text
stringlengths 22
2.11M
|
|---|
[Question]
[
For context, I've been working on a fantasy race for use in a science fiction novel, the gist of which is essentially a red fox that has had its genes manipulated by a supernatural force with the primary purpose of blending with and killing members of its original species. I'm thinking of messing with sapience and a gradual progression towards bipedalism and opposable thumbs but...
**Today I'm mostly concerned with assessing the viability of having venom glands and venom delivering fangs in the mouth of a red fox.** How much does purposing the fangs to inject venom necessarily compromise their structural integrity? How big of a problem is that for an animal that only grows one set of permanent teeth? Does having venom injecting fangs necessarily lead to complications when using those fangs for their original purpose (i.e. tearing flesh)? How much would the presence of venom glands affect the facial structure of a fox that wants to pass for a normal member of its own species? Does having venom necessitate making any other changes to the creature's body?
Perhaps most importantly, what are some suggestions on how to structure a permanent tooth with the dual purpose of tearing flesh and injecting venom? I was initially thinking about a hollow tooth similar to that of a [Solenoglyphous](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/solenoglyphous) snake, but that seems a bit too fragile for a permanent tooth and I don't plan for these to be foldable.
[Answer]
Solenoglyphy is not the only envenomation mechanism that snakes can use there are also [opisthoglyphous](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/opisthoglyphous#English) and [proteroglyphous](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/proteroglyphous#English) snakes, I would suggest that either of these mechanisms would be more suitable for a fox that has to tear and crew its meat. In particular opisthoglyphous teeth are almost unaltered in their morphology except for surface groves that channel venom into the wounds they cause. Using opisthoglyphous teeth for envenomation I see no reason why a fox analogue would have any issues, since these teeth are just as strong as their venomless counterparts.
The size of the glands, and the degree to which they effect skull morphology, will depend on the toxin being produced and more importantly the dose needed. Given that magic is a factor in creating this toxic fox I would expect that the toxin is quite powerful requiring a relatively small dose and thus small glands that will fit seamlessly within the jawbone are practical.
Do remember that venom is often relatively metabolically expensive so your poisonous foxes may need more food than you'd expect.
[Answer]
There are a few mammals alive [today](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/venomous-mammals-living-in-the-world-today.html) with venemous saliva. The solenodon is similar to a large shrew, and has grooves on specialized teeth that conduct the saliva into a bite. Apparently this produces anti-social behavior in the solenodon, such that if they are housed together there is a tendency for them to bite each other.
It is not too much of a stretch to imagine this critter evolving a more specialized version of this. For example, it could have a way to avoid accidental envenoming, such as storing the venom and having the ability to control whether a bite included it or not. Kind of harsh if they groom their own fur and accidentally poison themselves. Or it might develop two grades of saliva, one non-toxic for regular purposes and the other lethal and only directed down the grooves in it's teeth.
Some species of vampire bats have anti-coagulant in their saliva. It's not too much of a leap to imagine this being weaponized as opposed to just continuing the meal. A vampire fox might then be able to bite its prey once. Then it would stand around and wait for the prey to bleed to death. Then it could dine at its leisure.
There are also several critters that make use of venom that they obtain from other sources. For example, there is a species of rat that chews poisonous tree bark into a paste it then applies to its spiky hair. Maybe Mr. Fox can eat poisonous-something and store it in cheek pouches for later use.
[Answer]
A venom is a nonliving toxin produced by an organism for use as a poison. Foxes do not have that. But a fox can definitely poison a thing with its bite. **Foxes can transmit rabies**.
If you want to wipe out a carnivore species rabies works great. African wild dogs have been driven to near extinction by rabies. They are social and so it is easy for a dog to get close to another dog. Once a pack member is infected others in the pack try to help and all get infected. Foxes are less social but they do interact.
A fox tooth with a hollow tip for a reservoir of infected saliva would do well at introducing / injecting infected saliva. The fox would not look particularly different as regards teeth. It might not look too great because of the rabies.
Genetically engineering a fox into a snake is pretty nerdy for a demon. Genetically engineering a fox so it would carry and spread (and suffer from) rabies but never die from the rabies seems more demonic, or even satanic.
[Answer]
Venomous fangs seem like a bad idea for mammals since it would be a bad idea for venom to set in before weaning is completed and hunting needs to start before that. Canines additionally are social animals and fights are part of establishing social order, with rituals and patterns for avoiding terminal damage of members of the same social group. That would not work well in connection with venom: that's more appropriate for animals with more of a solitary lifestyle.
