jpg)
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**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 5 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/34105/edit)
Nowadays Stack Overflow is a common place for programmers to solve their problems. Most of the companies such as Microsoft, Telerik, etc. encourage discussion on Stack Overflow about coding relating issues. In this stage if Stack Overflow is no longer available to use (maybe due to some hackers group attack) means what would happen to software industry?
* Will the pace of software development be reduced? If yes, how much it will be reduced approximately?
* How will software industry manage the valuable information lost due to StackOverflow loss?
* Yes, people will try to build another Stack Overflow site. But how much time it will take to build a similar website with similar content?
* Will there be any advantage for programmers if Stack Overflow is no more?
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My job requires me to do some programming and I am a member of and frequently use StackOverflow to solve specific problems.
## Magnitude of Impact
However, I turn to StackOverflow for assistance when I generally already know how to solve a specific problem, but am having problems implementing that solution. Based upon my personal experience, I would estimate no more than a 10-20% decrease in efficiency for those tasks that I would turn to StackOverflow to solve.
Since this is a minority of the problems I face every day, I would not expect the impact to be all that great.
## Preserving the lost information
IMO, the value of StackOverflow relative to other web resources is the specificity to which it can get. I can always find general instructions on how to do various bits of code. However, if I'm trying to do something very specific and get unexpected output (usually errors), I can turn to StackOverflow to see if someone else has tried doing exactly what I'm doing and how they got past the error messages.
The other benefit is that if I can't find what I'm looking for, I can always pose the question to the group.
I'm saying the information to do this **IS** already there on other sites. But some of the specifics are not.
## Cost to build a StackOverflow replacement
Unknown. I don't know how much StackOverflow cost to build. I imagine a replacement would simply cost the hardware and man-power to build and staff the place.
The content comes from the subscribers.
## Any advantages?
No advantages spring to mind. I imagine it is possible that a "new" Stack Overflow might include better organization or search tools but that is by no means certain. I would expect the odds of the replacement site being better would be at most equal to the replacement being worse.
And you'd still need to accumulate the content.
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Blimey, we'd have to read the docs for the software we use! Imagine not being able to cut and paste random bits of code off the web any more, productivity would plummet.
Mind you, quality might increase, particularly if developers spent less time on the stack exchange sites instead of working :-)
[Answer]
While StackOverflow is one of the biggest and most convenient sites to get software issues answered, it is not the only one. There are several others out there of reasonable size and many, many smaller blogs with more limited but focused topics.
So while it would be a pain to have more places to look it wouldn't be crippling. Like Jim2B said, often I use it to remember how a specific implementation is done that I use infrequently and haven't memorized yet. There would be a period of mourning, and then we'd just keep on doing our jobs. I've been a software engineer for twice as long as stack overflow has existed, and I was still able to do my job back then.
[Answer]
It's happened before, or near enough: Ten (OK 15-20) years ago you could have asked the same about usenet, or at least the relevant parts of it. To give an example with a near-direct equivalent: tex.stackexchange has pretty much replaced comp.text.tex. I'll admit to a nostalgia for the old distributed ways, but the model here is much more useful, with inline images, rep., etc. I used to be quite active in equivalents to diy.se, superuser (many newsgroups), etc.
What you suggest in the question is pretty much what happened to usenet -- ISP stopped providing servers, Google groups was more of an attempt to take over than a decent interface (though its search facilities got it lots of traffic). People switched to forums of varying quality, some free, some paid (expertsexchange). Eventually SE gained a dominant position. With hindsight it's easy to say that an open model was always going to win out.
Communities are more resilient than web services; *something* would grow up. If aliens took out SE there would be a dozen hacked-together replacements within a week (all those programmers stuck on their paying projects would have to do aomething to prevaricate).
[Answer]
If Stack Overflow Inc. went out of business tomorrow, there'd be a momentary disruption in access to the existing data and a larger disruption in getting *new* questions answered.
Questions and answers on Stack Exchange sites are licensed by their authors under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Stack Overflow Inc. provides data dumps of Stack Overflow and the rest of the Stack Exchange network to Internet Archive, which in turn [makes them available to the public through BitTorrent](https://archive.org/details/stackexchange). Someone with a halfway recent data dump would probably toss up a read-only interface. In fact, such mirrors already exist. So many exist in fact that Meta Stack Exchange has a [procedure to report](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/200177/229356) Stack Content Republishers Attributing Poorly and/or Excelling at Ranking (SCRAPERs), or mirrors that are incompletely fulfilling their obligations to Stack Exchange users under CC BY-SA.
But because of the levels of traffic that Stack Exchange gets, it might take a while for a site to offer read-write access, or the ability to ask and answer questions. It'd have to replicate all the caching and moderation "magic" that happens behind the scenes. There exist [workalikes of Stack Exchange software](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/2267/229356), but as far as I can tell, none are intended to scale as large as, say, Stack Overflow. Survivability, ultimately, is one of the pitfalls of using secret, non-free software. Compare to reddit, which makes everything but the spam filter available through [its GitHub repository](https://github.com/reddit/reddit).
Is this Worldbuilding or Meta Stack Exchange?
[Answer]
I don't think that SO helps senior developers - at least the help is not critical. If SO stops working, many junior programmers will slow down their work but globally this will not be noticed. After few months, the same junior programmers will be fired or will become more experienced and better thinking. They will not expect external help for every little bug.
[Answer]
## Pace of development
In the initial hours I would believe the pace of software development will be decreased. Mostly because
1. Searching with Google for any programming related problem will most likely continue to serve StackOverflow. You have to filter those results yourself, which takes time.
2. People posting on social media that StackOverflow is down and that the efficiency of programmers is decreased.
For some programmers this may result in a larger decrease than others. This may even vary per project.
## Data Loss
The loss will be at most three months of data. [Since 2009](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2014/01/stack-exchange-cc-data-now-hosted-by-the-internet-archive/) StackExchange dumps its data every three months and makes it available at [the internet archive](https://archive.org/details/stackexchange).
## Clones
Since the data is available. Whenever the news occurs that SO will not return, (illegal) clones will pop up rather soon. I would think that within a week or-so a clone will exist. However it may take longer, since SO itself is probably required for people to create the clone.
## Advantages
Again, this differs per person. Those who search every issue they have, even multiple times and fail to remember solutions will have to remember those solutions. Initially this will give them a time penalty, however I would like to think that the cache in the brain has a lower latency than the cache on the web. With sufficient training you could increase the brain-cache in size, reducing the need for high-latency lookups.
[Answer]
There will be someone trying to fix this issue.
But for a while, users feel less motivated on sites that clone the data on StackOverflow. And users cannot easily find sites that doesn't clone those data, and it would be somewhat paradoxical to deal with low quality contents there: a site must firstly live with that, but StackOverflow has shown they will be unwelcome sooner or later, and users always debate about this. It's very likely they all will be forgotten slowly, as the informations on them expire and there are not enough users motivated to maintain them. The final clones that are not down are likely read-only or converted into other formats such as a wiki. The same person or company who runs it may also run another separate QA site, but they must have a different path to be successful and to get enough users.
Existing QA sites that are not exactly the StackOverflow model might have some advantages here. Some new sites will also try to advertise their sites in different ways, such as being specialized, having hired answerers, or being incorporated into another model. Many of them may not work well as a model, but they only work because they distinguish themselves from exact StackOverflow clones. And users can have a higher expectation based on how they did their works.
This will be discussed in other types of sites such as forums, SNSes, chatrooms or even mailing lists, maybe even in the comment area of a news sites, *to improve their social cohesion*. Specially, someone will claim the things you can get from StackOverflow are not *the* (as they thought) most useful ability a programmer should have. Though it is irrelevant when StackOverflow exists because it supposedly doesn't hurt to also have StackOverflow no matter what you value the most.
Others may criticize the users on StackOverflow that may try to push their common sense to the industry, and say that we should agree to disagree. Those who don't agree to disagree may think misconceptions exist everywhere, and it doesn't worth to clarify anymore. This might not seemed to be that harmful. But new sites that intended to replace StackOverflow struggle to find why they cannot replicate what was on StackOverflow exactly, and don't realize they must do extra works inventing a different way to encourage some of the users to do the dirty, hard and repetitive jobs.
New sites sometimes might also be considered jokes there. Otherwise, users aggressively want to help a new site, bringing in different ideas about how the site should work, only making it less manageable. As there might be many similar sites, users will also abandon a site that they think not good enough rapidly.
And the possible final results are:
* There might be an already big, prepared site advertising too much about their new things and take the role of StackOverflow. They already had their users, so they wouldn't have the difficulty. It's very likely the will refuse to talk to their users too much as that would be likely the way they would have succeeded.
* It's possible that someone finally worked a way mixing contents from different locations and successfully preserving their quality before someone becoming the new StackOverflow. And StackOverflow would be irrelevant.
* With those problems, the path of being another StackOverflow is effectively blocked for a while. But seeing it as a chance, sites owned by a company with an irrelevant model might all want to also have some QA features. And they may develop faster without StackOverflow. One site may finally grow to a complete StackOverflow, with a lot of legacy fascinating new features that didn't exist in QA sites.
The pace of software development would not be reduced significantly immediately, as the data won't be lost, and they would remain being useful for a long time. And everything new asked there is still answered by a human. Because the problems described on StackOverflow should be isolated enough, I'd say it won't be too harmful to the overall efficiency if a company just hire more people to deal with those problems as a last resort, if that really becomes a concern. And 8k questions/day still doesn't compare to the total number of developers around the world.
But without a default way solving problems for those who cannot solve problems themselves, ugly workarounds might be more common and potentially might increase the number of bugs a little. Or something on StackOverflow is already ugly workarounds, and people find a way to improve without StackOverflow. Who knows?
[Answer]
If Stack Overflow was no longer available today lots of “clone” sites will start up populated with the old questions/answers from the data dumps. **However the expert will be divided between these sites** and it will take a very long time until one site becomes the clear winner.
**BUT**
It will take a change in the world for StackOverflow to no longer be available (the investors will not allow their money printing machine to close, if it is still getting lots of users) if this was to happen, it would not be today, but in some time. When it happens the world would have change in a way that stops StackOverflow from being useful. We can no more predict what the outcome will be like, then newnet users could predict the details of StackOverflow.
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So what sort of changes could it be.
* Programmers no longer wish to help each other
* All programmers work for a small number of companies and are not allowed to talk to anyone outside of their own company.
* Computers learn how to program themselves.
* The world is no damaged, there we no longer have power to run computers.
* Legal issues make StackOverflow impractical.
* Something a lot “smaller” then the above, that none of us have thought off.
Personally I will put my money on the last item in the above list.
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* >
> Will pace of the software industry decrease?
>
>
>
Yes.we could expect some short-term decrease in the pace of software industry.
>
> Maybe it would not affect well-experienced developers but **it will
> surely affect freshers and less experienced developers who always
> looks straight forward answers for their problems and surely this
> issues will transform to small scale industries who heavily depend on
> these developers since they cannot always hire market leaders**.As a
> result small scale industries, freelancers will be affected more and
> they need to give more training to freshers to understand the language
> documents.
>
>
>
* >
> Deadlock between StackOverflow clones
>
>
>
Though most of the old contents preserved the real challenge come to generate new good contents and building the good community.Since StackOverflow driven by its users, these clones will suffer to find good moderators which are key to building a good community and to keep the site clean.Since every user has to start from zero(reputation) on these sites contributors will find more difficulties to get privileges such as vote down and close votes will be a barrier to getting good contents.
>
> * Any Advantages?
>
>
>
Yes.More security professional has to be hired by existing software companies in order to satisfy their customers since stackoverflow was defeated by hackers.This will create more job opportunity for security professionals :).
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[Question]
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I'm a xenobiologist going on an expedition to a habitable planet about 14 LY away. We don't expect to find anything amazing - maybe some bacteria to study - but lo and behold, the place is *teeming* with all sorts of complex life.
Looks like I'll be busy.
How do I classify these creatures? Do I use the old naming conventions from Earth? They won't fit well, because most of them can't be strictly placed under "plant" or "animal" and they exhibit...well, *alien* behaviors.
Should I just slap another term on (Origin, Kingdom, Phylum, etc.) to specify the planet of origin and make up new terms for these aliens, or start from scratch with something new and more fitting, possibly causing a great upheaval in the world of nomenclature as I do so? Or should I just use plain English for now and let someone else give them fancy names later?
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The answer is "yes." You do all of the above. Each system serves different purposes.
The first big division to focus on is laymans' names versus scientific names. You will find that a realistic community will have both, because they serve different purposes. Laymans names are more focused on practicality. Two things that are obviously different will have different names. Two evolutionary similar things with different uses may have very different names. They are easy to remember and easy to teach. Scientific terminology, on the other hand is designed to support science's key tenants: repeatability and reproducibility. When you write a paper and someone tries to reproduce it, it's important that they can identify the exact same species.
As a fun example, consider two stinging beasties that we deal with as divers in the ocean. The first is the hydroid:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/178tfm.jpg)
These little buggers hang out on rocks. If there's nasty weather, they break off and the little pieces can sting you. The next baddie is the jellyfish:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/oA7HHm.jpg)
We all recognize a jellyfish when we see them. Some are extremely poisonous, others like the moon jelly above are more cute than anything. Now these are layman's names. They're easily identifiable, and practical. The scientific names may be less practical. The first picture is of *Turritopsis nutricula*, in the class of Hydrozoa. The latter is *Aurelia aurita*, of the class Scyphozoa (a class that is typically known as "true jellyfish").
Now what about this guy?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v2ZPFm.jpg)
He looks an awful lot like a moon jelly. In fact, his layman's name is the Immortal Jellyfish, for its unique ability to return to its larval stage if needed. Scientists, however, call him Turritopsis nutricula. If this doesn't sound familiar, look up a bit. It's the name of the spiky looking hydroid I showed a picture of earlier. These are actually two pictures of the *same* species, in different parts of its lifecycle. The former was a picture during its hydroid stage, rooted on the ground. The hydroids then emit tiny "medusae," which are the jelly-fish like things we know and love. The scientific name is far more concerned with a precise name for the species than it is the convenient identification at a glance.
Now not only do we have two pictures of things which may be given different layman's names but the same scientific name, but we also mentioned the different classes. The idea of classes is relatively new. It only started to appear in the 19th century, and only gained fame as Darwin promoted it. The idea that everything is connected evolutionary into a [phylogenetic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_tree) tree is quite a new concept as far as science is concerned.
Which points out the next piece of the puzzle for you. Eventually you will want to put a new level at the root of our phylogenetic trees, indicating the different origin planets. This is mentioned in other answers, but here we can see why. The explicit purpose of these trees is to show a common genetic heritage. There will be no common genetic heritage between Earth and your planet 14LYr away (or will there?). Thus, you should not borrow from any of the existing branches of our tree. Branch off lower, and start a new one.
However, that will come later. It took a *long* time to figure out all of the different branches of our tree of life. And, honestly, it's not that helpful to anyone outside of a biologist who is actively researching deep evolutionary history. You would probably start with just a genus and species (such as *Turritopsis nutricula* or *Homo sapiens*), and start cataloguing that obvious part of the tree. Later, as you learn more about the planet and it's history, you'll be in a better position to solidify the lower branches of the tree with the evolutionary history. But, in the mean time, genus and species is so effective that we typically refer to all living species by their genus and species (it's also called a "binomial name"). Sometimes we even abbreviate the genus (such as "H. sapiens") because there's enough information there to provide all the scientific precision required.
But while you're giving things scientific names, you will find they get layman's names as well. My garden has *Solanum lycopersicum*, *Daucus carota*, and *Spinacia oleracea*, but if you were to ask me what's in my garden in a conversational setting, I'd tell you "tomatoes, carrots, and spinach." You can see why the laman's names have a use!
[Answer]
I like using Orgin as a taxonomical descriptor. I would put it as a level above the three Domains (Eukaryota, Archaea, Bacteria). Then make this planet's taxonomic tree (Maybe make the two Orgins "Terra" and "Extraterran" or whatever your planet is called)
Since (presumably) the life on this planet has no relation to Earth's life it doesn't need to be classified into our taxonomic tree.
As for the naming of the different things, you can probably describe them in English then go in with the Latin later. You pointed out that they don't fit cleanly into plant or animal, and that they are alien in behavior. That must be something observable and quantifiable, and therefor useful in classifying these species.
Take a look at how our taxonomic levels originated and see how you can apply it to your planets wildlife. (Ex. What kind of symmetry does the thing have? Does it have a backbone? Does it have limbs? How does it reproduce? Is it trying to bite your face off? These are the kinds of things a biologist really needs to know.)
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Old habits die very hard among humans; therefore, my assumption is that the biological community will resist anything other than using, as you call it, an origin prefix. It's what they're used to. Consider how difficult it's been to extend, for example, I.P. addressing beyond the original IPv4 nomenclature. Classifications have a philosophical "inertia" that is very difficult to change, even when it becomes obvious that they should (because the effort of changing everything in the past is greater than suffering yesteryear's short-sightedness in the future).
However, it's worth noting that regardless of the wondrous imagination of science fiction writers, life in the universe will very likely be similar to our own. This isn't to say that it isn't possible for there to be something completely different out there, only that the odds are in favor of life being water/carbon-based. Therefore, while the habit is to add a prefix based on location (and it's likely to happen as a convenient form of cataloging), the more valuable prefix would be those that identify a new "life fundamental." (E.g., lifeforms based on silicon, etc.)
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*Build a new system AND also use the less efficient old system.*
If your new system is more practical, over time it will become the only system in use, at least by the scientific community that takes the time and effort to learn it well. Lay folks may still enjoy the older system, whether it be for easier understanding, tradition, or because it is more aesthetically pleasing.
An example of this is when over 10 years ago a Wisconsin county decided to rename the rural roads with numbers for easier fire and emergency response. They kept the traditional word names on the signs with the new numbers, as locals still prefer to call them by the names they've known for years, and the new naming system also works well for its intended purpose.
A possibility for the new system could be built using DNA sequences in the naming, which could leave lots of room for newly discovered species to be worked in, since they would definitely have different unique sequences. This assuming the aliens also have DNA similar in structure.
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I’m sure there would be a positive biological bunfight over the naming conventions. In the meantime the guys on the ground would have a field day (literally). If they had enough time and resources they should be able to figure out some of the important biological taxonomic divisions and give some of the species some provisional names.
If they were good at their work a lot of the taxonomic divisions and names might even end up being officially recognised. At the very least they would act as a temporary framework to allow for investigations to proceed in a coherent manner.
Although they weren’t expecting to find quite so much life, I would have thought that some contingency plans would have been made, especially as they were expecting there might have been something similar to bacteria present.
Not quite of the same magnitude, but of relevance, I see that that [20 new phyla](https://www.sciencealert.com/new-research-has-added-20-new-branches-to-the-tree-of-life) have recently been discovered in the domains of bacteria and archaea. For those not familiar with biological phyla, all insects fit into a single phyla (insecta). And all animals with backbones fit into another.
And that’s kind of big in the world of taxonomy as there are currently only 30 [phyla in the entire domain of bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_phyla). I wonder how long it will take them to sort out that nomenclature wrange?
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I agree with adding a new taxolevel on to the left of the name, "Origin".
For a long time now I would have liked to do that. (But my spaceship's in the shop, darn it!)
Anyway, I would abbreviate each level by one letter to form (with Origin) an eight-letter species code (being an old mainframe dog, I have a penchant for eight-letter names).
My code (and yours too) is EACMPHHS (Eukaryota Animalia Chordata Mammalia Primata Hominidae Homo Sapiens).