] |
[Question]
[
Before anyone points the finger saying this is a tasteless joke, there are some actual good reasons to pick that specific planet for exploration among the giants in our solar system:
* Smallest mass among the giants means an easier time navigating its gravity well;
* Only giant planet with a surface gravity smaller than Earth's;
* Mildest weather among the giants means less hassle navigating its atmosphere;
* Large tilt means longer days; a sol in there lasts for years, compared to less than an Earth sol for other giants.
Now that we have stablished the seriousness of the question, I really want to probe Uranus to get a feeling of what it's like. I know no gas or ice giant has a solid surface, but [according to the wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus)
>
> The ice mantle is not in fact composed of ice in the conventional sense, but of a hot and dense fluid consisting of water, ammonia and other volatiles. This fluid, which has a high electrical conductivity, is sometimes called a water–ammonia ocean.
>
>
>
And
>
> Very-high-pressure experiments at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory suggest that the base of the mantle may comprise an ocean of liquid diamond, with floating solid 'diamond-bergs'.
>
>
>
That got me thinking: maybe we could build a submarine or floating probe to explore Uranus. Unlike the probes that were sent to their doom into Saturn and Jupiter this one could last as long as it can stay afloat.
However, the same wiki also says:
>
> The gaseous atmosphere gradually transitions into the internal liquid layers.
>
>
>
This is in line with a passage from [the wiki on Jupiter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter):
>
> In this state, there are no distinct liquid and gas phases—hydrogen is said to be in a supercritical fluid state. It is convenient to treat hydrogen as gas in the upper layer extending downward from the cloud layer to a depth of about 1,000 km, and as liquid in deeper layers. Physically, there is no clear boundary.
>
>
>
[And for Saturn:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn)
>
> This is surrounded by a thicker liquid metallic hydrogen layer, followed by a liquid layer of helium-saturated molecular hydrogen that gradually transitions to a gas with increasing altitude.
>
>
>
I cannot get my head around this. On Earth, if you fill a container with gas and liquids, the gas stays on top and the liquid below, with a clear boundary. Even if the liquid is boiling or if the gas is condensing, we see distinct phases.
So, supposing we go for Uranus and send a splasher probe. Handwaving the problems related to getting it to resist the immense pressures and the low temperatures, would the probe be able to stay afloat - or at least keep a depth within a range - at some altitude?
[Answer]
First, the transition from the gas phase to a supercritical fluid is gradual. Think of the gas gradually and slowly getting denser and denser, with the gas molecules getting closer and closer. All gradually and slowly. After some time, you are inside a liquid!
Most people are not familiar to supercritical fluids because that is a phenomena that happens with high pressures and high temperatures that Average Joe would never see in his all life.
Now focusing in Uranus, I don't think that what you are trying to achieve is possible.
Using a balloon, you might float in the upper atmosphere, but since you want to reach deep layers, this is not what you want to.
In those deep layers of supercritical water-ammonia ocean, a submarine would need to sink very deep in the planet to actually float. At that point, the pressure would be enough to crush diamond and the temperature would be enough to melt it.
Your better bet would be to build its hull out of materials like hexagonal-lattice diamond, boron nitride, iridium-tungsten and graphene. Everything should be perfect and free from topological defects. Even with that, it is still very likely to fail and implode.
However, let's suppose that you built a submarine capable to stand the pressure and the temperature.
Further, down to 1000 km deep, it would be too far to be capable of establishing any communication. Since a submarine is too heavy to float to the upper atmospheric layers, it is sorta of doomed to stay there forever.
However, there are still some ways to establish communication and even supply lines. A balloon in the upper atmosphere could drop heavy objects that the submarine catch. The submarine could release floating objects that the balloon are able to catch.
Communications are possible by sending those physical packages up and down carrying some data with them, which is slow but works. Another way to establish communication would be to have a lot of different submarine/balloons floating at different layers one above the other spaced by say 1 km. Every vehicle in those intermediary layers are gradually balloon-like or submarine-like accordingly to the intended layer. Every vehicle is then responsible for sending, receiving and relaying radio signals between its deeper and shallower neighbors, possibly switching radio frequencies when appropriate.
[Answer]
Pressure is important here. It's both a problem and a solution.
As expected in giant planets, the atmospheric pressure and temperature change with altitude and depth. By the time you get to the base of the troposphere, pressures are at about ~100 bars, which is slightly higher than [the atmospheric pressure on the surface of Venus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus) (93 bars). If you're wondering how strong that is, consider that [the Venera series of probes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera) in the 1970s survived those conditions for about 50-55 minutes. [Vega 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_2), the last lander we sent to Venus (in the 1980s), didn't do any better. Temperature was also a major contributor to the failures, as was the atmospheric composition, so a probe to Uranus certainly wouldn't face *quite* as hostile an environment. That said, the high pressure would still be problematic.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3DKS1.png)
Image courtesy of Wikipedia user Ruslik0, under the [Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en).
On Earth, the [Challenger Deep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_Deep) has pressures of about ~1000 bars, and has indeed been reached on four occasions. It's closer to the interior of Uranus than the surface of Venus is (considering the composition and low temperatures). This means that we do have the capabilities to travel below Uranus's troposphere. However, we do have to worry about launch weight if we significantly increase how much pressure it can withstand.
The good thing? Increased pressure means increased ambient density, which in turn means an increased [buoyant force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy):
$$F\_B=mg\_U-\rho\_fVg\_U$$
where $m$ is the object's mass, $\rho\_f$ is the fluid density, $V$ is the object's volume and $g\_U$ is surface acceleration due to gravity on Uranus. Uranus is, on the whole, fairly light (with a mean density of 1.47 g/cm3), but at the core, [densities can reach 9 g/cm3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Internal_structure). We don't know much about the density profile inside, which makes it difficult to determine what the maximum depth we could reach is. If we assume the submarine will have characteristics similar to [*Nereus*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nereus_(underwater_vehicle)), we can estimate a mass of about 2800 kg and a volume of 22.5 m3, leading a critical density of 0.124 g/cm3. By taking in ambient fluid, the spacecraft can increase its mass, helping it sink further down. Given that the atmosphere is at low densities, and the core is at high densities, there's an equilibrium point. The question, of course, is where that lies - and what the pressure will be like at that point. Will it be too high, or survivable? How low can we go?
Since we've never done the mission you're proposing, we don't yet know that, so I can't give you a definite depth.
[Answer]
>
> I cannot get my head around this. On Earth, if you fill a container
> with gas and liquids, the gas stays on top and the liquid below, with
> a clear boundary. Even if the liquid is boiling or if the gas is
> condensing, we see distinct phases.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gVlw7.png)
The above image is that of Supercriticial CO2. You can clearly see that the CO2 is now looking like it looks like a gas, and somehow still looks like a liquid. Keeping a gas under high pressures can do really weird stuff.
Supercritical fluids are basically a sort of form of matter, when the pressure gets so high that it can diffuse through materials like a gas, and yet be able to dissolve things like it were a liquid.
Also, supercritical fluid occurs naturally even on Earth. Supercritical water is a major constituent in the stuff that comes out of a "black smoker".[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/GP4Ii.png)
And furthermore, Uranus doesn't have "calm" weather. The wind speeds on Uranus can peak out at 900 km/h, strong enough to make Jupiter's Great Red Spot seem like a gentle breeze.
We indeed have water-ammonia here on Earth, it is known as Ammonium Hydroxide, or basically ammonia bleach. That stuff is pretty nasty and corrosive, and isn't pretty kind to human skin.
I'd rather colonize Jupiter, thank you.
] |
[Question]
[
The US Government, and eventually the UN and all nation-states around the world, have realized they are broadcasting their existence to potential enemy civilizations in the nearby galaxy (at least to those that happened to be paying attention to the electromagnetic spectrum, particularly radio waves).
(Most of) The nations of the world want to bring this reckless behavior to a stop. At the very least the US, China, the EU and Russia have all been convinced of the importance of this. They've set a timeline of ten years to bring it about.
What steps would be necessary to stop this constant production of signals? What types of changes would the people on the ground notice? I imagine that radio frequencies would become a lot more regulated and cable and "tight beam" type communications would be explored. Are there frequencies that don't propogate that would still be legal?
Edit: To clarify, I mean any potential civilizations in nearby interstellar space. Not neighboring galaxies.