The first letter comes in handy for Star Trek fans too; such as K for Klingon and T for Trill.
[Answer]
I feel like you have your answer already,
Just add an origin prefix to the syntax.
Possible syntax :
*Origin - genus species*
The hyphen is an arbitrary syntax addition for readability, like the capitalisation of the first letter in the genus. Feel free to change that.
For example -
*Panthera tigris* becomes *terra-Panthera tigris* or something of the like.
If a colony of earth lions for some reason were found on the moon, then earth lions would be *terra-Felis leo* and moon lions would be *luna-Felis leo*. (Assuming that they somehow evolved to be the same)
A colony of first generation martian humans would be *Maris-Homo sapien*.
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[This question](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/164490/could-the-sky-on-a-planet-theoretically-be-any-color) on Physics.SE asks whether other colors are possible for the sky.
I would like my planet to be inhabitable by normal humans. It has 768 days and they are living in a temperate/Mediterranean climate area. I am not yet sure what color the sun is, but I'd like the sky to be near blue, but more violet. Would that change the color of grass or leaves? I understand that we have trees with color variation on Earth, but this is an overview. A child would say leaves of summer are green. I think that as my sky is just slightly off color, that trees would be the same, slightly a different green.
Edit:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n6ihF.gif)
This is the color I had in mind. I should have said LIGHT violet
[Answer]
# Reasons for plant coloration
Plants would develop pigments that let them absorb the parts of the spectrum that are most valuable to them. Here are the absorption spectra for the two types of chlorphyll in plants:[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ygcv5.png)
As you can see, plants absorb almost nothing in the green range, so green light is reflected; thus plants look green.
Red algae, on the other hand, live deep underwater where there is only blue and violet light; shorter wavelength light penetrates water more deeply. Thus, red algae have absorption spectra that look like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tgfsS.jpg)
The carotenoids give them significantly enhance absorbance in the blue and green regions, so that they reflect more yellow to red light giving them a red appearance:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LsW0d.jpg)
Your sky is slightly shifted to the violet so there is more violet light available relative to the more blue light available on earth. There should still be plenty of red light available because you aren't under the ocean.
# Conclusions
I think there are two possible explanations for your flora. Either the primary absorption pigments (chlorphyll) are shifted to the violet; this means the wavelength gap would be more blue-green than green.
Alternately, you could say that all your plants have a secondary pigment (like caroteniods) that give your plant more absorption in the violet-blue range. This will make your plants appear more green-yellow.
[Answer]
Color of foliage is based on whatever the color is of bacteria that get incorporated to become chloroplasts.Or more specifically the color of their light absorbing pigments. there is a huge range in nature for color in photosynthetic organisms, plants are green becasue chlorophyll is green, it could have just as easily been red or purple. <http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss3/pigments.html>
the only rule is if there is a wavelength of light not making it through the sky you don't want that color. heck chlorophyll reflects the most abundant wavelengths from our sun. there is decent evidence that chloroplast ancestors absorb the margins of the visible spectrum becasue halobacterium absorb the major constituents, becasue the chropyll users could not compete with them directly.
you could make them pink like halobacterium which may have been the dominant form of photosynthesis at one point in earths history.
<http://funguerilla.com/lake-hillier-australian-natural-wonder/> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zMy50.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z3DZY.gif)
[Answer]
I think your assumption is wrong, and so we wrote wrong answers.
The light of sun is white: if you put a white sheet in lawn, you see it white, not the blue/azure like sky. The colour of sky is due to soft scattering of light, but direct light has very few scattering, so white.
BTW because of scattering, light "loses" few blue, so the light is "less blue" as original light (e.g. as seen on space or on the moon), and not more blue as it seems by the question.
Additionally, our eye has chromatic adaption, which "correct" most of colours (note: but mostly in direction of red, not really much adaption in direction of blue/violet), so we tend see (in brain) the colour of object, not the colour of the light of the object (as seen from the eyes).
So the color of leaves are correlated on color of the sun, not really about the color of the sky, but if the sky is really darker (so if the sky absorb light).
So, with a sun like our but a planet with light violet sky, I would assume leaves would still be green.
Note: You should carefully choose what it is "violet". If it go in direction of purple, it means scattering of blue and red, which means (in case of darker sky) that the most important light reaching ground is predominately green, so plants would not discard it.
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**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
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I love history and I love alternative history. But when I want to write alternative history myself, I quickly feel restricted. Now, I like mythologies and fantasy too. Now I came across an old map. Now I'm thinking about creating a fictional setting and living out my "alternative histories" here. I would have more freedom and and there's no danger of alien space bats. Plus some stuff from the mythologies. Would that be bad worldbuilding and I should stick with real history & world?
Here is a [link to the map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/1700_Cellarius_Map_of_Asia%2C_Europe_and_Africa_according_to_Strabo_-_Geographicus_-_OrbisClimata-cellarius-1700.jpg).
[Answer]
[Alternate history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_history) is a well-established genre. Full disclosure: I'm a fan. You can base your alternate history:
* On a point of divergence from real history. For example, S. M. Stirling's [*Draka*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domination), which diverges from real history at the conclusion of the American rebellion against the United Kingdom, when a large number of royalists, instead of submitting to the victorious rebels, emigrate to South Africa.
* On a point of divergence from almost-real history; for example, S. M. Stirling's [*Nantucket*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nantucket_series) has a point of divergence at a poorly defined time before the Trojan war. (By the way, this would be an excellent example of an alternate history work set in a made-up world; real knowledge of what the world was actually like at the presumed point of divergence is scarce, and moreover the books contradict it in many more-or-less important points. But it's a great alternate history series nevertheless.)
* On an entirely fictitious world, sort of like ours but subtly different. For example, [Ken Liu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Liu)'s *The Grace of Kings* is placed in something very much like the Chinese empire at an unspecified time, but not quite like it -- the world in the novel is more generic extreme Oriental than specifically Chinese. Works of this kind are usually not *called* alternate history, but they are written and enjoyed as if they were.
It is not at all unusual to base the plot of science fiction and fantasy novels on real-world events, from S. M. Stirling [*Raj Whitehall*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_series) series, based on [Belisarius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belisarius)'s efforts to reunite the Roman Empire at the behest on emperor Justinian, to David Weber's [*Honorverse*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse) series, based on the expansion of the British empire. (Note that in both cases the relationship of the plot to the cited real-world history will be noticed only by people who actually *know* history -- all the names are changed, events are out of sequence, etc.)
It is also not unusual to base the plot of literarry works on previous works of fiction; and classical mythology is definitely a rich source of characters and plot devices. A famous example of mythology-based alternate history / fan fiction / universe expansion *avant la lettre* is [Fénelon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_F%C3%A9nelon)'s [*Adventures of Telemachus*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Aventures_de_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9maque) (1717), a prose epic which expands the [*Odyssey*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey). (In the original work, Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, is a supporting character; *The Adventures* centers on him.)
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What is the difference between alternate history and straight fiction? For example, did Captain America really fight in WWII? Did Kinsey Millhone ("A" is for Alibi) really solve crimes? And since we have passed Judgement Day (in 1997), are the events of Terminator 2 science fiction or alternate history?
An advantage of writing based on history is that it is easier to create a consistent universe. IMO, the worst crime a writer can commit is being self-contradictory.
Write what interests you, and I hope you get published. Don't worry about truth -- well, as long as it's clear this is supposed to be fiction.
How do you know there aren't space bats?
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A lot will depend on what you mean by "template". If you mean the usual ups and downs of history and the rises and falls of empires, then sure, using the primary world's history as a guide is okay. If you mean copying Roman history but changing the names, then no, that's pretty bad worldbuilding.
If you also like fantasy and mythology and are considering the combination of myth, fantasy and history in a semi-legendary landscape as envisaged by early cartographers, then I'd say go for that! (Disclaimer: my own world happens to enjoy this admixture to some degree and in certain locations as well.) I think that would actually be better geopoesy.
Though I would caution writing strict A-H in such a rich world. That would be a waste of effort. If you want to write A-H, just set it in some semi-fictionalised Earth locale. If you want to write mytho-historical fantasy, then set it in your own otherworld!
Also, plus 1 for the ancient SHWI reference!
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Like most things processes are rarely inherently good or bad. They always a matter of how well or not they are accomplished. If someone is a good worldbuilder, then no matter what type of world they build, hopefully, it will be good. This can vary according to their knowledge and understanding and skill in constructing that type of world.
One person might be good at creating star-spanning future histories, but a dunce at medieval alternative histories.
Essentially simply do what feels right for you and the type of world you feel comfortable building. No-one can know inherently what sort of world you are best at building. This can only be in the making.
Good luck and have fun creating your fictional world. You have a map to start with, now fill it with interesting stuff. Just say no to alien space bats.
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Real world content has one huge advantage: it is the most believable content you can bring to the table. In many cases, it is also rich and vast. Never be afraid to use what is at your fingertips. However, if I were to advise an alternate-history writer about world-building in this way, I would steal from real world history: a quote from Bruce Lee:
>
> Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own. - Bruce Lee
>
>
>
People who explore fictional worlds aren't paying you to show them real history. Your real history can indeed form a framework for your world, but what the readers are paying you for is what you bring that is your own.
For some writers, that framework is exactly what they need to make their imagination soar. For others, the framework is a hindrance. The same goes for mythologies. Some writers *flourish* in the world of Orcs and Elves. Others find those tired tropes simply get in their way.
This is why I like to recommend Bruce Lee's quote. It encourages you not to take what is useful wholesale, but to *adapt* it. Nothing frustrates me worse than an alternate-fiction story where the author changes one cusp event, and creates a huge discontinuity full of contradictory details as they try desperately to weave it into the part of the word that they copied wholesale from the real world. Far better to reject what isn't helping your story, and fill it in with your own.
[Answer]
While most answers so far have chosen to say "yes" (to some degree or another), I'll try to present a case for "no" (with a caveat).
Real world history is inherently complicated. It isn't even fully known. We can only attempt to make a best reconstruction, with a lot of effort.
The concept of "History" in most people's mind is not such a best reconstruction, but a biased and simplified view of the world: this includes "most authors". Such a biased and simplified view can often come with misconceptions taken as "foregone conclusions". Thus, there is a real risk of making the author lazy in the worldbuilding process, wherein they simply transfer their biases and simplifications of history onto the fictional/alternate world, and miss out on the opportunity to imagine details within the interactions of the world that could have lead to unique story opportunities.
In my opinion, the the sort of detail that is examined when building a new *good* fictional world is similar to the sort of detail real life archaelogists and historians have to deal with when interpreting extant records. Nothing is "black or white", nothing is a simple stereotype. A good example of a series that makes this mistake is the [The Shadow Campaign](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15810910-the-thousand-names) series. It is not alternate reality, but it is heavily based on real world "history", with a good dose of the author's unintentional biases. Poor world building.
So, unless you are willing to put in historian level effort into first studying history until the point where your alternate reality diverges, you may be unintentionally hobbling yourself by inherent/assumed biases.
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[Question]
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[Vantablack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack) is very dark, absorbing 99.965% of light. I've also heard it absorbs waves beyond the visible spectrum.
Does this mean planes painted with Vantablack would be invisible to radar?
If yes, would stars or clouds affect the plane's stealth? Or will it be completely hidden no matter what?
I'm looking for real-world science—only handwaving the difficulty of getting a plane painted in Vantablack.
[Answer]
Radar operates at about 50 cm wavelength.
Vantablack reflectivity spectrum shows 2% reflectivity at 25 micron, and rising.
So my answer would be no.
There are special paintings developed to minimize radar reflection, and they are used on stealth planes. For obvious reasons they are not advertised in the hardware shops, so it's hard to find more info on them.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZRoEJ.png)
Clouds and stars would reveal its presence, because the plane (regardless of its surface layer) would cover them, therefore from any given point one would see a moving black spot on the background of clouds/stars (unless the plane is flying behyond the clouds)
[Answer]
No. Radar uses microwaves, which are orders of magnitude longer in wavelength. Short fibers (like the nanovelvet you mentioned) will be invisible *to* the radar. Perhaps some engineered nanotube or graphene solution would work, but it will be **designed as an antenna for that sized wave**.
It would not be velvet-like, as the shag would be several inches long. A shaggy plane is not good!
Instead, the nanotubes would be threads parallel to the skin of the plane. To handwave, explain how the conductive fibers act as antennas and that dumps the energy into a graphene substrate whose resonance is monitored in real-time and actively dampened. That way incoming energy is absorbed and not re-radiated.
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[Question]
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How would we compile our code if all the binaries in the world disappeared and we had only the source code? At first you might think “It’s all okay: I have my Roslyn code here”, but wait! It’s in C#! So you look at an older C# compiler which is in turn written in, say, C++, but wait... and so forth. Would you end up soldering yourself an ASM compiler?
How would we rebuild current software, if we had all the current hardware and all software source code, but no actual software? Would we follow the same path as before, or would we take some shortcuts and end up having, for example, managed code earlier? Would we skip unmanaged code entirely and end up having a [Singularity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_%28operating_system%29)-like OS? Would we build our new bootstrappers and compilers so that they can use our existing (and probably, by the time we get things running, ancient, code) or would we write everything from scratch?
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The process will happen in stages. We will not see a bunch of geeks crowded in a room for 4 years followed by a working i7 booting Linux. Those big complicated CPUs and architectures are only a small part of the modern computing world. There are also thousands upon thousands of smaller chips which are much easier to stand up.
We would start with a small chip, like an ATtiny. It can be [programmed over a SPI serial bus](http://www.atmel.com/Images/Atmel-2586-AVR-8-bit-Microcontroller-ATtiny25-ATtiny45-ATtiny85_Datasheet.pdf), which is clocked 100% by the master. This means you can have a set of 4 switches controlled by human hands, and if you twiddle them in the right order, you can push instructions into the ATtiny's memory.
Now the first program doesn't need to be much. This is a good thing, because twiddling switches like that is hard. The first application would probably be a text editor like application which lets you write an application with easy-to-use switches (i.e. set 8 switches for a byte, then hit the "confirm" key to store it into the program), and some basic read/write capabilities (seek to byte 200, replace it with an e8). Before turning it off, this would be extended to write to the flash memory on the ATtiny. Now we have a working computer (albiet a small one). When you turn it off and turn it back on, it can reload the text editor application.
Now the next piece of the puzzle is to use this to program other chips. This is easy: the same SPI interface you used to develop the first app is the one you'd use to build up apps in others. You could write a second program into flash memory which, on command, is burned into this second chip. Now we can easily duplicate our text editor program, letting multiple developers work on the challenges in paralell.
Now we can use this to program a bigger chip, like an ATmega. In reality, we could have started with the ATmega, because it has similar programability, but I felt the story had a more clear feeling if we started by programming something that's too small to hold onto any modern tool like a C++ compiler. Regardless, once we get to a large enough chip, we can develop a real assembler. Perhaps dust off one of those old dot matrix printers and print text to the parallel port. Dust off an old PS/2 keyboard and wire it directly into the ATmega. Now we have a full blown assembler, with some modicum of human decency to it.
Now the bootstrapping phase commences. We can use this ATmega to bootstrap some of the larger chips, like the i7, because we can use it to program FLASH chips, like the ones the BIOS is connected to. It's not easy, but we have a lot of engineers who are still having to work down in those layers, so someone will remember enough to get the bios working. With this, it is not unreasonable to expect working keyboard and screens to work (no more printing code to printers to read it). We should also be able to access hard disks again, so we can write code more permanently. I would expect, at this point, someone to write a bare-bones version of `vi` (yes, it can get more bare-bones than `vi`), and an assembler, both of which work on a rudimentary file system. All of this is well within today's developer's capabilities. In fact, a few of them would think it's actually kinda fun (until the Mtn. Dew runs out).
Now for the real bootstrapping phase. Someone will write an assembly driver to access a modern file system, like EXT3. It won't be pretty, but that's enough to find a copy of some ancient version of C from the early bootstrapping days. C was bootstrapped by writing a very simple C compiler which handled some (but far from all) of the commands in the C language. This simple compiler was then used to develop a more advanced version of C, and so forth, adding features each time as they become easier and easier to write.
Eventually we'd write enough of a C compiler to compile GCC itself. Once we compile one GCC compiler, the brakes get released. Within a matter of weeks we would have every single Linux application operational, including Linux itself. From there, the other operating systems could boostrap themselves.
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We'd get on the phone to some of the people who did it the first time.
No, seriously. We have a lot of experts in this field who are still alive, and they may well hold enough knowledge between them to build a working BIOS. From there, we can carry on the process a lot faster than it was done the first time: we simply consult the next set of experts for the next bit of knowledge, which we use to construct the next level of software up.
Eventually, this process gets up to the experts at Microsoft and all the big computer companies who make and maintain the languages we use today, and they simply press F5, compile the language's source, and provide us with a fresh new set of binaries.
The bigger problem here is redistribution. If *everyone's* binaries have disappeared, you need to either reconstruct every computer, or have everyone buy a new one. And then for some of the new languages that aren't pre-installed, you need to beef up your distribution servers so they don't crash when everyone tries to get a copy at once.
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Today, we won't be able to use any computer -if all binary programs disappeared-, since all of them has some firmware (e.g. the BIOS) to boot, and that firmware is inside some ROM (often, some Flash ROM).
The time where the primordial bootstrapping program could be easily entered (without the help of some other computer) is long gone. In the 1960s you could boot [IBM7094](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7090) with switches!
If you change your hypothesis to "all the disks I have are erased" and if your firmware gives you some write access (and if you had all the necessary documentations on paper!) you could bootstrap your computer.
BTW, I guess that if we lost all the free software binaries on Earth we would have much more trouble than if we lost all the proprietary software binaries (I assume in both cases that source code remains available).
Read much more about [bootstrapping](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping), in particular about [bootstrapping compilers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_%28compilers%29), e.g. [how was the first compiler written](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1653649/how-was-the-first-compiler-written). Read also J.Pitrat's blog on [bootstrapping artificial intelligence](http://bootstrappingartificialintelligence.fr/WordPress3/), it is dedicated to bootstrapping issues from a strong AI point of view.
See also [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/19366553/841108) and [that one](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/285048/40065) to a very related question. You might also be interested by [Linux From Scratch](http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/), or by [Isaac Operating System](http://lisaac.alioth.debian.org/os.html) (written in its own language, running on the bare metal) or even by [MirageOS](https://mirage.io/).
A concrete issue with bootstrapping an entire computer today is that it is quite complex (in particular, but not only, because of technological complexities: the Intel x86-64 reference manuals are many thousands of pages, and x86 & PC are very complex notably because of historical & backward compatibilities reasons), so it will take a long time (many years of work) and it is (sadly) hard to get paid for that. So there is a social issue. It might be slightly simpler with other hardware (e.g. [RISC-V](http://riscv.org/), which does not really exist or is much less efficient).
A related question is how to restart the Internet if or when it would crash.
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## Apocalypse Now
Early one morning, all the binaries in the world vanish. Every piece of compiled code is gone; data is still there, the code files are still intact, but every piece of compiled code is gone. Poof.
The first thing on everyone's mind will not be how to get it back, but how to survive; fly-by-wire airplanes will drop out of the sky, phones won't work, the Internet will be gone, cars won't start, power plants would shut down. All those devices and systems, large or small, have little chips that were once full of firmware. Granted, anything built in the 1980s or earlier will probably be fine; cars didn't start getting onboard computers until the 1990s, for the most part.
Still, this isn't just an engineering or programming disaster. It's an apocalypse-scale event. A good chunk of world will be without reliable food, water, or electricity; communication will be down completely.