[Answer]
**Encrypt** all radio traffic. All good encryption algorithms are indistinguishable from random noise. Even if a far-distant alien were able to listen in, they would have a very difficult time distinguishing radio signals from earth in the glare from that giant radio transmitter we call the sun. The entire power output of Earth in the radio spectrum pales in comparison with the sun, so an encrypted signal from Earth just looks like noise from the Sun.
For people on the ground in those countries that move to all-encrypted, all the time they will need to buy new radios and new TV receivers. Cellphone service is already encrypted and relatively short range. WiFi is also encrypted (though there are still some parts of WiFi transmissions sent in the clear).
Ham radio operators will probably be given a pass from buying new gear as the strength of their transmissions are generally pretty low compared to commercial or military transmitters.
Honestly, it's probably not that big of a deal anymore. At great enough distances, the solar system becomes a point source dominated by the Sun. Any transmissions from earth get all jumbled together since frequency ranges are often reused on different parts of the planet. Trying to make any sense of the simultaneous broadcasts from thousands or millions of radio transmitters will tax any signal processor that may be listening.
Signal strength [decreases at the inverse square of distance](http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/propagation/path-loss/free-space-formula-equation.php):
$$S\_{signal} \propto \frac{1}{d^2}$$
The nearest earth like planet is Tau Ceti at 11.905 light years. Any civilization farther away will have an even harder time detecting Earth's radio traffic. We have
$$S\_{signal} \propto \frac{1}{(3\cdot 10^8~\text{m}\cdot\text{s}^{-1} \cdot 3600\cdot24\cdot 365.25~\text{s} \cdot 11.905~\text{Ly})^2}\approx \frac{1}{1.3\cdot 10^{34}}$$
which is about $-340 \,dB$ (assuming a satellite dish 1000 m^2). That is really really freaking tiny.
A ham radio operator friend of mine says that with a sufficiently strong EMP applied to the [D-Layer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionosphere#D_layer) would put a very firm blanket stopping *all* terrestrial transmissions. The effects would be transitory, lasting only hours or days. To sustain permanent radio silence would require a steady stream of EMPs in the ionosphere. Currently, our only source of EMPs come from nuclear explosions....so not really feasible.
He also said that if we could invent a technology that can control where and when sunspots form on the sun, then direct the proper type and sequence of coronal mass ejections (CME) towards Earth, we could achieve a radio "black out"...but if a civilization has the power to control sunspot activity on a star, they don't really need to worry about encroaching neighbors. CMEs are the natural way of energizing the D-Layer and blocking radio transmissions.
[Answer]
It is already happening. Cellphone signals are very short range. TV and Radio stations are moving more and more to the Internet. I think the main thing would be cutting off signals to satellites except for tight beam and even that I would probably cut out. No matter how tight beam you make the signal, scattering will always produce stray radiation. I think the US Government and UN would basically just move all communications to the Internet and regulate that all Internet traffic will be wired, except for highly local wi-fi and cell-phone type signals. No more amateur radio, no more local tv stations over the air, no more local radio stations broadcasting over the air. Like I said, most things are moving that way anyway, so just complete the move - force it by law.
[Answer]
**Give [UNOOSA](http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/COPUOS/copuos.html) the authority to regulate all space broadcasts.**
This is a global effort, and someone's going to have to coordinate it and get everyone to comply. Who's it going to be?
[As discussed in another answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/11319/how-would-aliens-in-orbit-know-that-communications-from-earth-are-legitimate-of/11346#11346), there is already UNOOSA, the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs. They, with the help of SETI and national space agencies, are likely to be the ones to coordinate contact with another civilization. They'd be the natural choice to govern the global effort to darken the Earth.
**Don't change the speed of light.**
The nearest star is [four light years away](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars_and_brown_dwarfs) so it will take our signals four years to get there. Then they have to decide to mount a response and fly all the way here at sublight...
Either they're already on their way, in which case we're screwed in 10-1000 years, or they're really far away, in which case we have even more time.
**Stay close to the Sun.**
If the Earth were a night light, the Sun would be the giant spotlight right next to it. The Sun is so bright and so electromagnetically noisy that it blots out everything the Earth might transmit. The aliens are blinded.
Usually.
Unfortunately for us, we're getting really good at [detecting exoplanets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets). We're finding more and more sensitive ways to tease information about a planet out of the noise of its star like the composition of our atmosphere and wavelengths of energy we're reflecting (or transmitting).
Being so close to the Sun helps, but we do have to mind what we transmit and how we alter our atmosphere.
**Don't fire focused beams into space, only omni-directional.**
Take advantage of the [inverse square law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law), when you double the distance of an omni-directional transmission its power drops four times. By the time something like a radio or TV transmission gets 5 light years out, it's very weak; [@Green goes into detail](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/26591/760). So long as you stick to omni-directional transmissions, you're probably fine.
If you focus those beams, the effect is greatly lessened. Now who would do that?
**Shut down all [Active SETI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_SETI) projects!**
Seriously guys, [stop broadcasting focused beams of energy at other stars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_SETI#Realized_projects)! It's like shining a laser pointer at the neighbor's window, the space aliens are going to be really annoyed. And stop sending out star maps!
Unfortunately [one message has already arrived at Altair](http://pinktentacle.com/2008/05/alien-e-mail-reply-to-arrive-in-2015/) 16 light years away in 1999. A map to our solar system, chemistry, DNA, characteristics... let's hope nobody in Altair was listening.
The next three are set to arrive in the 2020s with another five in the 21st century. They sent out everything from [the recipe for photosynthesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuBisCo_Stars), to [a bunch of text messages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_from_Earth), to [a full on navigation beacon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Signal). Fortunately these are all directed at specific stars, let's hope we get lucky.
**Stop sending probes outside the solar system.**
These will *probably* not be picked up as they're very dark and will eventually be very cold and indistinguishable from the background, but just stop it.
[Fortunately there's only five already on the way out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_escaping_from_the_Solar_System), and if we really wanted to we could [catch up to them with a rocket and strap an ion engine on it (and the rocket we sent)](https://what-if.xkcd.com/38/) to put them into a solar parking orbit.
We wouldn't want [one of them to fall into a wormhole, be given sentience by an advanced mechanical race, and return to Earth in search of its creator, wrecking havoc in its giant nebula ship when it finds us meatbags made it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaVqdz_Vk).
**Encrypt all transmissions.**
[Already covered by @Green](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/26591/760), if [done correctly encrypted transmissions are indistinguishable from random noise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciphertext_indistinguishability#Indistinguishable_from_random_noise). As correctly pointed out in the comments on that question, the communication protocol itself would still be identifiable; however encrypting the data portion would greatly reduce the signal's detectability as being artificial.
[Startalk recently featured Neil Degrasse Tyson and Edward Snowden discussing this very possibility](http://www.startalkradio.net/show/a-conversation-with-edward-snowden-part-1/).
**Stop radiating on unnatural wavelengths.**
Even if you encrypt everything perfectly there's still the problem of spewing out all that radiation on wavelengths which don't occur naturally. We use these frequencies exactly because A) they're not common in nature and B) they're not absorbed by our atmosphere. If aliens see a constant stream of [UHF transmissions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_high_frequency) coming from our planet, they're going to know something is up.
The Earth will have to practice some [steganography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography) and hide their signals in plain sight. One way to do this is to use wavelengths already common in the universe. Another is to avoid regular patterns of transmission times.
**Return the atmosphere to its pre-industrial state.**
We can already [take educated guesses at the composition of an exoplanet's atmosphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet#Atmospheric_composition) and we're already looking for signs of life or industry in its composition. There's nothing we can do about showing signs of life, the greatly elevated levels of oxygen are a dead giveaway, but we can do something about all the other dead giveaways we've been pouring into the atmosphere.
**Stop dumping heat into the atmosphere.**
An industrial civilization generates a lot of waste heat which can be detected as unaccounted for extra infrared radiation. There was recently a [SETI survey which did this for entire galaxies](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/alien-supercivilizations-absent-from-100-000-nearby-galaxies/) searching for [Type III civilizations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale#Definition) (lucky for us, they found no evidence).
Earth people would have to end the practice of dumping waste heat into the atmosphere. It would either have to be sequestered underground or reused.
**Send a transmission about that Hitler guy.**
One of the first major TV transmissions was the [1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Summer_Olympics#Broadcasting) featuring speeches by Hitler. It's going to be [one of the first video transmissions aliens might pick up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-Ngqhe3y-Y). Just to make sure aliens don't get the wrong idea, we should send out a final transmission saying "don't listen to that Hitler guy, he's a \*\*\*\*".
[Answer]
With the distances involved, they would still be hearing the past's radiowaves for quite a long time. Even stopping in ten years, any sufficiently advanced alien race would be able to pick up on our current radio waves and be able to pin-point with pretty decent accuracy our location.