## Where to start?
The best place would be a college or university, since they would be most likely to have a working [punch card reader](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card_input/output) (and a generator). Using punch cards as the initial interface, our intrepid programmers could start writing code immediately.
Of course, those old machines are terribly slow, and huge power hogs. So, our programmers use the punch-card-driven systems to program [microcontrollers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcontroller), or their faster cousins, [microcomputers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcomputer).
These tiny computers will need some sort of interface; hopefully, there is an old transistor-driven keyboard and a few old [CRTs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube) laying around. Modern keyboards and LCD screens rely on firmware. With a little code wrangling, our programmers have a computer, a keyboard, a screen, and a way to save their code.
Additionally, any devices with firmware that can be quickly rewritten will be re-flashed; some old hardware, like old CD drives, had very little firmware, but would still be able to read modern discs.
## Security Fuses
Getting back what was lost will be much, much harder. Almost all modern hardware will be nothing but trash; almost all chips with a burned security fuse will be useless, turning cell phones and laptops alike into bricks. Hard drives, though the data still exists, won't have firmware to extract that data.
The best bet is open source computers. Someone, somewhere, will have a non-security-locked flash chip with some stored code. From there, the open source computer can be rebuilt, and the programmers can slowly begin to restore software. Otherwise, someone has a back up of all their code on a cheap flash drive; with a bit of hardware hacking, it's possible to extract that data, though it will be a difficult process.
## Back to the Future
Once computers (however tiny) are operational, life will get a little easier, but most modern hardware will be useless. Even if the BIOS on a modern motherboard could be rebuilt, the video, ethernet, even sound cards would be missing their firmware. Software would reset to where it was in the late 1980s. It would return, gradually, but I expect it would take longer than the first time around. What with the apocalypse, and all.
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One of the biger problems is not the compiling of source code because you would loose all of it, all drives store in binary so everything that we know as current technology would be wiped. And reprogramming it all would be a big task considering that every prototype or version would be gone. I would expect even a food shortage or other events like it considering how many small computers are in the things we use so often in our lives, like cars, power grid management, and appliances.
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Technically, firmware is "hardware", so I would expect it to remain. I assume that "disappearing binaries" is more about the information being removed than a physical calamity which struck all information storage devices but narrowly missed anything which didn't look like running machine code. If indeed firmware remained, then I think we would have a good head start. We should be able to boot any system which can run off firmware, and at least have some primitive OS and text editing capability. The interesting problem is that if we have source code, but most of it is electronic, then it is mostly useless to us until we can restore the systems that are able to read it.
Since there is so much potentially usable software lying around, it would make the most sense to reproduce the compilers which could rebuild the software. This means society would most likely not try to reinvent programming languages from scratch until we had recovered the ones we just lost. Since we have lost the use of the internet and digital information storage, our best bet is to target the best-documented languages for which we have books. Without a doubt, a C compiler will be the first and most important high-level tool in the rebuilding. Once you have that, progress can be made very quickly. You can then rebuild entire OSes, many software tools, and compilers for a lot of languages. There is a reason that this 40 year old language still tops the TIOBE list. It is the "English" of the programming world: awkward, annoying, ubiquitous and powerful.
Since there are so many C/C++ experts in the world, once you have a system which can enter text and store bytes on disk, building a compiler should actually not be that hard. Most likely, a bunch of folks would be improving the "IDE" through raw assembly/machine code, and probably re-inventing it from scratch just to improve productivity. Many parts of a minimal OS would be brute-forced just to get this first C compiler up and running. But I'm pretty sure that getting the first self-hosting build of the compiler would be the moral equivalent of the starter on a giant engine finally firing up the flywheel so it can be self-sustaining.
In fact, this process would most likely happen in many places all over the world. It's entirely possible that Russia or Eastern Europe produces the first working C compiler "post-catastrophe" due to the number of hackers/virus writers who have to understand low-level code. Although China has a lot of hackers, they tend to take higher-level pathways into systems. I would be surprised if they created an early C compiler from scratch (although, a big group of enterprising university students may accomplish this through sheer force of will). The US and Western European hackers would have the advantage of the most C books and reference manuals available to them, and in a language they easily understand.
Now, if firmware is also zapped, things get much, much harder, along the lines of switch toggling as described by others. That is so depressing I can't even contemplate it. But I assume that the threads merge once you get to a basic console (keyboard, monitor, persistent store...whether disk, tape, flash, etc.).
Although many languages have self-hosting compilers, most of the compilers could be rebuilt from scratch in C, and most of the original language designers could aid in this effort. I think overall, the rebuild would proceed much faster than people might imagine (from basic console to self-hosting C compiler in 6 months or less). In almost all cases, folks would probably decide that it's better to simply replace what was lost and regain the functionality than to run off the rails and redesign things.
A redesign would occur if you *also lost the source code*. Perhaps information is retained in books, but if all electronic executables *and* source were lost, then I think we would see a significant redesign and shortcut to more advanced techniques. I think C would still be rebuilt from scratch, because of its status as a kind of lingua franca. And possibly Java and a few other major languages would be revived (though obviously from clean-room implementations). On the other hand, it would be much harder to restore Linux or Windows or OS X without any source code, from just books.
Interestingly, we could take this opportunity to eliminate a lot of nagging flaws from the languages, tools, and operating systems. Perhaps we wouldn't get C exactly, but a kind of enhanced C99 with a lot of legacy cruft removed. On the one hand, it would be to everyone's benefit to simply implement an exact C99 compiler, so that people from around the world could exchange C sources as the digital world was being rebuilt. This would discourage innovation. And for this reason, Linux would most likely become the de facto OS of the new era, simply because many portions of it could be restored from books and knowledge locked away in certain high-level wizards.
Probably proprietary software would simply fail to compete until the majority of functionality would be replaced. So the rebuild would most likely occur under a very open model, unless some countries noticed that they were progressing much faster than others, and could gain competitive advantage by closing off their progress from the rest of the world. At the end of the day, global commerce would force countries to re-establish international standards, so it is hard to say how long such walls could survive.
Although many failed languages would simply not be reproduced (unless by their loving creators), the most popular languages would surely be revived because of the stored value of programmers with proficiency in those languages. The same is true of tools. However, it would take a long time to rebuild something like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop, let alone Windows Server 2012. These tools may never exist again, and perhaps there would be a new arms race to reinvent each software category from scratch.
Every technology with a published standard would out-compete proprietary alternatives with no public standard, simply because the standards would represent intellectual effort preserved in text that does not need to be redone. But the weakest standard technologies may be displaced by better alternatives simply because the weight of legacy has been lifted and is no longer such a great advantage to bad old solutions.
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When we talk about computer languages and computer programming in general, we talk about languages and their level of abstraction. We once had patch panels that where used to program computers. Most computers where not trully programable but hardwired to do a certain kind of operation. Later we got programable computers.
At first, we used binary opcodes to produce code. You would need to know each opcode the processor used, and enter your program byte by byte into the computer memory. Later a shorthand form was invented, wich used words to describe operations. It was called mneomonic form. This is almost like modern assembly. A second step came with macro assemblers, wich allowed macros to be used. Those are the low level languages.
A medium level language is something like C and PL/I, they are not very abstract languages. People usually consider this as being the uttmost hacker language - "hey i am using a medium abstraction language, this should mean i am an uber hacker" - But, usually, lower abstraction languages are more prone to defects. C provides basic function calling based around function arguments, and other less primitive abstractions like arrays and structs. This is a lot easier to program than pure assembly, and if done carefully can even result in portable code. But C lacks abstractions like objects, strings (formal strings, not hackish pointer based strings).
A language with a higher level of abstraction is Java or C#. Unfortunately both languages are interpreted into a virtual machine. This means that code execution must be translated on the fly from an abstract virtual machine into something that the lower level processor understands. Wich is slow. Another language that offers very high level of abstraction is Python, Ruby etc. So people think that high level languages must be interpreted. Object Pascal (the rejected ugly son) is as abstract as Java yet produces trully compiled code (down to binary format).
Managed code is not the uttmost invention. It implies a huge price in speed. Its a kind of abstraction but not one that is without its faults.
The process of creating the ecosystem of a new computer system is called bootstraping. If you create a new computer you will need to do two steps : Create a compiler that can output code into this machine expected form and a new operating system (that will usually be written in that language).
Usually you will start with a cross compiler that will use a certain already existing system to generate code for this new system. Then this cross compiler will be used to create a basic operating system and to compile the compiler into a binary that runs on that new computer.
As real world machines are based on real components, those machines operate at a low abstraction level. You cannot have virtual machines without real machines, because a virtual machine is actualy a computer program just like any other. This means that between your program code and the hardware there exists a hollow that needs to be filled.
tl;dr
First you will need create a mneomonic assembler program from scratch (using your knowledge about the machines), then a macro assembler, and then a true compiler (usually for C language). From then on you will be able to compile everything else.
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> How would we compile our code if all the binaries in the world disappeared [...]
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Have someone from the International Space Station use a Soyuz-TMA to come down with a still-working laptop with all compilers they have available. (Hey, they aren't technically *in the world*...)
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## Recovery would be *much faster* than you think
Find a pre-1986 car, drive down to the computer museum. Start up the Altair, Imsai or Digital Group box, and start it normally: **toggle in a bootstrap loader**.
**Toggle in** means setting a memory address on the 16 address switches, then setting a data value on the 8 data switches, and hitting "WRITE", then autostepping to the next memory location, rinse wash repeat.
A **bootstrap loader** is an extremely short, ~100 byte program that can input data from some other I/O device, like a paper tape reader.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lbMvJ.jpg)
Use the paper tape reader to input your program, or hey - here's an idea, how about an *operating system*. You know, like Apple Monitor (2048 bytes) which included a lot of code to emulate a TTY on Apple's internal display and keyboard, not necessary, just use a physical TTY or VT100.
***And now we break for lunch***.
A few hundred bytes in the OS teaches it to read/write a cassette tape. Another couple thousand teach it to read/write disk drives. I'm not speculating, this is how they worked.
Meanwhile, parallel efforts are running on
* storing the bootstrap loader in ROM somehow, to cut down on finger callouses
* a primordial disk filesystem
* a simple text editor (hmm, do VT100s still work?)
* an assembler (assembly language compiler so we can say `LDA #INPUT_MODE` instead of `A9 03`.).
***And we better get dinner before all the restaurants close.***
At this point we're doing command-line just as we do now, except using an actual VT100 instead of a Terminal/PuTTY window. We won't have an `ls -R` because we don't have a recursive filesystem yet, but small steps Ellie.
Speaking of small steps, we start writing high level languages and cross-developing; i.e. use the Imsai to cross-compile 80386 to get the Compaq 386 booted up, (mind you, your very first x86 code would be native 32-bit and have no concept of the old 64k/1MB RAM barriers), then use that to cross-compile for the PowerMac G3, etc.
## The hard part is coordination
The problem is, this effort is happening independently in every single location where a functioning Altair/Imsai/Digital Group machine exists. Now the challenge is coordinating the efforts when the phones are down. If the phones worked, any museum-piece 300 baud modem would get the crews talking and sharing code.
And the phone company is not idle; they're trying to figure out how to get something up.
About a day after telecomm is up, someone will have (re)written BBS software, assuming they didn't find an old copy of BBS source code in BYTE magazine. Now we're doing the same thing we do right here. This increases the speed of the rebuild ballistically - especially since every nation in the world has identified it as a national strategic priority.
## Firmware is an annoyance
Unfortunately many components nowadays, like USB fobs, have "firmware" running on a lower level of the system, and don't really have a "hard" backdoor like the Imsai front-panel to force-load a bootstrap loader. If that firmware is gone, each machine would have to be hacked or scrapped. However that won't be a problem until we get into 2000's hardware, so that Pentium and Mac Quadra 800 will probably still run fine. And with those we can redesign/replace the other.
It's true that a Quadra 800 doesn't have a front panel of switches. It does, however, have traces on its PCB, and you would have to do some hardware hacking to get a bootstrap loader into it, or just learn to burn EPROMs.
## We know the destination
Since the design problems are extremely well-defined and well-understood -- all that remains is code-slinging. **We don't need to reinvent the wheel, we all know what wheels look like, we only need to carve one.**
Remember, almost all existing code is understood by *somebody* who is alive, and who if pressed could rewrite it. **Better.**
## It would be the best thing ever.
It would let us (heh) "reboot" our computing systems design from scratch, rather than constantly drag along old legacy infrastructure that makes everything complicated. Code would be streamlined and unified partly because *we have to get the world back up, and there isn't time* to support a bunch of legacy ways to do that same thing. DOSbox *gone*. Windows *gone*. Flash *gone*. HTML/CSS/AJAX morass *streamlined*. Etc. etc. The government would stomp all the patent issues owing to the national emergency.
Haven't you ever wished you could just *take a month* and scratch-rewrite all your legacy spaghetti code and obsolete standards? *Now you can.*
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Once we have a working [C89](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_C#C89) compiler, the problem is far from being over: many software can not compile without the glib that requires gcc, which is also a C++ compiler requiring C++ libraries.
So in order to compile most software, you need a C++ compiler, and to do so, you need a C++ compiler.
It will take a lot of time to achieve. And this may be enough time to make C89 software popular, to have new software to be written from scratch -- or converted -- in C89.
Lightweight programming languages like `lua` that are C89-only would take over the others.
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Assume Mars has developed an indigenous civilization of its own, perhaps as seen in Edgar Rice Burroughs' *A Princess of Mars*.
Much like Earth, Mars' years and days would be significant for any indigenous peoples. These would drive the seasons and daylight periods, such as they are.
But on Earth, there is an intermediate time period that was important from time immemorial: the phases of the Moon. With a period 28 times that of a day, but 1/13 that of a year, the motion of the moon was a good intermediate length unit of time from which, through long evolution, came our modern concepts of month and week.
But on Mars, the moon(s) are nowhere near as prominent as on Earth, and their periods are much shorter. As seen from Mars and measured in Martian days, Phobos will appear and disappear twice a day, Deimos roughly every 2.5 days.
**What astronomical phenomenon, visible from the surface of Mars, would replace the Moon's motion as an intermediate measure of time?**
Note: Not a duplicate of [this](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8728/what-would-a-martian-calendar-look-like), because this question presupposes indigenous Martians, not Earth colonists; and because this question is not about an 'ideal' calendar, but astronomical phenomena.
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**weeks and weekweeks** would be my guess.
As you stated, Mars doesn't have anything in the night sky that is prominent enough and has a long enough cycle to serve as intermediate division of the year.
Mars does have seasons but they vary quite significantly from equal quarters ([142 to 193 sols for spring and autumn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Mars#Seasons)). While an indigenous society would probably used season in their calendar, I doubt they would simply gloss over these differences and split the year into equal quarters. So a convenient intermediate division probably won't be derived from seasons either.
As Monica points out in her answer. Weeks are already arbitrary because they seemed like a decent rhythm. It's conceivable that since Mars sols are about 2.7% longer the compounded effect would have caused the Martians to adopt a 6 sol week instead. Six is also more convenient to calculate with than seven.
A weekweek would be 6 weeks or 36 sols, dividing the year into 18 weekweeks, 3 weeks and 3 sols.
You could even go so far and introduce a weekweekweek (6\*6\*6 = 216 sols) dividing the year into 3 WWW, 0 WW, 3 W and 3 sols.
A base 6 system would also have the neat effect that a five fingered species could easily use each hand as a full digit. Right hand counts sols, left hand counts weeks. If you go up to weekweekweeks you could seamlessly shift the representation of time units through the hands. A four handed species like in that abysmal John Carter movie could actually count through the whole year with their fingers!
**Edit:**
I was wondering how martians would deal with leap sols since their year is significantly off from a whole sol number... The most accurate number I could find was 668.5991 sols per martian year.
Some calculation gives a base year of 668 with the following leap sol rules:
* Every year has a leap sol (0.4009 sols too many / year)
* Except every second year doesn't (0.0991 sols too few / year)
* Except every 10th year does (0.0009 sols too many / year)
* Except every 1'000th year doesn't (0.0001 sols too few / year)
* Except every 10'000th year does
Realistically speaking most people won't care for the last two rules (IF they are accurate in the first place) which makes this comparable in complexity to our leap day rules. Of course if they end up with a different base for their number system then they might find different fractions more convenient...
[Answer]
**Please remember that time is an arbitrary concept**
Without any outside influence, the very first basis of time is the "day" consisting of a period of "light" and a period of "no light" that we Earthers more commonly know as "night."
* Day = one Light + one No Light
[According to Space.com](https://www.space.com/28403-astronauts-mars-skywatching-phobos-deimos.html), the moons of Mars are so close to Mars that they cannot be seen from some latitudes.
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> ...the bulge of Mars' own curvature gets in the way!
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Deimos would appear to rise in the east and set in the west.... very.... slowly... while Phobos would appear to rise in the west and set in the east several times each "day". Worst of all, because of their closeness to Mars and the speeds of orbit, they have phases, but the phases occur much faster than we Earthers see with our own Moon.
Not that they're very visible. Deimos would appear to be only 1/19th the size of Luna in the Martian sky and Phobos would look like a slightly oversized Venus. Somewhat unimpressive.
Which means Martians might not develop the concept of a "month" at all.
Due to the orbit around the Sun and the Martian's ability to watch the stars, the concept of a "year" would develop. With the discovery of Mars' orbit, you would eventually discover the two solstices and two equinoxs, which means Mars is (perhaps) more likely to develop "quarters" as a replacement for "months". Kinda...since the orbit is elliptical the periods between solstice and equinox aren't equal.
As for periods shorter than the "light" and "no light" periods, that's REALLY ARBITRARY. Considering Earthers have ten toes and ten fingers it's a wonder they came up with two twelve-hour periods. But that might have been because the [ancient Egyptians](http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/physics/161-our-solar-system/the-earth/day-night-cycle/761-why-is-a-day-divided-into-24-hours-intermediate) had two 10-hour periods plus two one-hour periods for twilight.
***How many toes do your Martians have?***
**EDIT: Apparently there are some people who think the details are really, really important. They're not thinking from the Martians' point of view.**
* 1 Martian Year = 1 orbit around the sun = "Year"
* 1 "light period" + 1 "dark period" = 1 "day"
* [667.99 "days"](https://mars.nasa.gov/allaboutmars/facts/#?c=inspace&s=distance) or just 668 days = 1 "year"1
* My Martians' have [five fingers and one thumb and four bones per-finger](http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/physics/161-our-solar-system/the-earth/day-night-cycle/761-why-is-a-day-divided-into-24-hours-intermediate), for 20 bones per "period" of a day for a 40 hour day. (Since hours weren't developed for astronomical reasons on Earth, I see no reason why they must be astronomically-based on Mars.)
* [My Martian's have a religious requirement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week#Days_of_the_week) to rest on the 11th day so their week is 11 days long. Luckily, their pantheon has 15 gods, so each day of the week is named for one of them as are the two equinox and two solstice days.
* Since Phobos would only appear like a fast-moving planet in the sky, the Martians really don't pay any mind to it (other than for historical purposes. They really did think it was a planet for a long time! Their [astrolabes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrolabe) describing its "planetary" motion were very complex!).
* Deimos, on the other hand, orbits Mars every 107 "hours"2. It's small and the phases are really hard for almost everyone to see, but it's motion is quite obvious. This caused the Obduracien Religious Wars in 1037 as they'd forgotten the number of hours came from counting bones in their hands and some people wanted to favor a lunar calendar over the traditional and now entirely religously-based Oburacien calendar. After the deaths of hundreds of thousands the scientists and religionists finally agreed that there would be a new division of time, the "month," which consisted of 200 days measured from the coincidence of moon-rise with sun-rise on the same day. To the scientists' great frustration, this lead to the new-age belief that the "lunar morning" of the 167th year brought about an alignment of day, month, and year that was truely harmonious! No one has tried to add the first day of the week to that mess due to a rumor that the scientists were going to use anyone who tried in some kind of acid experiment.
---
1 *I was too lazy to care about the ratio of Mars' orbital speed to its rotational speed, so as an Earther, I cheated and worked out the ratio comparison from the Earth numbers.*
2 *Martian hours....*
[Answer]
As you point out, Mars has so much *stuff* going on in its skies that its moons aren't going to provide meaningful calendrical support. Nothing else is both visible and consistent enough to act as a replacement.
I suggest, therefore, that your indigenous Martians won't look to the sky for divisions of the year. Days yes -- that's regular and obvious, so unless your Martians have a very short or very long "biological day" cycle, they can make use of that. (I'm taking it as implied in your question that your Martians don't, say, hibernate for an Earth month every other month, or sleep 15 minutes every hour, or something like that.)
Seasons are provided by the sun (and axial tilt), so those still work. Subdivisions of seasons could be provided by either computation or function. By computation, I mean that your Martians might find that the concept of "tenth of a season" or "quarter of a season" is a meaningful currency; if so, they can designate it without regard to visible markers. Our weeks are like that; they aren't quarters of the monthly lunar cycle. We humans have just found a unit of seven days to be useful. Your Martians can do that too.
Alternatively, they might have sub-season units of time based on *things they do* -- plowing time, planting time, livestock birthing time, and so on. These chunks of time will not be uniform in length. They also will not be uniform across the whole planet, so once your Martians develop global communication, functional designations won't work *as* functional designations. They could remain as historical designations -- they don't plow during this time *now*, but this stretch of time is still called "plowing time" because they once did. Planet-wide standardization of timekeeping was a late development here on Earth, when synchronization of (e.g.) train schedules became necessary. Your Martians won't need to all *agree* on time designations until they're interacting (and scheduling events) with other groups with different calendars.
[Answer]
**Deimos would be a good week-keeper.**
>
> Now consider the situation with Mars' moons. Deimos takes 30 hours and
> 18 minutes to make one swing around Mars, and the Red Planet makes one
> full turn on its axis every 24 hours and 37 minutes. So an observer on
> the Martian surface would see Deimos rise in the east, but the moon
> would then move across the Martian sky at a very slow pace. In fact,
> it would take about 33 hours to get directly overhead (or very nearly
> so), and then another 33 hours to descend and set in the west.
>
>
> And then, the Martian explorer would have to wait another 66 hours
> before Deimos again reappeared above the eastern horizon!
>
>
>
So one full circuit of Deimos would take 132 hours or 5.5 days. To me that seems like a pretty decent week equivalent. And moon-based, no less!
---
A little more esoteric: **sunspots**.
In smoky conditions on earth, one can see sunspots with the naked eye. I was in the So.Cal fires in 2003 and people were calling into radio stations asking what was wrong with the sun. You could see the spots easily with the naked eye. Here is a more recent image from this year's fires.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xzvtl.jpg)
<http://www.newslincolncounty.com/archives/187061>
Curiosity could see sunspots from Mars.
<https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4657>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yp5kZ.png)
A solar rotation is about a month. If you could view the sun steadily thru the Martian haze could you track the sun's rotation using sunspots? Maybe.
[Answer]
Earth would be clearly visible in their sky, as would Earth's moon. They would see a bright blue dot with a smaller white dot following it around, sometimes on the sun side and sometimes away from the sun. They would quickly note that the small dot flips back and forth across the big dot about every 28 days. At maximum separation, they'd appear about 0.25 degrees apart; for comparison, the full moon is about 0.5 degrees across.
So, it's possible that the answer to your question is "Earth months, or something very close to them."
] |
[Question]
[
In our solar system light and heat are, of course, provided by the sun. I was wondering if a comparable effect might be had by positing a burning moon instead? So rather than a true star, you'd have a much smaller but relatively close satellite with a surface that's just engulfed in flames.
Please assume that we can play with the orbit, size, and heat until reaching the desired effect, and that the following problems are not within the scope of the question, and can be dealt with artificially.
* The time scale. (It doesn't have to support evolution, just be habitable.)
* The presence of enough fuel. (In terms of the science, I'm more
asking about the likely effects of the moon once it's already burning
rather than whether it could plausibly ignite. I'm equally happy with
answers that assume a fuel source not found in our universe, and
answers that are hard science all the way through.)
Assuming all that, if this moon did occur, could it temporarily sustain a habitable world? And even tweaked to the ideal conditions, would the effects be in some ways necessarily and noticeably different from the perspective of the surface?
This question is inspired by ancient cosmologies in which the sun orbited the earth. I'm basically trying to suss out whether a science-friendly version of that is possible.
Thanks for your time.
*(The question has been edited to clarify my aim in response to some of the answers and comments below; thanks for your responses and help.)*
[Answer]
A burning Moon does not have enough fuel to sustain life on Earth for more than a few years, and it would have to be so hot it would instantly blow itself apart. Here's the rough calculations.
---
# Energy Density
This is a problem of [energy density](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density), and an important historical one.
Before nuclear fusion was discovered, the new science of geology was in conflict with the known physics and chemistry. Geology said the Earth had to be very old, hundreds of millions or billions of years old! But there was no known mechanism to have something like the Sun burning for that long. Even radioactive decay and nuclear fission were insufficient. Only nuclear fusion could provide energy for the 5 billion required years. If you want to read more about that, I'd suggest Bill Bryson's pop-sci book [*A Short History Of Nearly Everything*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Everything).
The most energy dense, naturally occurring, chemical reaction is the oxidation of [hydrocarbons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocarbon): ie. [burning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion) methane, oil, fat, kerosene, etc... that's why we use them in cars, it's very energy dense and very safe. ***Burning hydrocarbons have an energy density of roughly 5e7 J/kg.***
In contrast, uranium and thorium in a nuclear reaction have an energy density of 8e13 J/kg. The energy density of fusion is even higher, 6e14 J/kg.
So you can see, ***[a burning Moon is roughly 10 million times less energy dense than a star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(specific_energy))***. This will effect how long it can burn, and how much energy it can give off.
---
Next problem is one of surface area. While we could, theoretically, ensure our burning moon is fully oxidized and can burn all the way to the core, only the energy on the surface will radiate into space. The moon's surface area, and thus its radius, limits how much energy it can radiate.
And finally, its distance from the Earth is important. Since the burning moon radiates in all directions, only a tiny fraction of its energy will reach the Earth. ***The closer the Moon is to the Earth, the larger percentage of its energy will reach the Earth.***
---
# How Long Can A Burning Moon Heat The Earth?
Let's try this out for our Moon. Let's assume the Moon magically became a burning ball of hydrocarbons and oxygen. How much energy would reach the Earth, and how long would it last?
First, some important attributes of [our Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon). I'll use approximate numbers to make the calculations simpler.
* Radius: 1700 km
* Surface area: 3.8e7 km^2
* Mass: 7e22 kg
* Distance: 3.8e5 km
We can preserve the Moon's mass, or the Moon's radius. I'll do mass, it's easier and since the Moon is about 5 times more dense than gasoline it provides more fuel giving this a better chance of working. ***7e22 kg at 5e7 J/kg is 3.5e29 J of energy available.*** This assumes the entire mass of the Moon burns.
How much energy is that? Using the handy [Orders of Magnitude (energy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)) list, we find that the Earth receives about 5e24 J of energy from the Sun per year. This is nearly 100,000 times that, so it's potentially enough energy to heat the Earth for 100,000 years. But not so fast, that's the total energy output by the Moon, but how much reaches the Earth?
To know that we need to know what percentage of the Moon's sky the Earth covers. We can figure that out by imagining a sphere around the Moon with a radius that's the distance to the Earth, that's all the Moon's energy radiating outward into space. The surface of that sphere is 4πr^2. r is the distance from the Earth to the Moon, 3.8e5km, giving us a surface area of 1.8e12 km^2.
The Earth can be thought of as a disk on the surface of that sphere. Its surface area is πr^2. r is 6.4e3 km giving us a surface of 1.3e8 km^2.
1.3e8 km^2 / 1.8e12 km^2 is 7e-5. ***The Earth receives only 1/14,000th of the burning Moon's radiated energy***. This means of the 3.5e29 J available, only 2.5e25 J will reach the Earth *ever*.
The Earth needs 5e24 J per year to sustain its current environment. Only 2.5e25 J will reach the Earth. ***The burning Moon can only heat the Earth for 5 years*** and that's an upper bound.
Now that I've done the calculations once, you can change the parameters and do them again. Moving the Moon closer or making it larger will help.
---
# How Hot Does The Surface Of The Moon Have To Be?
The next problem is just how hot the surface of the Moon would have to be. How much power is each square meter of the Moon radiating? Is it feasible? Since the Moon is so small, it might need to be absurdly hot.
Let's, again, assume everything is the same as now, and the Earth is receiving its 5e24 J per year. Power is normally measured in [Watts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt) which is J/s. 1 year has 3.15e7 seconds, so the Earth receives about 1.6e17 Watts from the Sun.
We calculated above that's just 1/14,000th of what the Moon is putting out, so the total power output of the burning Moon is about 2e21 Watts. That's about 1/1000th of what the Sun produces, or roughly the same as a very, very small [red dwarf star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_dwarf).
The Moon has a surface area of 3.8e7 km^2 giving us a power per unit area of 5e13 W/km^2. Is that a lot? The Sun has a surface area of 6e12 km^2 and puts out 3.8e26 Watts giving a power per unit area of 6e13 W/km^2. Nearly the same!
***Somehow the burning Moon has to put out the same energy per per unit area as the Sun using fuel that's 10 million times less energy dense.*** That's a problem, no fire is going to burn that intensely.
Worse, that level of energy output will produce a great force wanting to blow the Moon apart. Stars cope with this by being very, very massive; gravity balances this force wanting to blow it apart. ***Our burning Moon has nothing like the gravity of the Sun and will be instantly blown apart***, the Earth will be showered with extremely hot fragments of burning hydrocarbons.
This part is particularly important because ***it means no amount of high-energy unobtanium will work***. A burning Moon has to radiate too much energy for its gravity to hold itself together; it will blow itself apart.
Again, now that I've done the calculations, you can play with the parameters to try and make it work.
[Answer]
Depending on what timescale you're aiming for it *may* be remotely possible.
One historic theory tested for the energy source of the sun was coal burning. Turned out this *could* power the sun, but only for a few thousand years. Thus the theory was falsified by observation: the sun has been shining for much longer than coal could provide energy.
With a moon being closer, and having much less surface area, this could work. Any chemical process generating enough head would do, but only for very limited amounts of time.
Still, no there are probably no naturally occuring large bodies in space that contain a large amount of "burnable" chemicals. The reason is that when a large body is formed it will almost surely be heated above the ignition point of said chemicals.
[Answer]
## Impossible with known physics
There are three ways to get energy: chemical bonds (electromagnetic force), nuclear bonds (strong force) or matter-antimatter reactions.
To have a burning moon with chemical bonds will require enormous amounts of fuel and oxidizer. Not impossible to get on a moon sized scale but difficult.
A burning moon based on fusion will require star like masses which is not a moon. Fission based burning requires man made products here on earth so I think improbable that conditions on this moon will naturally create these products.
Anti-matter powered burning requires exceptionally rare anti-matter. While this can be man made, we don't usually find it floating around.
Overall, without some kind of super-organizing force to provide fuel/oxidizer for burning or provide artificial gravity to compress fusion fuel, I find this moon impossible.
[Answer]
I'm going to quote [this from Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/i-have-heard-people-call/):
>
> "Jupiter is called a failed star because it is made of the same
> elements (hydrogen and helium) as is the Sun, but it is not massive
> enough to have the internal pressure and temperature necessary to
> cause hydrogen to fuse to helium, the energy source that powers the
> sun and most other stars."
>
>
>
If a body the size of *Jupiter* lacks sufficient mass to self-ignite, then a *moon* would be even harder pressed to reach sufficient mass.
I suppose a body of sufficient and correct elements might theoretically be ignited in some way, but it would burn only temporarily (on cosmic scales), before the combustible materials were consumed and the flames died out.
[Answer]
Two wormholes end in the nucleus of the moon. One, for some reason, flows oxygen into it. The other, more commonsensically, flows hydrogen. Boom! Light, heath, beautiful moonsets.
... the problem then is what to do with all that water. I guess a third wormhole takes it away into another universe.
[Answer]
In a story universe I’m tinkering with, the planet is lit by lamps in orbit, not a star. The key is that the lamps don’t contain all the fuel they need for a lifetime of billions of years. Rather, a large mass stores all their energy. But the mass isn’t squandering energy like a normal star — it’s a stockpile that will last them orders of magnitude longer; e.g. only lighting the planet with a spotlight, not shining into space in all directions.
Energy is tranferred from central storage, either by regular shipments of mass, or wirelessly like with tuned resonance inductance.
[Answer]
First, stay away from our moon. Seriously. While it has no oxygen atmosphere so I doubt you could set anything on fire there, that doesn't mean you need to try.
As to your question, you are going to have to get the moon's surface to the same temperature as the sun (5778 K). It's not just about getting light from the sun/moon/whatever you have in the sky. You are also going to need it to deliver the right wavelength of light (at least for terrestrial life). Too red and your body won't get enough Vitamin D. Too blue and you need a LOT of sunscreen. Some of that is a product of evolution, but since I don't think your lunar fire is going to last long enough for a new species to evolve, that's going to be a constraint.
Now will that produce the right amount of energy for the planet (around a kilowatt per square meter)? It's much smaller than the sun, though on the other hand it's much closer. Well those cancel out by some weird astronomical coincidence. It's the same reason the sun and moon appear about the same size in the sky.
That being said, do NOT interpret that coincidence as some hint from the gods that this little plan of yours is a good idea. I know it's tempting, I mean what are the odds that we would have a moon the exact right size and the exact right distance that it could act as a surrogate sun? Doesn't matter. We need the moon. It regulates tides and seasons and other things we need that for some reason are more important than having a cool looking second sun.
[Answer]
How about a **glowing hot moon?**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/r2tzZ.jpg)
from <http://www.gh-ia.com/images/heating-ball.jpg>
Burning, as in oxidizing, will of course eventually consume reactants and go out. But I could imagine a planet with an extremely strong magnetic field and a moon made of a high resistance conductor. As the moon moves through the magnetic field, induced currents and consequent resistance heats up this moon to glowing.
Ultimately the energy to heat the moon comes from whatever process is generating the planet's magnetic field.
[Answer]
Super advanced aliens could always built a giant artificial satellite that artificially provides light and heat to the planet it orbits. It could have giant fusion generators to generate the energy to power the artificial lights that light up the planet.
[Answer]
Let's start with the energy requirement of Earth.
[Solar irradiance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance) amounts to around 1360 W/m2 averaging on the whole surface, which is 510.100.000 km2, or 0.5E+15 m2. The total output must then be 0.7E+18 W, way less than the output of the Sun which is 0.38E+26 W.
There are several geometric limits that we need to overcome. For example we cannot simulate an isotropic radiation source because, being much nearer than the Sun, what correctly heats the Equator will let the Poles freeze, and the correct irradiance at the Poles from a point source equivalent will make the Equator inhabitable.
**So our Moon can't "burn"**. It must be a "fly's eye" of emitters, each pointed in different directions.
A power of 0.7E+18 W means 0.7E+18 W J every second. Since one megaton is 0.4184E+16 J, we need 167 megatons every second.
Matter-antimatter annihilation yields around 43 megatons per kilogram, or about the yield of the [Tsar Bomba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba). We need around four of those exploded every single second; 3.89 kg of antimatter (and as much of ordinary matter), for a total of around 670 tons of fuel every day supposing a conversion efficiency of 100%.
Consider that antimatter requires careful containment. Our satellite will require to be quite sizeable.
At that level of output, other things get difficult. For example, the radiation will likely be generated in several different annihilation plants, and then conveyed on the appropriate area of Earth through mirrors. Mirror reflectivity needs to be as close as 100% as possible, for even a thousandth of a percent would result in the mirror overheating and possibly in a catastrophic meltdown.
The "satellite" will likely be a lattice of burner-emitter units, set enough apart to provide some emergency insulation against mishaps, capable of redundancy if we have to [scram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scram) some of them.
Incidentally, this makes the satellite double up as a planetary control device; should all mirrors focus on the same planetary area, they would pack a considerable punch. Depending on how small an area they can focus on, this goes from rendering Australia uninhabitable to subjecting the whole Texas to one single continuous kiloton-level nuclear bombardment, hold the ionizing radiation.
(This means that deploying such a satellite would be a political and security *nightmare*).
Where do we put the satellite: obviously not at the distance of the Moon. We could place it at the L1 point, so that it's "still" relative to the Earth. Since the Earth rotates, it will "see" the satellite rising and setting just like the sun. There is the problem of supplying the satellite hovering at 1,500,000 km from Earth.
Otherwise we put it at about 60.600 km of altitude, so that it orbits in about 48 hours around the Earth's barycenter; since the Earth rotates once every 24 hours, it will see the satellite follow a widdershins orbit once every 24 hours. This is completely unfeasible if there is also a Sun available, as it would give you two superimposed "days" flipping around one another, with a long day, a short day, a long night and a short night all in the same 24 hours.
We don't want to put it *too* near, otherwise it will be unnaturally low on the horizon at the Poles.
This right there presents a snag: the radiation being sent out has a **pressure**. The satellite won't be able to keep a passive orbit. The thrust is given by 0.7E+18 W divided the speed of light in m/s, which is 0.3E+9, and comes out at 0.23E+10 N, of the same order of magnitude of the thrust of the [first stage of a Saturn V rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-IC).
We might want to, say, place the satellite in a *slower*, unstable orbit (which means putting it on a naturally *faster* orbit, that is, nearer the Earth, and having it go slow) - and stabilize it with its own energy emission. But the gravitational acceleration provided by the Earth decreases with the distance squared, and the thrust of the emitters needs to be divided by the total mass of the whole satellite to get an acceleration figure. If the mass of the satellite is one million tons (1E+9 kg), those 2.3E+9 N of thrust boil down to an acceleration of 2.3 m/s^2.
This is the acceleration at a distance (from the center of the Earth) of about two Earth radii, so 13.000 km, or 6500 km of altitude. If the satellite is stationary in respect to the Earth, it can "float" on the thrust of its emitters. At that distance, though, the parallax effect is noticeable - the "Sun" would be way lower on the horizon than the real Sun, and invisible from the "poles".
A heavier satellite could keep station farther out. We would want to have it librate by about double the planet's original axial tilt to replicate the seasons, however, otherwise either one pole would always be in darkness, or (if we kept station on the rotation plane) both poles would see a "midnight sun" just below the horizon all year long.
[Answer]
**NOT (ENTIRELLY) POSSIBLE**
The closest to what you are asking, from my point of view, is having a planet really close to a white dwarf star. Too big for being accounted as a moon (the typical size would be roughly the size of Earth itself), in an orbit too far away for being called a moon, and will probably tidal lock the planet (a side with burn while the other would freeze as in deep space).
Serious doubths on how this tidal lock would affect planet core rotation (and the magnetic field protecting the planet from solar wind... another problem added to the tidal lock). However, should it be made possible, it has an interesting side effect: it would last forever.
Ok, not forever. Everything will end. Even the universe. But in a future so far away that it defies description, a white dwarf will still emit light and heat, therefore it would offer a chance for life. A corpse of a star would literally burn to the end of times and quite possible be the last light emiting thing to shut down in the universe.