Anyway, society would probably switch to [fiber-optic and light communications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_optical_communication) rather than radio waves.
If that were the case, another race would have to guess towards the usage of light as a communication source. Intercepting communications wouldn't matter because they'd receive light, which can mean any number of things in space (gravitational lensing, stars, reflection of dust, etc), whereas a radio wave is slightly less common and greatly more obvious method of communication.
To give an example, we use a light beam to contact our satellites. Using color as an encryption/encoding style, messages would be easily distinguishable to those who know what to look for, whereas those seeing this light communication from space see a steady stream of slightly changing light, which isn't abnormal in space.
Kind of scary to think that the same thing may be happening to us without our knowledge.
[Answer]
>
> The US Government, and eventually the UN and all nation-states around the world, have realized they are broadcasting their existence to potential enemy civilizations in the nearby galaxy
>
>
>
Given that the [nearest galaxy](http://messier.seds.org/more/cma_dw.html) is about 25 thousand light years away, there is no need to do anything - the aliens will receive the signals in 25 thousand years, any reaction would come in another 25 thousand years, and by that time so much can change that any plans will be completely moot (e.g. we can outdevelop the aliens). Moreover, the power mankind radiates into space is steadily decreasing, with lower power spread spectrum broadcasting being the hype now, and military radars being deployed less than during cold war. So the first step would be to go for the low hanging fruit, ban military radars (those are by far the most powerful signals that get into space).
[This physics.stackexchange](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/165476/detectability-of-interstellar-messages) question discusses the distances and dish sizes needed to detect interstellar signals and what is detectable given our technology.
[Answer]
In addition to the previous comments, I'll add these:
* Radars, both civilian air traffic control and military air/space defense would have to go down. How do you replace them?
* GPS depends on [relatively powerful](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_IIIA) transmitters so that the receivers can be small and inexpensive. If the military was prepared to abandon that advantage, something strange is happening. There are other [radio navigation systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loran-C#Transmitters_and_antennas), too.
* We're changing the [spectroscopic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_spectroscopy) profile of our planet by industrial emissions. Could aliens tell that our atmosphere is "not natural"?
] |
[Question]
[
In my universe I am designing anthropomorphic foxes similar in appearance to the japanese mythological [kitsune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsune). For those who are familiar with the game League of Legends: [Ahri](http://pre03.deviantart.net/a6f8/th/pre/i/2014/203/3/a/ahri_fox_fire_lol_wallpaper_by_77silentcrow-d7rrntx.png) is a good example of what i have in mind. I use magic in the setting and do not care about topics like evolution (e.g.: [creation of fox-fire](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/59532/the-creation-of-fox-fire-and-illusions-for-the-nine-tailed-fox)) or concealing the existence of the kitsune ([How would a kitsune conceal her presence in a city?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/11072/how-would-a-kitsune-conceal-her-presence-in-a-city)).
**I want to know how to use my version of the kitsune in a medieval army**.
Here is how I want to design my version of the kitsune:
Look and magical capabilities:
* Basically humans, who grow tails and ears that look like those of foxes
* They store magical energy in their tails, which can be released to create magical flames
* They can create one flame per tail or they can also combine the magic from multiple tails to form a bigger flame. The flames are fueled by the magical energy in their respective tail
* The flames hover in the air and can be controlled by the kitsune
* Normally a kitsune with one tail is able to create and sustain a single flame that encompasses an adults hand for a few minutes
* The furthest distance a single flame can be moved, is a few dozen metres, depending on the ability of the kitsune
Aging:
* Kitsune grow like normal humans up to the age of 25. At this point their first tail starts growing and they begin to age more slowly.
* A tail takes about 100 years to grow
* The magical capacity of each tail continues to grow even after the tail itself does not grow anymore
* The kitsune in my universe cannot shapeshift
* Their eyes, ears and nose are more sensitive than those of normal humans
Other magic:
* This is the only kind of magic that exists in this universe
View of society:
* The exitence of kitsune ist common knowledge, but they are rare
* A kitsune with one or two tails might be found every few villages. Kitsune with four or five tails can only be found in the biggest cities.
* Most of them do not live long enough for their sixth tail to start growing
* They do not possess magical healing abilities or better regeneration
* Because they are rare and they can use magic people view them very differently
* There are religions and cults worshipping them as their deities.
* On the other hand many people fear them, because they are different.