] |
[Question]
[
I recently played the game [*Mary Skelter - Nightmares*](http://maryskelternightmares.wikia.com/wiki/Mary_Skelter:_Nightmares), in which the protagonist after some time acquires a weapon that is called a [*Mary Gun*](http://maryskelternightmares.wikia.com/wiki/Jack) - a device that shoots his own blood.
I'll change the properties this gun has in the game a bit:
* A *Blood Gun* is supposed to be a gun-like device strapped to the hand/forearm of the wielder.
* A syringe that is part of the weapon design is able to draw out blood from the wielder.
* When pressing the trigger the gun shoots the blood of the wielder at the enemy.
* The weapon can store a certain amount of blood so that there is enough blood readily available when needed.
* The wielders blood is an effective way to deal damage to enemies that are hit by it - assume the blood has some magical property that damages magical creatures that get into contact with it somehow. This magical property can be ignored when making assumptions related to the blood. The gun is merely used to deliver the blood reliably over a distance of at least a few feet when needed.
Such a *Blood Gun* poses quite a few problems:
* *How many times can the gun be fired in a row?*
The answer to this problem is comprised of two separate problems:
+ *[How much blood can I drain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding) from an average adult German male ([~80kg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_weight) at [~180cm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_human_height_worldwide)) before my protagonist falls unconscious in a stress situation?*
Unconsciousness in battle would mean the end of my protagonist.
+ *How much blood do I need to shoot for each shot?*
Depending on the design there may be a minimum amount of blood, for example to build up pressure. The gun should be able to fire the blood at a distance of at least a few feet.
* *How far can I shoot the blood in its liquid form?*
The farther, the better.
* *How fast can I drain the blood without my protagonist suffering any medical difficulties?*
Drawing a huge amount of blood in a matter of seconds may introduce problems for my protagonist, but the faster I can draw the blood, the better.
* *How can I make sure that the blood doesn't clump inside the gun?*
Depending on the design the blood doesn't need to be fired directly after being drawn out of the wielders body, but could instead be kept inside the gun. This could for example be used to build up pressure and to already have a "bullet" ready when it's needed, which requires [anticoagulants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticoagulant) being stored in sufficient quantity and applied to the important parts of the gun without affecting the wielder. Otherwise my gun might not work the way I want it to work in a critical situation, for example because the blood won't be able to pass through the exit.
* *How much weight is acceptable as a sort of gun that is wielded in one hand and therefore limits the amount of parts and storage of the gun?*
A design that requires the protagonist to carry multiple kilograms of equipment attached to their hand would be problematic when trying to escape danger or when trying to quickly target an enemy.
* *How can I make sure that my wielder will not die from blood loss the moment something damages the gun?*
If something hits the gun and suddenly the syringe rips open my protagonists' arteries he will surely die without any help.
All of these problems lead me to the question:
**How can I build a *Blood Gun* with present day technology?**
This question is purely about the technological considerations that I need to account for in such a weapon.
The fact that shooting your own blood doesn't look like an intelligent way to combat enemies can be ignored. Other solutions, such as preparing "blood bullets" in advance and simply having a couple cartridges with you are outside the scope of this question.
For all cases where you have to make assumptions about technology you can assume real world technology. For all assumptions about the wielder and his blood you can assume an average adult European male.
Answers should take the problems outlined above into considerations. The more problems you discover that I couldn't find the better.
This question is different from [Building a Syringe Gun](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/67702/28789), which basically asks about a tranquilizer gun, because I don't want to simply fire liquids *in cartridges or containers of any kind* - I want to shoot *blood in its liquid form*, like a water pistol, with the blood taken more or less directly from the wielder of the gun when pulling the trigger.
[Answer]
This dude is shooting his own blood. Time to set niceties and practicalities aside, and maximize the grisly badassitude.
1. Blood clotting. He prevents this by anticoagulating himself before going into battle. A shot of low molecular weight heparin would work within 15-20 minutes and last 12 hours. His blood will now not clot.
2A. Blood delivery. He has an arterial line leading from his wrist, entering his radial artery and continuing up to the aortic valve. His gun shoots blood at arterial systolic pressure, in spurts with the beating of his heart. He can open and close the valve with the same hand the line is in, turning a stopcock with thumb and forefinger.
2B: Blood delivery. Normal systolic blood pressure is only about 2.5 psi. He takes drugs before battle to raise his blood pressure up to 210/120 and increase spurt distance. This gives him a headache, bloodshot eyes too and possibly a nosebleed, which will help if this is an anime. If a [normal arterial blood spurt can go 18 inches laterally](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_squirt) this should get his range up to about 4 feet. For longer shots, parabolas are his friend.
3A. Blood supply. He is a blood doper like the professional bike riders, using erythropoietin to run a hemoglobin of 19-20 as opposed to a normal 14-15.
3B. Blood supply. He already has an arterial line in place. He has bags of saline and sugar (and more drugs) in his back. During a lull in the battle he can force a few of these down his arterial line into his heart. This will replete volume and is also good for the anime, as the red catheter from his wrist will turn the color of the fluids as he forces them back. He will need to overcome his own systolic blood pressure to get the fluids in, so it will take some force.
As he runs low on blood but keeps his pressure up with drugs and fluids, he will get paler and paler. This will be noticeable in his skin and also his bloodshot eyes. He may have an insatiable craving for ice after the battle, chawing down great handfuls of it.
[Answer]
All you need is a normal [water gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_gun) hooked up to a tube in your arm and you have an auto-filling blood gun with a few pints of ammo.
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According to the professional vampires at [the Red Cross](https://www.redcrossblood.org/faq.html), a normal person can safely donate a pint of blood every 8 weeks. However, that is just to have large safety margin, as the red blood cells are replaced in as little as four weeks:
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> How long will it take to replenish the pint of blood I donate?
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> The plasma from your donation is replaced within about 24 hours. Red cells need about four to six weeks for complete replacement. That’s why at least eight weeks are required between whole blood donations.
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As with a normal blood donation, blood pressure alone will fill up the gun's reservoir in a few minutes:
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> Donation
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> We will cleanse an area on your arm and insert a brand–new, sterile needle for the blood draw. This feels like a quick pinch and is over in seconds.
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> You will have some time to relax while the bag is filling. (For a whole blood donation, it is about 8-10 minutes.
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Since a pint of blood can be drawn in 8-10 minutes with blood pressure at a resting heart rate, we can assume the process will go much faster when heart rate is up during a fight. Even quicker if the gun includes [a pump](https://patents.google.com/patent/US7281642) to manually pull the blood.
So, at a minimum you can safely have an auto-filling blood gun with a pint of ammo. However, you can definitely do more than that without dying:
[Hypovolemia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypovolemia) is the technical term for 'bad stuff from blood loss', and is something we want to avoid. According to [this paper](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1065003/) a person may enter hemorrhagic shock(described as 'rapidly fatal') after losing 40% of their blood in a short period of time, but anything less than 30% has relatively minor issues such as anxiety and slightly reduced oxygen delivery to muscles and organs. That paper also claims that the average person has 70 ml of blood per kg of body weight, so your hero has about 5600ml/11 pints of blood total. This means the hero can safely lose 1 liter/2 pints of blood without much issue, 1.5 liters with some lethargy and anxiety problems, or 2 liters with a serious risk of death.
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In short, your gun can pull about 2 liters/4.25 pints of blood max before killing the user, so let's say your gun has 1 liter of ammo at a time to be safe. The [first water gun I found online](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00EAHXWQI) holds about 22 ounces/650 ml/1 pint of water and can shoot several blasts of water up to 34 feet/10 meters away, so you can definitely make a blood gun with a 1 liter reservoir and a range of several meters.
You'll need about a month to recover each pint/half liter of blood you use, so try not to get in too many fights.
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**Addendum on preventing clotting:** Something I didn't consider until it was pointed out in a comment: these gross blood guns are going to clog from coagulating blood. The fresh stuff in the reservoir should be good for a bit, but the barrel will clog pretty quickly and the rest will soon follow.
To solve this problem all you need is a tank dripping [anticoagulants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticoagulant) into the blood reservoir, essentially turning it into a [blood bag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packed_red_blood_cells). There are many types of [anticoagulants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticoagulant#Types) to choose from, so as long as you have a steady supply your gun should last longer than your body.
[Answer]
## This is more of an attempt to state the obvious.
The most simple approach to this problem is not to use a syringe that actively draws blood and shoots it. This is horribly impractical, slow, inefficient, painful, unwieldly, and their is no control against drawing too much blood.
It makes a lot more sense to draw the blood out before hand, and keep it in a blood bag. Keep the blood active in the same way that blood banks do. Collect blood into a bag that has CPDA-1. The solution has Citrate (an anticoagulant), Phosphate, Dextrose, and Adenine. Have an attached heater to keep the blood around 40C so that it stays viable for up to 35 days.
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7147334>
Now you have addressed the blood part.
Next feed this blood into a high pressure water gun, or power washer. Now the ballistic part of this system is resolved.
The only thing you have left to worry about is **running out of blood.**
[Answer]
Sounds like blood bullets are essentially paintball bullets. So pretty much the exact same rules apply.
But let's get slightly more sci-fi. In theory, you could have a gun that extracts blood, freezes it instantly with liquid nitrogen, then fires it with some sort of gas propellant (like CO2).
The "bullet" would hit like a low speed musket round. Accuracy and range would be trouble, but it could definitely penetrate an unarmored opponent. A fancy enough gun could pump the blood into a mold before it's frozen into a bullet shape, then loaded and fired. You might even be able to use some rifling (but this generates heat, which would melt the ball)
This is a pretty worthless gun overall though unless your plan is to spread disease or something.
-Edit
As pointed out by the comments. You could use the nitrogen that froze the blood to also fire it, giving it far more power. Enough to actually function like a real bullet. Your accuracy would still be limited, but your range and hit power would be huge and most likely lethal.
[Answer]
For starter, I think your first concern is to avoid at any cost massive uptake of blood. Since during the peak of the fight it's easy to forget such details, I would go against "charging while fighting", and rather opt for a "charging before fighting".
Basically your guy would pump out his blood before the fight, maybe while still in his HQ, store it into a suitable vessel with anticoagulants, and then use it when needed. In this way your hero can also partly recover the removed blood before the fight, being fitter.
It's [worth nothing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding) that:
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> **Class I Hemorrhage** involves up to 15% of blood volume. There is typically no change in vital signs and fluid resuscitation is not usually necessary.
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> **Class II Hemorrhage** involves 15-30% of total blood volume. A patient is often tachycardic (rapid heart beat) with a reduction in the difference between the systolic and diastolic blood pressures. The body attempts to compensate with peripheral vasoconstriction. Skin may start to look pale and be cool to the touch. The patient may exhibit slight changes in behavior. Volume resuscitation with crystalloids (Saline solution or Lactated Ringer's solution) is all that is typically required. Blood transfusion is not usually required.
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> **Class III Hemorrhage** involves loss of 30-40% of circulating blood volume. The patient's blood pressure drops, the heart rate increases, peripheral hypoperfusion (shock) with diminished capillary refill occurs, and the mental status worsens. Fluid resuscitation with crystalloid and blood transfusion are usually necessary.
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> **Class IV Hemorrhage** involves loss of >40% of circulating blood volume. The limit of the body's compensation is reached and aggressive resuscitation is required to prevent death.
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Since you want your hero to be active during the fight, I would stop at class I, meaning 15% of about 5 liters, that is 0.75 liters.
I would then use something like a paintball gun, to shot blood loaded projectiles which splash on impact, increasing the chances of hitting the skin.
With 0.75 liters of blood you can fill a fair amount of projectile, and maybe even more if you can slightly dilute the blood.
If you want to shot just liquid blood, than have a suction system connected to the vessel, and shot as long as you can use those 0.75 liters. But that would limit the maximum reach and also the pace of fire.
[Answer]
# Don't use a squirt gun
I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet - squirting large amounts of blood mid-battle sounds like a horrible idea. The water gun suggestion in particular will only last for maybe a couple dozen shots - and tyical water guns have a comparatively slow shot speed which, along with the inaccuracy of the fluid jet due to turbulence, makes dodging relatively easy (think of fights using these guns during a hot summer - even in a relatively cramped garden, where combatants are mostly prioritising offense over defense and dodging, a non-negligible portion of shots will still miss). And then you have to recover for a month!
The "paintball" (bloodball?) idea is much more manageable. According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintball_equipment#Paintballs), paintballs are typically around 17cm in diameter, giving a volume of around 2.57 cubic centimeters, or about 390 paintballs in a single liter. Much better, as you have almost 400 shots per month, but you're still going to be feeling slightly weak most of the time.
Since you mentioned that "any amount" of blood will do, I think we can do a lot better.
## Aerosol
I wasn't able to find good data online, but if you could install a mechanism to properly spray a very fine mist of blood, you could cover a significant area around you. It would have shorter range than a directed shot, but would be amazing in close quarters against multiple enemies - you'd only use somewhere on the order of 1ml of blood to reliably hit everything in your immediate vicinity.
This could also be useful for defense: spray a fine mist all around you, or - even better - at a choke point, and until the suspension settles (which could take a couple of minutes if the mist is fine enough, or even longer) this becomes an impassable area that kills any enemy that tries to go through.
The disadvantage is that this would be of limited effectiveness in windy conditions. Although slight air currents, if favourable, could actually help spread the mist - rendering it less useful for setting up defensive blocks, but more effective at spreading to kill everything around you. I don't know if this would actually be feasible in practice, but spraying some aerosol into an indoor ventilation system might perhaps be a great way to mostly clear out a building.
## Aerosol bullets
Spraying blood mist is very limited in range but covers a wide area. Bloodballs/pellets have excellent range but need careful aiming, and a miss means wasted blood: you can't really sustain any sort of automatic firing. (Squirt guns, again, have neither and should really not be used.) How about a capsule filled with pressurized gas and blood, that upon impact will shatter like a paintball and cover everything in a wide area around it in a fine layer of blood? Or even [exploding bullets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-explosive_incendiary/armor-piercing_ammunition) - it's hard to find real-life examples of these since [various treaties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet#Treaties_and_prohibitions) ban their use on low-caliber weapons, so these mechanisms are usually found on anti-vehicle armour-piercing ammunition, but the fact that they were deemed worthy of a ban as early as [1868](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Declaration_of_1868) makes me think they're very feasible to construct. Add a payload of blood, and you only need to hit some hard surface (such as a wall or floor) near the enemies to spray them.
This makes shooting require significantly less accuracy - meaning less wasted blood. Moreover, you can hit several enemies in one shot, and - if the resulting spray is fine enough to function as a proper aerosol - this can be used to set up killzones mentioned above at range, and render an area deadly (restricting the movement of your enemies) even on a complete miss.
## Poisoned bullet
Instead of making a thick bullet with a complicated explosive mechanism, you could simply fire blood-delivering bullets. Generally that means something like a [hollow bullet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow-point_bullet) filled with blood.
While less effective than aerosol-spraying ammunition (since you lose the benefits of AoE), this sounds much simpler, and while I don't know much about bullet ballistics I feel like this would make it more feasible to, say, deliver blood through a sniper rifle - or even make an armour piercing blood bullet. It also allows you to very carefully control the amount of blood delivered - you could place a tiny droplet into a tiny dimple on the bullet, and you'd be sure it would touch its target.
The only issue I can see is with clothing absorbing the blood before the bullet impacts the wearer, if your enemies wear that.
## Conclusion
The main things I focused on was reducing the amount of blood needed per shot, and increasing the efficacy of each shot. Since there's no mininum amount of blood needed for effectiveness, any blood not strictly meant to come into contact with a living enemy is wasted. Using these methods will probably use little enough blood that you could engage in intensive combat regularly with almost no negative side-effects.
Mind you, these solutions are technologically advanced - you'll need a proper aerosol mechanism that creates as fine a mist as possible over as long a range as you can achieve (a non-trivial engineering task), and you'll probably need your own very specialised ammunition for the explosive bullets that would allow you to fill them on demand - or a hyper-specialised gun to coat bullets with blood in a precise way that uses the minimum amount of blood while still ensuring it's reliably delivered. This isn't something you could jury rig together in your backyard from a needle and a hose pipe. This also departs significantly from your initial image of "squirt some blood". So these methods may not suit your tastes - but they're all technologically feasible given adequate resources and achieve what you asked in your question in a very efficient way.
## A note on connecting to the blood supply
A simple way would be to install a blood plug with a fail-shut valve. The gun would connect to the plug, which would open the valve. Simply make the coupling easy to disconnect, and any impact or injury will dislodge the connection (shutting the valve) before damaging any of the gun's parts. Sure, this might result in accidental disconnects in the middle of heated combat, but that's better than bleeding out. The connector could even be magnetic to make it extremely fast and easy to simply pop back into place when it gets dislodged.
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[Question]
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In our non-magical reality, feudal nobility is postulated to have evolved from warlords - an armed man in charge of a group of armed men. Since they can intimidate less-well armed or trained people, they are effectively in charge. Then, as they must defend their territory against other warlords, they must gain the cooperation of the people they rule (or they might defect), hence the social contract between vassal and lord, and when a stronger warlord comes along that both know that one cannot defeat the other, the lesser warlord becomes a lieutenant to the stronger, hence chains of fealty.
Now, suppose that we have a world where magic exists , and magicians (very similar to the magi in the [Ars Magica RPG](http://www.atlas-games.com/arm5/), who are quite rare due to some semi-random magical factors that only combine fortuitously in a few individuals) must study for many years to gain their powers. An apprenticeship is 15 years long, and is typically begun at ages between 4 and 7. To gain in power noticeably, a magician must study for months, and the greatest typically spend the majority of their lives in study - think of them as being like research scientists in that respect.
However, these magicians, once they become sufficiently powerful, can achieve many things. They can extend their own lives to as much as a couple of hundred years or so. A combat magician could devastate an army without magical support single-handed. They can control the minds of others, build and destroy rapidly, control the elements, create illusions or go unseen, all with only a few limitations, based on the amount of study they have put into each area.
In the Ars Magica RPG, which is based on medieval European history, these magicians are explained as not being interested in temporal rule, and are all members (on pain of death for refusing to join) of a secret group that enforces this secrecy and detachment from mundane society, as well as their magical abilities making most of them just feel *wrong* to mundanes to a greater or lesser degree.
However, how realistic a scenario is this? We have a small minority of people with great magical power who certainly have the ability to rule effectively, more so than some thug with a sword and delusions of their own self-importance. They can use their magical arts to divine the will of the people or alter it, and can reliably get to the truth of a situation regardless of the lies the mundanes might try to tell unless another magician has interfered.
However, to achieve these capabilities, they must first have studied for as much as half a mundane lifespan - probably on the order of 30 years from age 5 or so - and must continue studying around 90% of the time if they want to continue advancing their skills.
So: Would these magicians *want* to be in charge, given that the demands of governing would detract from the time they might otherwise spend in study, and that if they spent any significant time governing, their advancement would suffer and leave them open to conquest by a magician who had studied more? What might government look like in this scenario?
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Magicians will rule by proxy.
Might keep the thugs in power, but tell them what to do. "Get me more research materials/subjects." "Get me some good eats." Etc. And "Don't bother me with trivial BS, I'm studying."
Probably have a lesser caste of magical enforcers, or make the apprentices do it, as part of their service: which they'll do so they can learn from you (assuming there's some value, like in ARS magica, to learning from people who've done work before you instead of studying being something that each individual mage needs to do himself (recreating the wheel) - hermetic texts vs., say, studying from vis)
Truth detection, and grill your proxy leaders and/or *charm* them into slavish obedience. Come out every once in awhile to win any wars your vassals/proxies are waging to expand/defend your kingdom/magedom.
Probably sumptuary (thx Monty) laws, with strict enforcement: nobody dresses like a wizard, or suffer dire consequences. Nobody harms a wizard (who is identified by their dress) or suffer dire consequences. Nobody tells a wizard "No".
Probably need some investigatory wizards, to track down any assassins. But that should be easy for powerful wizards, and will quickly stomp out any of those tendencies in people/alternative power structures.
Everyone gets tested for magical powers. Everyone. And they all work for the mage(s) in power.
Mage in-fighting, who's the controlling in-power mage? Run it by council, and you'll have politics. Wizard-war amongst mages, when you can't settle it otherwise (assuming you can't enslave a wizard; if you can, first wizard to power *charm*s every other mage to work for him, and apprenticeships never end). Escalation of power: magical-nukes, dead-man switches, MAD, etc.
Also, I'm assuming that this:
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is not *completely* true. You do have a time in a wizard's life when he's not that powerful (apprenticeship) - so during that time period, a regular kingdom can offer him things; like food, candles, and a place to study: that he can't get himself. In addition, even after he's become powerful, he's got to take time to study to do each of these things: ie: he can't transmute gold, *and* raise towers, *and* make amazing food, *and* do every other thing - since each one is going to require some study (and/or magical energy/time to cast spells). He's going to work on some things, and not work on others. And he's probably going to want to spend time on learning to defend himself from other mages, and to attack them. As well as to control regular humans (keeps him out of fights with strong dudes who're quick with a sword), and protect himself (sucks to fall into a lake of lava, must do something about that).
If a wizard can do *all* of the things himself (or get them done by magic: ie: summon up a genie) relatively quickly in life - and doesn't need social interaction with other humans (wenches/poolboys, friends, lovers, families) - then they don't need to be in power of a social network of other humans/run a magedom, unless they want to. But in that case he's not really a mage, he's just a demigod. The assumption of a mage is that there are *some* limits to his power/power-use.
So, I agree with Serban - we need more information on how magic works in your world. Strictly the magic system as defined by ARS Magica (which edition?)? Or roughly like ARS Magica? Or are there other dissimilarities? How does the power-level go up, and how long does it take to acquire new abilities?
Also, I disagree (a bit) with Serban about gerontocracy (unless it's descriptive: ie: Communist China & Korea are descriptively gerontocracies, but that's not their form of government) if there's natural talent, or if a mage can specialize heavily in influencing / killing other mages. Only the old ones in those categories will be in the running for power.
And, it's kinda relative. If they're living to 300 years, and you're comparing them to mayflies (I mean, norms), then yes, of course its a gerontocracy. But compared to other mages, maybe not.
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Since it seems like (perhaps?) you're playing an ARS Magica world, you should note the kinda cool thing they did in (kinda) limiting magic-families: taking a life-extension potion/treatment makes you sterile. Of course, as a beginning mage (playing RaW, for at least the editions I'm familiar with), you're unlikely to be able to get access to such stuff until fairly late in life - and you can start pumping out kids at ~14, and was done so in the Medieval period (maybe a bit later for men who don't have a place in society/still apprenticed). Anyways, nobody has said the Gift is not heritable, just that they've not found it to be so. Of course, they don't show mage families. I always have my characters pump out a few babies before taking their potions. You can even get those kids through the childhood death period too.
There are also some hard-ish caps on power in ARS Magica. Twilight, especially in the versions I played in, would get you if you studied too much magic (Vim). Every 5 (or 10?) levels in Vim you got a twilight point. Which will rapidly put you out of business.
Another problem is that the wizards get dotty. And very powerful. Kinda need a council to take down those wizards, just out of self-preservation.
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If a single mage can nuke an entire army, obviously they will rule, if only to keep other genocidal powerhungry mages in check.
**Motivation to rule**
Think about it. **Why do these magicians study magic**? For the sake of learning alone? Or out of greed for power? If you study continuously for 200 years and then you die of old age, what have you accomplished? Unless the study of magic is so rewarding as to be **addictive** (i.e. mages wake up every morning thinking of nothing but learning more magic, morning after morning after morning, their entire lives), then the accumulation of **magical power will be (also) a means to an end.**
There is an obvious heterogeneity of preferences and circumstance among regular people (some choose to become criminals, other mercenaries, others to be doctors). If the genetic (or whatever) factors that make one into a mage are randomly distributed in your population, of course you'll get mages with a variety of interests. There will thus inevitably be some ruthless psychopathic power hungry mages that will literally try to take over the world. Since it's unlikely that the very first powerful mage will have been a psychopath ([or is it?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_complex)), presumably the devastation wrought by the powerhungry will have forced even the less politically inclined into action to stop their rampage (if only out of sheer self-preservation).
**How does magic start?**
Since any noticeable magic requires serious study and experiment over decades, it's somewhat unlikely that you would have mages come into their powers in pre-agricultural societies, since among hunter-gatherers you don't have enough specialization of labor to afford a class of people dedicated to such (slow payoff) lifelong study. So the magi would be an outgrowth of the shamanic (part-time specialist) and priestly (full-time specialist) classes in ancient society, or if magic requires a quasi-scientific method, they would start off even later in human history, perhaps initially a subset of monks and court scholars.
Does the first mage control all others? It's easy to imagine that with a century's head start, the first mage would be able to dominate the minds of secular rulers and younger mages alike, if they were so inclined. However, I find it more likely that magic starts off in a similar fashion to the scientific revolution, where a wide array of distant scholars enthusiastically correspond on their initially small discoveries ("Treatise on the Magickal Lighting of a Match"), so effective magic emerges in many locations with near peers.
**Political organization**
How you go from here **depends on how magic scales with age and learning**. You have to decide. Is your average 170 year old mage exponentially more powerful (godlike) than a 70 year old, or simply a bit stronger (once or twice stronger)? Are power limitations in any way innate? Is there such a thing as extraordinary natural talent? That will determine whether you get a Gerontocracy (where the oldest mages rule), an Aristocracy (where the strongest mages by talent rule), or some general direct democracy or Althing (if none has an overwhelming advantage, it is a stable arrangement if each mage has a near-equal say).
Obviously, they will have administrators and non-magical keepers of the peace (possibly magically enhanced with weapons and amulets if the setting allows it to give them an edge), to allow themselves to dedicate more time to study.
Now let's look at the three cases:
## Gerontocracy *(exponentially more power with age and study)*
The oldest mages, when not lost to the world in some incredibly abstruse quest in the higher dimensions, are so powerful as to tear a younger mage to pieces with nary but a bat of their eyelashes. One does **NOT** anger an old mage. Some of the grumpier have been known to set villages aflame for poor service in a bar. Especially among the eldest senile ones, the older and younger apprentices alike tread with care, and even their strangest whims are fulfilled in full. There is little of politics, since no one outside one's (tiny) age cohort is anywhere near in power. There is a rigid age-bound hierarchy of power, and any deviations are met with severe rebuke and even binding (preventing the mage from studying). Hierarchies mean most will know exactly their place, and complex ceremonies are there to facilitate and ease interactions, and diminish the room for errors and miscommunication. The rare wars of the Elders (the latest is slanderously rumored to have started over a mistake in a tea ceremony) can devastate entire lands, leaving them dead and barren for generations.
## Aristocracy (power is in the blood)
Power is in the blood, and only unlocked by study. Mages are painfully aware of this, and guard their bloodlines jealously. Genetics has been worked out talomere to talomere. In the Great Game, marriages are planned generations in advance, assassinations and byzantine schemes are rife, and you have a near-feudal system with the powerful families of Magisters at the top, Maiors in the middle, and the barely magical Compulsors tasked with keeping order among the plebs. Under the Lex Sanguinis, genetic modification is forbidden under penalty of death, and Questors are tasked to seek out and destroy all who trespass. For the powerful, however, the law is respected more in its universal breach, and all the great houses who do not wish to fall behind secretly engage in extensive genetic manipulation. After generations, their offspring are so monstrous as to barely be recognizably human.
## Althing (power is rather evenly distributed after serious study)
Since the power of any one mage is no match for the combined power of the Althinghouse, the Commonwealth of Magi, a majority rule system is in place, where politically skilled mages strive for power and influence, while most mages simply don't care enough to be bothered, and would rather transmute earthworms all day than attend a general meeting. For this reason, full meetings are rarely held, and an informal council (the Guyde) handles day to day business, but remains subject to the will of the full Althing if such is called. A force of Lawreglans acts as police, subduing unruly mages and those overly abusive towards the Commoners.
TL;DR version: *In a world with magic, who would rule?* **MAGES.** Wouldn't they be shy, or recluse? **NOPE, out of fear of, you guessed it, other MAGES. Gotta fight fireballs with fireballs, man.**
[Answer]
I think they would not want to be in charge. Simply put; what can ruling a regular kingdom offer them, that magic cannot offer them more easily? Unless such a magician gets some sort of kick out of bossing people around, there's nothing to gain from having a kingdom.
Want a sweet tower to call your home? You can either spend two years having some schmucks build it for you, or you can magic it together in an afternoon. Want to have riches? You can build mines, dig the earth bare, make smelters... or you can just conjure it up. And the same goes for just about anything a wizard would want.
There's no real point in terms of raw power for a wizard to have a kingdom. It is much better for them to work on their research, because it'll be a more efficient path to whatever it is they are looking for.
(Unless, again, they *like* bossing inferior folk around, in which case they would probably want a kingdom, and it's not like anyone (except other wizards) would be able to stop them really.)
[Answer]
There are many reasons for wizards to stay out of human politics
## If Magic Is Real, So Are Magical Creatures
This has been covered in both the J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, as well as Jim Butcher's "Dresden Files" series.
Short version: if wizards are real and magic is powerful, wizards might be more concerned about whether dragons are leaving their reservations or giants are coming down from the mountains because those things can do some real damage. The whatever of mortals is just really not as important, and generally wizards that get tangled up in mortals run afoul of other wizards with mortal entanglements and wizard government may expend a not-insignificant effort to keep wizards from inflicting breathtaking destruction in a tug of war over the kids.
## Wizards May Be Competing for Influence With Their Peers
Similarly, if other magical creatures exist, wizards may be competing in hot or cold wars for influence with peers in power. Getting involved in the goings on of the mundane - beyond a certain hygiene level of mortals not being a threat - may just seem like a waste of time when there are much bigger concerns at play.
In Dresden Files, the wizard council mostly stays aloof. Partly because it is in a power struggle with other magical groups (such as vampires). Their involvement mostly comes in the form of enforcing laws against the kinds of things that may turn a wizard evil. The main character, Harry Dresden, has been innovating by mentoring hedge magicians - mortals that haven't completed the half lifetime of study required to be potent, or just lack that special something to ever become a peer in the magical community. The hedge groups are controlled on-ramps into the magical world.
In Harry Potter the wizarding government checks in with the mortal government. But the wizarding world has it's own problems to deal with.
## Wizards May Have an Agenda Too Big To Waste Time On Anything Else
You mentioned Ars Magica, so I imagine you are familiar with Mage (by the same company and part of their World of Darkness). In Mage, and partly in Ars Magica, what was really valuable was putting your stamp on reality : creating spheres of belief where the way you wanted to see the world work (technology, theophany, mentalism, weird science) was the way it worked. If you tried West End Games' TORG, that idea of a struggle between competing visions of reality was put front and center. TORG did a good job giving you an idea of why winning the reality war might be appealing enough prize that highly intelligent people would seek mastering reality over mastering people.
## Wizards May Be Barely Concerned With This World
In Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" the Raven King, and later our wizards, realized that what was going on on Earth was much less important than what was going on with magic itself. Similarly, Lev Grossman's "The Magicians" are concerned about the state of magic more than specific mundane concerns. In both cases, Earth is a small provincial town in a much bigger magical universe.
## Mutually Assured Destruction? Already Done It
In Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman's "Deathgate Cycle" wizards literally tore the world apart contending with one another for the influence of mortals. The book presents you with the post-apocalyptic worlds several generations later when wizards starting building up to tear the worlds apart again for the same reason. They realized there was no gain in killing everyone (possibly including themselves) and settled, it seemed, on living separately from the mortals.
## Art for Art's Sake
In another Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman series, "Dragonlance", wizards were preoccupied mostly with advancing the art. To the extent they policed themselves, it was to keep the weak/corruptible weeded out and to keep gross atrocities against the mundane to a minimum. Seeing as your wizards spend most their lives in study, it might fit that the community of capable wizards is mostly content with doing what it's always done - advancing the art.
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It seems to me that the answer would depend on the characteristics of whatever magical world we're talking about. The original post and most of the responses so far refer to Ars Magica, but as far as I can tell (not being overly familiar with that RPG), the role of magic in that realm is not quite the same as in, say, J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth, and certainly quite different from the world of Harry Potter. Being the greater contrast from Ars Magica, the Potterverse is the one I will discuss here. (Not having the books handy at the moment, I'm using the [Harry Potter wiki](http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page) as the source for what follows.)
In the Potterverse, being a magical or non-magical person (i.e. a wizard/witch or a Muggle) is a matter of hereditary genetics (though mutation in either direction is apparently possible as well, as exemplified by Muggle-borns and Squibs). Not surprisingly, at some point in the distant past this led to the notion - espoused by Salazar Slytherin and his namesake house at Hogwarts - that wizarding society ought to be basically a caste system based on blood purity, with pure-blooded wizards on top and Muggle-borns at the bottom.
Notice I said Muggle-***borns*** at the bottom - not Muggles themselves. In the Potterverse, wizarding societies occupy the same real estate as their Muggle counterparts, but the former, under longstanding international wizarding law, maintain a strict separation and self-concealment from the latter. Why would they do this, you ask? It turns out that for all of their power, wizards still had to contend with Muggle prejudice against them - as exemplified by real-world historical practices like witch trials and burnings at the stake. That wizards responded by going into hiding *en masse* suggests that magic alone, no matter how powerful, wasn't enough to win over Muggle hearts and minds, much less conquer them outright.
Furthermore, despite their fantasies of superiority, pure-bloods proved to be no more capable of subjugating other wizards than they were with Muggles. As a result, wizarding governments came to resemble republics and parliamentary democracies - complete with Prime Ministers (or "Ministers for Magic" as they are known), bureaucracies, law enforcement agencies, court systems and the sorts of banal political maneuverings one might expect to see in a Muggle government - a far cry from the traditional-style monarchies one might expect to find in other magical realms such as Tolkien's.
**TL; DR:** The Harry Potter saga suggests that, absent any significant differentiation of magical ability and skill levels, it would be very difficult for any one individual or class of wizards even to lord it over Muggles, much less other wizards. Indeed, it took [the greatest evil genius in that world's history](http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Tom_Riddle) to even come close.
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I would expect some to want to rule first hand, however, I think they would be more like the Catholic church during the middle ages. They would be a power unto themselves. Making 'suggestions' on how things should be done or not done.
When someone has the power to destroy you it is unwise to upset them much. They could influence things much more by not actually being the administrator. They don't need to make all the everyday decisions and deal with the problems of running the country or keeping vassals in line.
They can be advisers and shadows influencing the masses through those in power. Likely (like the church) there would be a LOT of politicking going on between the different members of the magicians guild. If they are all tied together, that is where the real power struggles will be going on, and it of course will spill out onto each of their 'vassals'.
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One more factor to mix in: If magic were real, it would be fascinating to study, with subtle variances in technique yielding vastly different results. There are strong parallels in current day fields such as medicine and technologies, where research and practical use struggle for the minds of the learned. As with those modern day disciplines, there would always be wizards who left the hard arts for the power and prestige of management (or its political corollary, leadership). And among these former practitioners-turned-managers, there might be great nostalgia and regret, for the good old days when they were cutting edge magi.
Would wizards sit in the seats of political power? Probably. But they would never sit comfortably in those seats. They would always long for, and often return to, their magical roots, where they had simple access to power instead of complicated political relationships and responsibilities.
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Historically, anyone who is perceived to have supernatural powers is killed. While we might like to think of ourselves as "enlightened", so have our forbears. They too looked on the mistakes of their progenitors with detached distaste, and claimed they wouldn't stoop to such lows.
Given your description, most children showing any sort of magical ability would likely be killed, or controlled and used as tools. Given the amount of training required to become even marginally proficient at protecting oneself and those one loves, a nascent magician, or her parents, would likely try to keep it a secret, hidden.
Given that it's very rare, I wouldn't expect them to govern, not as a group. Individual magicians might gain enough power to become small tribal leaders, but their subjects would be pawns in larger magical skirmishes between magicians.
More often than not, magicians would die through intrigue than open magical fights - there are fewer of them, and people who crave power below them will use them if they can, and kill them if they can't.
If you changed the rules so that they were more common, or their powers were significantly less devastating, they'd have a better chance at living long, full lives.
As it is, they would likely have a short average life span, and would typically lead lonely lives, mostly in the shadows.
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Mages are powerful yeah but before that they have studied for like 30 years. That means that while a mage can be a bless, can be a hazard too. When the first mage with all his power tries to conquer the world, every magic and non magic being will try to stop him and maybe succeed with the time.
All this will take us to the point that people will decide that mages can't rule so they might study in institutions build by the government where they will be taught obedience and then magic. There gonna be anti-illegal-magic agencies to enforce this too.
In any scenario the non magic beings will try to regulate the mages for having more power.
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You make the assumption people want to rule. In society, people rule for the power it gives them but wizards already have power.
The day to day effort of ruling stops a wizard from studying magic which is actually his/her true source of power. It would be a distraction.
Better to let the mundanes rule themselves and only use your power to stop them from interrupting you with their wars and famines and other petty concerns.
If you read the [Rift War Saga](http://www.crydee.com/) by Raymond E Feist, the magicians of Kelewan answer only to the ruler and ruler alone. They have their own society and their word is law. They basically are all powerful but they don't have to bother with the day to day problems of ruling.
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One thing that's often not considered is that incredible skill must be maintained. If Lebron James was elected president, he couldn't play much basketball for the next 4 years; he'd be too busy. When his term is finally up, he will be nowhere near as skilled as he was before the election. So perhaps your mages need to practice their spells for a prohibitively large amount of time just to maintain a competent skill level, not to mention improve. This will lead to a kind of magic cold war. Instead of the US and USSR competing to see who can have the most and most effective nuclear missiles on standby, you will have Cyrodil and Elsweyr competing to see who can keep the most mages adequately trained and ready for war. The nations will be ruled just like any mundane nation, while the master mages spend nearly all their time practicing for Armageddon. They're too busy to rule a country.
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It depends on the type of person your mages are.
I believe that had magic existed, it would have evolved similar to our technology. The first things will all be about food, shelter and sex (which contains everything from getting mates to supporting and teaching your children as they grow). So in effect, mages would be the fittest, healthiest and best looking people out there with the best houses, food, clothing and most beautiful spouses and children who benefit from the magic.
Now a warlord can't trust his vassals if he doesn't make a deal with them, so the warlord needs to be trustworthy and not have bandits, possibly his own men, rampage across the countryside or his vassals will turn against him.
The mages need to be the same: if the mage can make crops grow, someone will also assume he can make crops go bad and he/she'll be blamed for it regardless of what caused it. This means the mage needs to help his community or have to deal with mobs and stabbings in the street (or his sleep). So the more open a mage is in a community the more of a leadership role he needs to take to prevent people from turning against him. This is in all likelyhood also where the combat magic will originate: mages incapable of the social cunning to deal with the unfairness of the accusations (or the complete fairness if its an A-hole who loves to mess with people) will have created defensive and offensive magic to deal with them. These mages are less likely to survive as long as the "benevolent" mages. I write benevolent between " because they are pretty much forced into the role if they show their power.