Technological level:
* The technological level of the world is similar to 15th century Europe.
My question is: **How can kitsune be used in an army?**
Here are a few keypoints that I was thinking about:
* Extra tails make them an easy target on the battlefield. By chopping off their tails they cannot use their magic anymore and they are heavily bleeding.
* Heightened sight and the ability to create little flames at will might be useful for archers that use fire arrows. But a kitsune will run out of energy pretty quickly when igniting the arrows of many people.
* Their heightened senses give them an edge in the night. Therefore they might be useful as spies. On the other hand their tails give them away pretty quickly.
* In the rear they can be useful by providing magical fire at will. This might come in handy when patrolling to illuminate the path or to warn others. But an army should have enough torches for this kind of task
* After a few hundred years you probably know a thing or two about war. Therefore kitsune might be good advisor. But as I mentioned above some people fear them and might therefore object to them advising the commander.
* There are only a few kitsune compared to the normal humans in the army.
* They can greatly vary in their ability to control their magical energy as well as the amount of magical energy they can store.
* Both sides have kitsune in their army.
If you have an idea but need to adjust the level of military technology, the power of the kitsune or other factors for your idea to work please feel free to do so. The goal is to find ways to utilize kitsune in an army.
[Answer]
They will have very limited use in armies, due to this restriction here:
>
> A tail takes about 100 years to grow
>
>
>
For the 15th century medieval society to have a city with a 5 tail Kitsune, this Kitsune would be 525 years old and around for the dark ages that preceded it. You now have a being who can impose their will throughout history on the scale of 10x human life spans. They can see a scale and direction far outside of what any human can witness. They will have years to acquire and perfect skills, but also years to make a single mistake and die in battle.
The first question is what happens in the first 125 years before they gain a tail? Are they being heavily guarded and trained by older Kitsune? Are they being left to their own means? Do they exist in remote monasteries disappearing from human view for 4 generations before returning as super trained monks with over 100 years of training? War is death...if Kitsune are rare, then risking an asset that has possibly taken 300+ years to develop on a battlefield is a risky proposition.
Medieval armies started to hit some impressive sizes by the 15th century, so it's hard to suggest that one or two of Kitsune could really influence a battle that heavily, and if they were there, they would be big targets. There might be some opportunities for them to fill in at some key points (defend a bridge during a withdraw?), but a couple Kitsune (from a purely 'combat' point of view) isn't going to heavily change the outcome of a battle.
So to the question:
>
> How can kitsune be used in an army?
>
>
>
The likely answer is they wouldn't. Their value is simply too high to risk in a war. As knowledge/technology/history scholars having knowledge spanning generations of humans or craftsmen/blacksmiths/woodworkers/etc with centuries of experience or as kings/advisors allowing for a constant vision/direction spanning many human generations or merchants with centuries of massed wealth or even a borderline god like status (if they can convince the world their energy is divine...). Kitsune would see a much greater scale than a single army/battle/war as their lifespans are far longer than any medieval empire ever survived.
All this said : There is the potential of the Kitsune having a 'hero' like status (kinda like Achilles or Hector in 'Troy' or several of the characters in 'Hero' from 2002) or the leaders of an elite squad/body guard unit. Will they die? Likely, every battle could be their last. Will they add an explosive element to the army the hero accompanies? Yes, most definitely.
An after thought:
As much as war is a leading cause of death during these times...disease and famine also played their parts. Kitsune might need a heightened immune system
>
> Adding more towards their combat uses after some comments were answered.
>
>
>
You may have found an interesting balance here.
1. Sieges in Medieval terms are generally not short events and are drawn out across months and years. However an army with a Kitsune could drop a city in a matter of days...
* Stockade. Any smaller town with a simple wooden wall is a simple fire away from being wall-less. Smaller towns wouldn't even require an effort to create siege equipment from that army to successfully overrun, massively increasing the rate a marching army can capture targets.
* Turrets / defensive artillery. Larger cities will have walls armed with weapons, which a high powered Kitsune could disable from a safe distance. The Kitsune doesn't even need to fully burn the device, just simply burn the ropes and firing mechanisms. Archer towers can also go up in flames
* Front gate. Why bash it in when you can burn it down? With enough intent, the Kitsune should be able to burn the gate, or the mechanisms that keep the gate closed. Burnt ropes will drop draw bridges as well
* City itself. A good way to reduce a standing garrison at the walls is start burning the city in behind. Ammunition, food stores, and other supplies can also be targeted.