Because of all this it is not a stretch to say that mages learn quickly to hide their power of they want more normal lives, and magical communities to start being build so they dont have to deal with mundane people's problems and woe's, not to mention the higher ease of teaching/learning from eachother. Eventually such communities could go all the way: we want nothing to do with the needy short-lives mundane people so we'll hide our existence from them, and heavily punish any mage who doesnt cooperate.
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*I can easily set a story in a dystopian environment not subject to ethics, but I would rather try to create a backdrop that is as ethical as possible given the requirements. I feel that writing about possible deviations from an ethical starting point will give more interesting insight into human interactions than just starting off with no ethics. With this in mind, I would like to know how I can set up a generation ship that has a good chance of continuing in its search, whilst taking as ethical an approach as practically possible.*
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The first generation born on a generation ship will be living among people who were born on Earth and made their own decision to leave Earth forever. However, the new generation did not get to make this choice. Resenting this they may choose to force the ship to turn back, either by mutiny or a few decades later when they form the majority.
Assuming a ship that does not have the power to simply reverse its direction at any arbitrary point (since the speeds achievable by slingshot give such a large ship too much momentum for its own propulsion systems to be able to match), what can be done to ethically prevent the ship being turned around by slingshot at the next available star?
A few ideas come to mind and I'm not sure if they would be more or less ethical, or whether they would make continuing more or less likely.
* Keeping (very long time delayed) communication channels open to Earth for as long as possible.
* Imposing a false history so that the first few generations believe there have been hundreds before them, and Earth is not even theoretically reachable.
* A false history where Earth is uninhabitable and only generation ships survived.
Are false histories effective or more of a risk if they get discovered?
Are false histories ethical if in the long term a species' survival depends on spreading out among the stars? To increase the probability of species survival, ships need to be sent out while Earth is still healthy and inhabitable. How can this be justified ethically?
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I'm interested in the ethical implications of these particular points, and their effects on the probability of success. I'm also interested in hearing what points I have overlooked that affect ethical considerations and risk of return, including ideas about method of government, education and its potential overlap with indoctrination, and access by the general population to knowledge and sensor readings.
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**In response to the point raised on [meta](http://meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/225/can-we-ask-about-how-ethics-affect-a-human-built-world) that ethics can be subjective and vary between cultures, I am looking for answers backed up by studies of ethics that are as near as possible to objective. Not what would one particular cultural history suggest, but what would a present day international effort to send our species to the stars be likely to settle on as ethical requirements.**
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On the practical side, I think that the best solution for such an issue is the same we apply here on Earth: Education.
Spaniards speak Spanish and like tortilla because that is what they were raised into. Ultraorthodox Jews are that way because that is how they were taught from the cradle. Do you think Japanese people are ultra-polite due to some genetic trait? No, they are because that is how they were educated since birth.
Of course every society has problems with its young adults. But in the same way current societies keep going on due to those young adults growing into adults and changing mind to less subversive and more pragmatic mindsets, that could happen in a generation ship. The young generation is not an issue on itself and there will be no clash with older generation risking the mission. Instead, if you have a fairly normal age pyramid and a good educative system, the conflicting set of individuals will always be a minority against the pragmatic adults, being these the original adults or the hundredth generation.
There is no living USAmerican who voted for their Constitution (or even who was alive when it was approved). Does that make them ignore it as just a decision of their grandparents? No, they are instead proud of it. How? Just by being educated immersively in the thought that it is the supreme truth.
So, if the generation ship crew raise their children with a fairly normal educative system and fairly normal family ties, including into that their own appreciation for the mission (whichever it is), there will be no problems.
...and it is the most ethical approach.
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That new generation is not going to grow up in a vacuum. They are going to be raised by the first generation and likely work along side that first generation. In fact by the time the first generation have all died off there could be 5 or more generations on the ship. All of these will have worked with and had their expectations and goals shaped by their time with the first generation.
False histories are more problematic because as the first generation ages some are likely to start forgetting the lie or decide to expose the lie. It is just not a good option to try in the first place. Unless you can some how grow a whole generation to start the ship with out any help of the original generation there is no effective way for this to work.
That said there are other stories that are based on this premise. The most successful one I can think of is the [2008 movie WALL-E](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E). The movie was nominally about a robot that was assigned to clean up a wasteland that was left behind on earth, but the subtext was much the same as you propose. When humans find out they are lied to they tend to want to find out the truth.
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First, I think it unlikely a realistic generation ship would have enough propellant to return without actually going to the destination and refuelling. You want to spend as little of the mass and volume of the spaceship on propellant as you can get away with because every bit of propellant you have is something you have to spend propellant to accelerate. So the ship would have propellant to reach destination on the planned trajectory and some added margin of safety for corrections en route. This might not be enough to even stop the ship without using orbital mechanics at the destination to assist. Stopping before reaching destination, turning around and then stopping at the solar system should be quite impossible.
There really is no reason to include the propellant needed for a return. The return option would be to reach the destination as planned, and if found uninhabitable, refuel, and return. There might be several alternate destinations that could be reached, but even this is unlikely as the whole point of generation ships is that the distances between stars are large compared to the speed of the ship. Thus the costs of changing destination after starting should be impractically high.
Another question is: Why would anyone want to return to Earth? Maybe the ship computers would contain lots of cool images and videos of the planet, but none of the inhabitants after the first generation would have any personal experience of any of it. No emotional attachment. The ship would be their one and only HOME with capital letters and its inhabitants would be their people. They'd probably be curious about Earth and maybe even dream about visiting it, but there is no reason it would be particularly important to them.
A generation ship would be fairly stable environment by design. There would be no factor driving people to go somewhere else. Unless the design is flawed, in which case the mission will fail regardless of whether people try to turn the ship back.
This could be fairly simple to reinforce in mission planning if you want to be certain nobody gets stupid ideas. You could build an entire religion of the decision of the first generation to take a huge **one-way** step into the unknown. It should be fairly simple to make the the commitment to the mission a central part of the cultural identity. After all, they really did make a huge commitment. And as mentioned it really would be hard to turn back or do anything except go right where the ship was sent to go.
And even going to the destination and then turning back would probably take considerable time and essentially require colonizing the star system you were sent to colonize so you can collect the resources needed. At that point there should be some people willing to stay and establish a self-sustaining colony rather than turn back. Just as planned.
And even if the ship then travelled back to earth... So what? Generation ships are built to last, the ship could then be sent to colonize another system. If some of its people decide to emigrate to Earth, they shouldn't be hard to replace. And most would prefer to stay on the home they and their parents grew up on rather than go live among aliens with incomprehensible customs and **strange** environment. "Frozen water falling from above? Been here, seen this, going back home..."
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My view of a generation ship is that the mission would most likely be set up to allow no possibility of return before arriving at the destination, and that everyone involved at the start of the mission would be informed that they were making this decision for themselves and their descendants. Children and possibly also pregnant women would not be permitted to embark as the children could claim that they should have been given their own choice. Once on board and under way, reproduction could be allowed to resume as per the mission plan.
So, we have a ship that cannot return short of its destination and a legal agreement binding the original crew and all their descendants to working toward reaching the destination.
As to how a disagreement as to continuing to the destination would be settled, the simple fact that *return is not an option* would go some way to settling it. Who would want to condemn *their* descendants to dying in a ship that has run out of resources well short of *any* destination?
I would anticipate that a generation ship would be a huge thing, with the most advanced technology available, as well as research facilities to improve on that technology before arrival at the destination, giving the crew lots of productive things to do. And, should any children be curious about Earth, it is entirely possible with the technological level necessary to build a generation ship that the ship would contain an extensive library relating to Earth, including VR simulations of Earth.
I would also anticipate that reproduction would be planned to manage population growth, and that children would be educated from birth to look on the ultimate destination as being a better choice for their descendants than returning to an already overcrowded and polluted Earth. The crew of a generation ship would likely have a greater sense of community than occurs in our own society, and would have been educated that to return to Earth would place an undue strain on Earth's resources and would represent a waste of the resources that the people of Earth had expended to make the mission possible. Since overusing or wasting resources on a generation ship would logically be anathematized, this should be a powerful argument.
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I think false histories are both unethical and unlikely to work. Generational ships are going to want to communicate with earth and it would be hard for everyone to stay true to the story. I also don't think that would be necessary.
These people on the ship left earth for a reason. Whether it was personal, or paid, a desire for adventure or a need based on population growth. The same reason would likely hold for any child were born. These children would be raised in an environment where everyone chose to go and would be raised to value the same choice. They would also have no experience of earth and everyone they know would be on the ship. Why would they return?
Finally, I don't think Earth would take kindly on anyone paying back the massive investment on the ship by just coming home. I am sure the ship would be run by a captain and turning back would not be an option. As long as this isn't a prison ship or forced relocation, everyone agreed to get on this ship and I think they and their descendants have to live with it.
Now for your particular points:
Keeping (very long time delayed) communication channels open to Earth for as long as possible. I think this would encourage people to carry on. It would remind them why they are going, keep them connected with earth, and remind them they are no alone. I think this would be both ethical and the most likely to keep people going.
Imposing a false history so that the first few generations believe there have been hundreds before them, and Earth is not even theoretically reachable. I think any form of lying would be ethically wrong and hard to carry on. How do you carry on a deception of this scale so that everyone sticks to their story. By the time the original crew all dies and their influence is lost, it probably is impossible to return to earth anyway.
A false history where Earth is uninhabitable and only generation ships survived. Not only does this have the same issue with lying as the second point, but this would cause long term harm. The ship would have no way to communicate with earth if something happened or they discovered an alien race. In the future, if the ship comes across any other ships or even future ships from earth they would be shocked, cut off and betrayed. I will believe in this case the truth is both ethically and practically the right choice.
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This has been handled in a few different ways.
Herbert (*Destination: Void*) solved the problem by having the crew believe the ship was wired to explode if they decided to turn around and go home.
Robinson (*The Dark Beyond the Stars*) had control of the ship tied to an immortal captain with a regular generational crew. The captain is essentially "programmed" to continue going forward.
Another concept, that I can't locate, is that some time after the ship is launched a final transmission is sent telling them that war has overcome the Earth, it's no longer habitable and won't be for eons. This would serve as a catalyst to keep going as they would need to reestablish the human race.
However, the easiest path might be in establishing that the ship pilots itself and the original crew does not contain anyone with the skills necessary to reprogram it.
Now, how does Ethics play into the above situations? Under the [Beneficence principle](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/principle-beneficence/), preservation of humanity would very well override any negative sides to forcing a group to continue in such a ship as this is for their - and humanity's - good.
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This is not much different of how our society works. In our lives we deal with the results of decisions made before we are born. How we deal with that ?
Democracy.
If the majority of the crew, at any time in history, decides to turn back, they have the right to. Just as we can decide to halt and revert a decision made years back by other people or by ourselves in our own planet.
Anything different than that will make people become "objects", dispossessed things that are less valuable than "the mission". When inanimate things (ideas, or objects) are granted a value bigger than humans, and ideals or inanimate objects becomes the reason of our lives, when things are full of life and humans are devoid of it, we have a situation we call "fetiché" or reification. History becomes the history of space ships, target planets, neo-colonisation, love for the "country" or for the "government", abstract ideals, the history of inanimate things, not the history of people and their desires, their want of fullfillment. Human happiness takes a second place. People believe that what is being asked from them, their lives, their happinnes and their well being, is of no importance. Life becomes dull, dry. Living is not good anymore, because you are now alienated from what you are doing. You cannot reconnect to your work, your studies etc. You ask yourself : "Why i am doing such and such ?" - And find no true answer. So theres a split between the reason for what you are doing and your own aspirations. People raise "beneficence of mankind" as the reason, but, if you are in the space, and the only mankind you know is the ones that are in the same spaceship as you, what is the best for that mankind ? The value of the general good becomes abstracted away, its not the real mankind good's anymore, its the good for an abstract, distant, mankind that you never related to, that you dont know, etc.
The first generation is voluntary to colonize other planets, and by jumping onboard and making sacrifices for the sake of the mission, they do so because they want. Not only that, they identify theirselves with their mission. When you ask why they are doing that, they answer with a smile in their faces and a increased heartbeat : "Because i want to see other planets !" or something of such value. Because they are not alienated from what they are doing. Next generations might embrace or not the mission. They might very well want to end it all and return home. And there is no solution to this. When theres no ethics to show us the path, the only true value is liberty. Being majority, they should be able to supplant the powers that control the ship, if not peacefully, by force. Because liberty is the only true value of life. Liberty is where all other values are rooted. And anything that goes against that is opression, cruelty and lack of mercy.
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It is simple.
**Let them know that as soon as they can create a drive technology that can turn the ship around and reach the Earth (with the resources available on the ship), they will be happy to drop them off.**
The original crew can then use this new magical drive to head back out and get to their destination much faster, even with the side trip.
Oh, and everyone who wants to turn around and isn't working on some kind of super tech drive can spend the next year retaking basic physics. They seem to need it.
**Actually, I doubt this situation will come up.** For any new generation, the ship is home. It is what they know.
**Another reason this isn't likely to happen is:** It would be stupid to test the life support systems when there is no way to send help to solve problems and to test the inhabitants of the generation ship to see if they are psychologically suitable for the trip. The solution: have a few generations live in the ship while it is still in solar orbit. Work out all the kinks. Build a generation for whom living on a giant mobile space station is normal. Then leave.
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Is the possibility of eventually turning around a key part of the plot here?
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> ... the ship being turned around by slingshot at the next available star?
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I don't think there are going to be any 'next available' stars. Space is big! I suppose they could make a small course adjustment now to direct themselves to a different star at some distant point in the future, but you'd likely then be looking at several generations passing before actually returning to earth.
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One solution I don't think I've seen anyone else bring up is to not include the location of Earth in the ship's data. If there is nothing on board that would help locate Earth, then there's no target to redirect to. Don't even have to lie, just make it part of generation 1's agreement to not bring aboard anything that would help locate Earth.
You might also need an odd route so that a path can't be traced back simply, and the ship would have to avoid saving data about this early maneuvering. Not sure how plausible this sort of maneuver is. I'm also not sure how much info would need to be censored to prevent future researchers from figuring out Earth's location by looking at simple things like old movies and books, and searching for planets that might fit the description. Of course, the farther from Earth you go before someone starts trying to find it, the less likely it will be possible.
You could also send off a beacon of some sort ahead of the ship that would land on the destination planet in advance and which would contain any missing information about Earth, so that after the mission is successful, future generations could locate Earth for whatever purposes.
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The reason they don't turn around is they can't.
You talk of a slingshot maneuver around a passing star.
1) It's very unlikely there will be any passing stars. Space is vast, it's unlikely there's a star that close to their path. Not only that but the mission planners would deliberately stay away from stars as much as possible--stars mean gas that slows the ship and they mean debris that threatens the ship.
2) If you are traveling at a velocity that allows you to use a star to turn around you're going way too slow to get to your destination in any reasonable interval. If we figure a thousand year voyage to the nearest star we are still looking at about .25%c--well over 400 miles/second. If you want a U-turn at that speed you need a degenerate body.
3) If we are considering a generation born in space we have already flown a lifetime. Suppose you could magically make an immediate U-turn--you're still looking at another lifetime before they get back. Thus such a generation has no hope of getting back to Earth even if they do turn around.
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Propelling the "quitters" backwards with any force at all will propel the remaining colonist forward even faster. Resulting in a less massive vessel that takes less fuel/energy to maintain. Forces used could be a magnetic cannon etc.
How could future generations call it "Home" anyway?
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Simply make the ship traverse a large starless region enroute. By the time they reach a star to slingshot back they're already most of the way there and don't have the resources for a full trip to Earth without reaching their destination anyway.
This way ethics play no part in the problem, it's a purely practical one beyond anyones control
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**NOTE:** I am aware of the recent Grenfell fire. While it inspired this question, I mean no disrespect to the victims of this tragedy.
Centuries ago, before modern fire brigades, there were a number of cities where a small fire turned into an entire city being burned down. Events like the Great London Fire of 1666 destroyed hundreds of houses after a bakery caught fire, and there have been records of fires destroying thousands of houses before being stopped in cities like Shanghai.
However, with modern fire brigades being able to respond much faster and with much greater effectiveness, would a fire like the London Fire of 1666 or the Shanghai Fire of 1894 be able to occur today? I know that there was a fire in Gatlinburg last year that damaged or destroyed 2400 houses, but I consider that a rural situation. I'm talking about a major city the size of London, New York or Los Angeles being burned to the ground because someone accidentally dropped a candle. I preferably want a scenario where there aren't any extreme outside aggravating factors, like an earthquake or other disaster happening at the same time.
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A modern city is mostly concrete and glass. These materials do not burn near as well as wooden structures used to, back in the day. Modern cities also have high-pressure water systems to make sure fire fighting teams have plenty of water for their hoses. And they have hoses, not buckets.
But modern cities have buried gas lines. And factories that produce highly combustible or explosive materials. And population density is far higher -- ancient cities didn't have high-rise apartment buildings. And we have aerial bombardment to deal with as well.
WikiPedia lists [major fires here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires). The most deadly fire it lists in the 21st century so far is an armoury explosion fire in 2002 that killed 1,100 people. There's a fire in Manila that left 8,000 people homeless. A brush fire in San Diego destroyed 2,232 homes.
But that compares quite favorably (at a statistical level) to fires in the 1930s, like the one in 1934 in Japan, where a house fire spread. That left 2,166 dead and 145,000 homeless. Or a 1923 Tokyo fire after an earthquake that razed half a city and over 100,000 dead.
Or the 19th century, where we have a Nova Scotia fire in 1897 that destroyed 80% of Windsor, Canada.
Looking over that list, it appears that modern building methods, modern fire fighting methods, and other safety measures (smoke alarms, etc.) have greatly improved our ability to respond to fires. Modern fires tend to not spread to entire neighborhoods. Exceptions exist, such as in case of brush or forest fires or other major natural disasters.
But the toll on human life is certainly going down.
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It could happen, but it would take some precise combination of factors to make it so. You would need something to take down the fire brigades, paralyse the transport infrastructure, and stop a federal response.
It would help to have slums around, since they are usually built without respect to regulations, have roads with difficult access, and will have a lacking infrastructure.
\*\*EDIT:\*\*A friend reminded me of Centralia, where an underground deposit of coal caught fire and ended turning the city into a ghost town.
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## Fire code says no
Modern cities with well-enforced building standards have a *massive* edge over their counterparts 100 years ago in the form of largely noncombustible/fire-resistive construction for key buildings and party walls, zoning rules that help prevent combustible buildings from being abutted too closely to each other, and even the widespread application of *active automatic fire suppression* inside buildings. Downtowns and other high-density areas in particular are aggressively fire-resistant in design and implementation, relying heavily on the factors mentioned above to keep fires manageable.
These combine to make fire spread within buildings and from building to building vastly more difficult. Wildland-interface suburbs, due to their lower-rise, more combustible construction and the higher surrounding fire load, are more vulnerable to such a conflagration than downtowns. Even then, though, building code development has been catching up to prior experience in these matters, requiring improved exposure fire resistance in such applications.
Even buried pipelines and factories aren't enough to touch off a wide-scale disaster in many cases -- transmission pipelines can be shut down remotely if they start to leak, and zoning keeps hazardous industries largely separated from residential areas.
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The possibility of a major city experiencing a major fire due to accident on the part of people (or Mrs O'Leary's cow) is slight to very slight.
Cities are just not combustible these days. They are made of concrete, not wood. Even with the somewhat wood based major cities of the early 20'th century, the city destroying fires during that time were all the result of deliberate and massive bombardment by purpose built incindiary bombs: Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo (and quite a few other larger Japanese cities).
The worst example: 16 square miles of Tokyo were burned out in the fire raid of March 9-10, 1945, deaths estimated to exceed 100,000. But, that required over 300 B29's, each carrying five tons of napalm, and that was with a good deal of the buildings of Tokyo being made of wood and paper.
There is one scenario whereby a major city might be flattened or set alight by an accident today. If a tanker ship containing liquified natural gas were to catch fire, the resulting explosion would be close to a small nuke, and the resulting fire could be extensive.
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# No, because modern cities have wide streets
A bit of background: I currently live in Trondheim, which had a story of being destroyed by fire... on multiple occasions. Let me quote from [its Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trondheim), emphasis mine:
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> The city has experienced several major fires. Since much of the city was made of wooden buildings, many of the fires caused severe damage. Great fires ravaged the city in 1598, 1651, 1681, 1708, twice in 1717, 1742, 1788, 1841 and 1842; however, these were only the worst cases and there have been several smaller fires in the city. The 1651 fire destroyed 90% of all buildings within the city limits. The fire in 1681 (the "Horneman Fire") led to an almost total reconstruction of the city, overseen by General Johan Caspar von Cicignon, originally from Luxembourg. **Broad avenues** like Munkegaten **were created, with no regard for property rights, in order to stop the next fire.**
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Wide avenues act as architectural [firebreaks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebreak). If you have ever seen [how firemen fight wildfires](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildfire_suppression#Tactics), you sure have noticed that the strategy to putting wildfires out is to actually *not* put them out, but create enough firebreaks with *bulldozers* while you airdrop enough *retardant* to give the bulldozers time, and just *let it burn*.
In a modern big city you already have firebreaks: big avenues, motorways, and even open spaces like parks (which can be bulldozed out if needed) will prevent the spread of the fire.
In a city-wide fire scenario, I expect the fire brigades to act the same way as in wide-scale wildfires: make sure that the firebreaks are clear, and make sure that they work (station firemen at the not-burning side to quench any small fires that might happen due to falling embers). They will not be trying to put the fire out, they will be trying to make sure the fire doesn't spread to the next block.
Even if you assume a nightmare scenario where all the buildings are covered in [Greenfell-tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire)-like flammable cladding, firemen would still be able to contain the fire *as long as they can contain it using wide avenues* (obviously while *not* trying to put it out, thus costing more human lives).
It is plausible to think that an entire slum district could burn down, but not the *entire* city.
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Conceptually, because of fire codes and other advancements in urban planning, architecture, policy, it shouldn't happen. However, the other side of the problem is to look at the human factors involved.
A lot of people have already posted answers in consideration of this, but I am specifically thinking of ways that social stigma allows fires and natural disasters to proliferate (among other factors at hand). The cases I've read aren't about entire cities per se, but significant portions of them (if Manhattan burned down in New York, that's kind of it's own mini-city).
[99% Invisible covered the burning down of Chinatown](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/pagodas-dragon-gates/) and how
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> Residents of Chinatown were largely unaided by their neighbors during and after the disaster. The fire department, for instance, focused available resources on the wealthy residents of nearby Nob Hill, dynamiting buildings in Chinatown in an (unsuccessful) attempt to stop the flames from spreading.
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Also, notably in California, large fires are a byproduct of other events (earthquakes/natural fires encroaching urban areas). Chain reactions can make fires a lot worse than they would be on their own.
Another example is from the San Francisco 1906 fire. I've read more about it elsewhere, but [this talk by a San Francisco professor Robert Cherny](http://sharpsf.com/?meeting=the-1906-earthquake-and-fires-with-robert-cherny) touches on the compounded effects of natural disasters and discriminatory decisions public servants practice. Not saying this always happens, or that all public servants are like this, but it's not uncommon either.
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> Brigadier General Frederick Funston was the acting commander of the federal troops at the Presidio. Acting on his own initiative and without any legal authority, Funston marched the troops into the city “to aid the municipal authorities. . . .” Mayor Eugene Schmitz welcomed the decision and ordered the troops and the police to shoot looters. In effect the city was under martial law.
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> It did not go well. In an attempt to prevent looting, the authorities ordered residents off the streets, a blunder because the order discouraged people willing and able to fight the fires from doing so, although many pitched in anyway. The troops and police targeted poor people and ethnic minorities with their “shoot to kill” orders. Some of the soldiers and police officers themselves looted.
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Well, technically, yes. But emergency responders would probably need to be absent. Also, the city in question would have to have enough flamible material to keep it going. Perhaps there was a celebration recently, spreading around a lot of paper confetii or other similar things around. If the city has a lot of planted trees that would also add fuel. If the fire hit a fireworks factory, that would help spread sparks around.
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I guess with modern cities everyone thinks of the modern parts of the city first, but some cities (including London) have old town centers or other older parts (or slums, they can work in a similar way for this scenario).
If your fire starts in that part, you have more "options".
**Houses are still made of inflammable material and might not be particularly well kept**
This is not the "pretty old center" tourists look at, this is just some residential area where the buildings have been around for a long time and people just kept them up without doing major renovations or just doing cheap renovations. (Yes, that is borrowed from the Grenfel fire. It can happen everywhere.)
**Streets are narrow and houses close to each other**
Old streets were not built for large fire trucks. While the fire brigade struggles to get through, the fire is jumping fast from one dry attic to the next. In a city that normally does not cope with forest fires, the availability of means to extinguish a fire from the air might be small and would have to be brought from far away, which gives the fire even more time to spread.
**Make it social**
If it was not an accident but an angry mob setting fire to a given "enemy", this same mob would try to keep anyone away who tries to extinguish it. At some point, they would have to leave the dangerous area, but at that time the fire can already be out of control. The mob has also added fuel to the fire in the meantime or hid explosives or other dangerous material which makes it too dangerous to get close or use standard methods to extinguish the fire.
**Let it start in multiple locations at once**
Even the largest fire brigade can be spread out thin until help arrives.
**Let it smolder**
Maybe it is something wrong with the gas supply which leads to smoldering, undetected fires in multiple locations. Or electric transformer stations have been serviced by a company who made multiple mistakes that also lead to smoldering which at some point breaks into a fire. This scenario also somewhat "helps" with the fire breaking out at multiple locations at once.
A smoldering fire can already be spread far before it is breaking out or detected. And situations in which there is smoldering are often harder to extinguish as well.
Of course, not all of this works when "someone accidentally dropped a candle". But from the beginning, this is a hard start, as that someone obviously sees the candle fall and can act immediately.
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This is actually more plausible than it seems. I remember reading an article (will try to find it later and add a link) dealing with modelling of a large fire in a certain modern city (can't recall which one exactly, but I think it was Moscow). The surprising result was, above a certain size/intensity, the fire was self-sustaining, with concrete burning and immense winds fanning those flames and spreading them over hundreds of meters. It had something to do with regular layout of buildings directing winds in a special way.
Of course, that study was assuming the "candle" dropped was a medium-sized nuke, which isn't exactly what you were looking for. However, I find it quite plausible that, if you pick the point (or points) right (and modern computational resources can help you find the winning setup), you could start a similar self-sustaining fire on a smaller scale at first. Such a fire could grow to envelop few building blocks within an hour, which is fast enough to avoid being extinguished too soon. After that, regular firemen would be unable to do anything, while extraordinary measures will take some time to get approval — time that the fire will use to engulf the whole city (and millions of civilians trying to flee in panic won't help either).
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Bruce Sterling had a short story in Wired back in 2000 called "Newer York, New York" that started off with a brief scenario for a modern great fire.
Essentially hot summers from climate change enhanced by the heat island effect cause the neglected electrical grid to overheat and eventually catch fire which took out the gas mains.
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> New York was versatile and tough, sure, but it had never been designed for week after week of blistering tropical heat.
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> People were used to the occasional burning car at rush hour. That's why emergency helicopters routinely hauled two-story-high sacks of water out of Jamaica Bay to the Long Island Expressway. But then the insulation on the old electrical mains started burning beneath the streets. Finally the DC current lines blew - and took the gas mains with them.
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> Sudden explosions ripped up Broadway, Fifth Avenue, 42nd Street - great flaming trenches that had once been the principal thoroughfares of Manhattan. New York autoincinerated. Fire leached into tenements, tourist traps, infotainment stores, and expressionistic corporate towers.
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Source: <https://www.wired.com/2000/01/futuretekture/>
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Wildfires near big cities are a probable trigger for such an event. Recent example, which fortunately has been rapidly under control, is [Sand Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Fire) in 2016 near Los Angeles, CA.
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No I would say the probability is near 0. When is the last time a fire destroyed an entire city? A loooong time ago.
That fact alone shows you that modern cities cannot be ENTIRELY destroyed by a single source of fire.
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It would be exceedingly unlikely but it could happen. Combine hot, dry, windy weather with a fire in something like a refinery. Under normal conditions the fire brigades will stomp on any fire but if the fire gets too big too fast they will be overwhelmed. At that point a fire could get out of control.
Yes, modern cities are far less combustible than the cities of old but that won't stop a big enough fire.
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Overground? Probably no, unless there was a severe gale passing through (essentially disabling the fire service and letting the fire jump gaps) but that might count as a second disaster.
An underground fire is another matter. A city built over a coal seam isn't impossible and those can catch fire in ways that can't be extinguished.
If your entire city suddenly loses structural integrity, it would be destroyed. This is a natural version of a medieval siege tactic.
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Another scenario comes to mind, it would require some laxness with safety for it to come about:
You need a city with a LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) terminal either in the city or placed such that the tankers must pass by it to get to the terminal.
A tanker is going past and the helmsman suffers some sort of medical incident that causes a major commotion. In the chaos nobody (modern ships can have very small crews) notices the tanker has turned towards the city until it's too late. One of the tanks suffers a major breech when it runs into something. The broken tank makes a decent boom on it's own, when the gas detonates (it will disperse and at some point find an ignition source) you've got a boom up there with a backpack nuke.
Start enough fires and the firefighters won't be able to stop them, especially if the boom takes out a major water main. (A big part of what lead to the loss of WTC 7--when the twin towers came down they seriously damaged the water system there and the firefighters didn't have much to fight the WTC 7 fire with.)
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Is the city allowed to be a modern *third-world* city? If so, much of the city outside the CBD could plausibly still be very flammable, with lax enforcement of fire codes (bribing the code inspectors can do wonders for getting them to look the other way) and little access to public services (like, say, the fire department).
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While constructing a planet, with the same mass, volume and overall composition as Earth, how do I know **how many tectonic plates should it have**? And **what does having more or fewer tectonic plates change**?
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Obviously there are lots of unknowns here, but you can make some good guesses just by reasoning through the details (kind of like how, even if you'd never seen a planet, you could work out that all planets have at least one cyclone, due to the [hairy ball theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_ball_theorem)).
* An Earth-like planet has a crust because its exterior is cool enough for magma to solidify
* But the crust is too fragile to be in one piece like an eggshell, because the stresses from tides and internal convection, summed over a whole sphere, are great enough to crack the shell
* Maybe the plates start as islands floating on a sea of magma, and then grow until they meet; or maybe the crust forms and then breaks; or some combination of the two. Regardless, for various reasons, I think it is valid to assume we start with an unbroken shell (1)
* Once a crack starts (2), it will tend to grow until it hits another crack (because the stresses are still there, and the tip of a crack is the weakest part of the shell)
* So if you start with a single crack, that crack will keep growing, in a random-ish path, at both ends (3)
* It is possible that the two ends will circle around and meet head-on, cutting the crust into exactly two plates (4). However, I think that's improbable enough to ignore.
* The next thing that will happen, then, is that one end of the crack will circle around and hit itself, so you have one complete plate plus one crack that is still growing (5).
* The growing crack will either stop at the edge of the first plate (6), or it will again intersect itself to make "spectacles" (7) – either way, you now have three plates.
* After that, any new crack that forms will eventually cut one of the existing plates in half, increasing the total number of plates by one.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HI3e1.jpg)
So just from this topological reasoning, we can assume that your planet will have at least three plates. That's not nothing!
We also know that the larger a plate is, the more stress it experiences. Also, that relationship is non-linear (because of the nature of the forces involved combined with the [square-cube law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law)). That suggests two further ways to get more information.
1. When a plate is too big, it will crack in two. But the process is random, so in many cases it will crack into one very small piece and one piece that is still too big. You could analyse the statistics of this with a generic simulation. Of course, the exact definition of "too big" – and therefore the expected number of plates – depends on actual hard numbers.
But you could refine your guess about the minimum number of plates, because, if a single plate is too big, then there's a good chance that dividing it into three would give you two small plates and one plate that is still too big.
2. If you had a million plates, that would amount to a single giant volcano, and the lava would build up on the surface, making the crust thicker and stronger, so you'd get fewer plates. You could develop a sketch model of this equilibrium and try to estimate the upper limit on the number of plates for a planet with extreme tides.
If nothing else, I think I have convinced myself here that an Earth-like planet could be expected to have an Earth-like number of tectonic plates (perhaps 5-10 major ones).
As to what difference the number of plates makes, I would guess "not much" – a planet has whatever number of plates it needs to make those plates mostly stable. You might have more places like Chile, or more places like Chicago, but the nature of those places would be similar, and on an Earth-like planet you'd have some of each.
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There may not be a formula for that, but if all the parameters are similar to earth, having a similar number of plates seems a reasonable guess.
More or less plates would mean more or less mountain ranges, fissures, and faults. Mountain ranges are formed as plates press against each other and the earth is heaved upward, fissures and trenches as one slides under the other. Faults are cracks on the plates formed by pressure - occasionally they shift...well, I'll let Superman explain...
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> it's the joining together of two land masses. The fault line is
> unstable and shifting, which is why you get earthquakes in California
> from time to time.
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Less plates might also mean the geography of the planet might not change as much over time. Less plates mean less movement of the land masses.
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First, since you are comparing this planet to Earth, having the same mass, volume and composition, it helps to know what earths tectonic plates look like.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pLXRJ.jpg)
Earth has seven major plates and ten minor plates, as well as many micro-plates. To answer your second question, `what does having more or fewer plate tectonics change?`, it would mainly change what your planet looks like. These tectonic plates create volcanoes and mountains, depending on how the plates are merging. This means that along plate boundaries, there are usually either islands in the oceanic places and mountains along the inland areas (this is all dependent on the tectonic plate interactions, which I talk about below).
Other than how violent your planet is, a significant reason for our atmosphere is from these plates with volcanoes spewing carbon into the atmosphere. Having more plates and thus more plate tectonics would likely result in a more robust atmosphere. Or, at least, it would take less time for your planet to have a habitable atmosphere, and likely produce life quicker than Earth.
How many plates you should have is totally up to you. However, I would recommend you at least have a couple if you want your new planet to be similar to earth.
More the more important question, in my opinion, than how many plates, is what TYPE of [tectonic plate interactions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plate_interactions) you want. These interactions will dictate whether you have transform boundaries that produce earthquakes, divergent boundaries that produce volcanoes, or convergent boundaries that produce mountains.
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Roughly speaking, because I started to write "a [deep time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_time) approach to worldbuilding" outlining my preferred technique then realised I'd be here all week, decide how many continents you want to have, on Earth there are 7 and how many [active](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orogeny) mountain ranges you want in the continental interiors, on Earth we have 2, the Himalaya, and the Southern Alps (most of the continental crust around New Zealand is under the South Pacific but it is there).
The total is roughly how many major plates you need, Earth has 7 major and 6 minor plates; active mountain ranges, like the Alps (both European and Southern), Andes, Cascades, Himalaya, Japan and the Sierras mark plate boundaries as do major ocean basins, the Mid Atlantic Ridge, East Pacific Rise, Southern Ocean spreading ring. How these boundaries migrate and change over deep time is governed by [plate tectonics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics) which we still don't understand all the driving forces behind yet but we do have a good working model of it's long-term operation.
The different plate boundaries give rise to different characteristics at the margins of the continents that they hold, [active margins](http://jersey.uoregon.edu/%7Emstrick/AskGeoMan/geoQuerry26.html) are highly geographically dynamic and occur at [convergent boundaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_boundary) like [subduction zones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subduction) and along [transforms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transform_fault) like the [Alpine Fault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_Fault). They're characterised by elevated terrain, regular seismic activity, volcanism, mountain building and high average erosion rates. Passive margins occur at continental edges proximate to [divergent boundaries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_boundary), here river mouth deposition and coastal erosion are the primary forces in landscape dynamism and the pace of change is generally much slower. Passive margins are characterised by gently sloped or rolling terrain, slow meandering rivers often with wide deltas, salt marsh, [barrier islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_island) and low average erosion rates.
Having more plates means the continents are smaller, there are more coasts, more active boundaries. This means more nutrient turn over due to higher overall average erosion rates, and richer oceans, more shallow water for reefs more coastal wetlands for fish nurseries, less farming land but of a higher quality where it does occur due to higher erosive nutrient input rates.
Fewer plates means larger continents, fewer coasts, less active boundaries, a lower overall nutrient turnover from erosive processes so farmland is poorer but there's more of it. The issue that could be really critical is that evidence from the [late Permian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event) suggests that if there aren't enough separate continental landmasses ocean circulation is greatly impeded and this can kill sea-life.
Elaborations of any unclear points are available on request, let me know what you want me to focus on and I'll edit accordingly.
One thing I should have made clear and I don't think I have is that only the areas of plates with continental crust are anything like stable over geological time, we call those areas [cratons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craton), oceanic crust is always being created at rifts and consumed at subduction zones. That's what creates supercontinents and drives up mountains.
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This is somewhat circumstantial, because I am not an expert on plate tectonics. But I do work with quite a few people who are experts on that topic, and I have asked them in the past the question "why does Earth have the number of tectonic plates that it does?" Their answer was a very strong "**we don't know**."
Moreover, we don't know what parameters it depends on. People would like to know this, because it would allow us to predict whether there will be plate tectonics on exoplanets, and if so what form it will take. There are many competing theories about how plate tectonics gets started (and why it happened on Earth but not on Venus), but unfortunately it just isn't something that science has a good understanding of yet. We can understand how the Earth's plates move and why, but we can't understand how the process gets started and what it might be like on other planets. This is partly because so far we only have one example of a planet with tectonic plates.
Therefore an honest answer to your first question should probably also be "we don't know."
On the positive side, this means you're pretty much free to choose whatever number of plates you like, and it will be consistent with modern scientific knowledge :)
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A few other back-story factors will impact your answer, but again, they'll be largely within your control.
As best we know, the engine behind plate tectonics is convection in the Earth's mantle. As a quick demonstration, sprinkle a dime-thick layer of wheat germ over a pot of slowly boiling water (or for more cogent illustration, slowly boiling molasses). The planetary case is affected by some very large departures from this simple case...
1) Your planet may not even have a fluid, semi-fluid, or plastic mantle. (Subsequent questions assume you've got a little something to work with.)
2) A spherical planet surface complicates the geometry of upwellings and subduction zones.
3) Planetary rotation will affect both this geometry and the distribution of heat transfer to and from the mantle.
4) Chemical composition of the mantle and heat transfer from the planetary core will affect the violence of convection within the mantle. (Compare the pots of water and molasses, and then turn up the heat under the molasses to see how more violent convection tends to result in a greater number of smaller plates.)
If you're free to ignore or freely specify the history of your solar or planetary system, none of this will have any significance. Even if cosmological history has an important impact on your story, you can easily take it into reasonable account and still have a lot of wiggle room.
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