* Threat. Why attack an enemy you can coax to surrender instead? "Open your gates and let us in or our Kitsune burns every home in this town and every man/woman/child in it".
Of course, the reverse applies...a defending Kitsune could easily burn siege equipment (Siege towers would burn before they ever hit the walls). It'd be an interesting power balance...a city with a high power Kitsune would be hard to overcome without a kitsune in the opposing army as well. A Kitsune becomes the ultimate in siege warfare and the presence of one 5-tail Kitsune could make a city 'unsiegable'
2. Skirmish/Guerrilla/saboteur. I suspect a Kitsune would make a pretty wild 'robin hood' type figure. Quick strikes at supplies and a quicker retreat, especially when combined with heighten senses at night. Extra points if the Kitsune could turn an armies encampment to ash overnight.
3. Kitsune Youngins. Most of your single tail (or no tail) Kitsunes are relatively weak compared to their older counterparts. Ultimately (as other answers have mentioned) their use is will be more dependant on the value of these Kitsunes and their place in the social structure.
* Just as peasants can be given weapons and join an army, so can these young kitsune. Like anyone else, this will give the Kitsune a trial by fire experience of war and they'll learn quickly or die. If Kitsune are semi common, you might see this setup occur. They might find the occasional situational use of their fire magic and potentially be able to harm some more powerful enemy units with fire, but will mostly be no different from the majority of other soldiers. In this methodology you will have battle hardened veteran Kitsune emerge, however only through surviving heavy attrition will they reach multiple tails.
* If there is a high 'divine' view of these Kitsune, then the general might find himself benefiting from a body guard of these Kitsune to show his fellow troops and the enemy that the divine beings are on his side (this would relegate them to be more figurines than having any useful role beyond weak bodyguard). If troops are more willing to fight to the death because a 'divine' kitsune is following the general like a trained puppy, all the power to em. Should also note that if you are using them for this reason, then having the enemy kill them off can be a heavy blow to morale.
* My precious! If there is this view that the Kitsune is a very rare and powerful resource to be taken care of and nurtured, then no...they won't be used in an army readily as the benefit they give to an army is easily outweighed by what their future state could be. They would be removed from combat and likely only experience it through training until they are older. One thing to point out on this front though...How many people are capable of seeing several generations beyond their lifetime? Would a general in a war now forgo using a potential resource because 10 human generations later would see this resource increase exponentially in power? Hard to call.
4. Leaders. Added this in after...but no matter how you look at it, these Kitsune exist on lifespans far beyond humans which increases the upper limit of the amount of experience this being can have compared to humans. This means they would make excellent advisers to generals or generals themselves pretty readily.
Incidentally...the more common Kitsune are, the more developed the local fire department likely is ;)
[Answer]
As artillery:
First thing that might come to mind is in heavy artillery. Find a way to charge a massive projectile with kitsune fire, or even propel a normal projectile using the energy from said fire (or both at the same time, of course). Meaning the kitsune individuals (I struggle with applying the plural form to this Japanese name, so let's go with that) that possesses the most tails would be the most valuable, and the more high-capacity kitsune units an army possesses, the more artillery units it can employ for less resources (an army marches on it's stomach)
This use of kitsune as a resource, rather than a work-force, implies that the kitsune are treated as a lower class. In which case, doing things like cutting a kitsune's tail should be bussiness as usual for the machine of war.
As spies and gurrila warfare unites:
Kitsune with a lower tail-count would probably have the easiest time traversing a forest or any other difficult environment. The act of cutting tail- if acceptable in the society you are creating, would probably be a normal procedure for kitsune of two or three tails, as removing their magic ability completely would probably be a waste (and they might be using their tails for balance, so removing all of the tails could leave them unable to preform acrobatic moves)
And of course- A kitsune with even a single tail is never unarmed.
Think about stealthy and asymmetrical warfare, not just reconnaissance. An elite group of stealthy kitsune could take down units much bigger than themselves by using their natural talents and some crafty tactics to get a massive advantage (and cause massive damage)
As musketeers:
Came to me after thinking about that artillery option. A kitsune could easily operate a matchlock rifle, considering they literally have fire at their fingertips. Depending on the size of the projectile and the technology available to creating the guns, they could be deployed as sneaky, long-range assassins, or as entire infantry squads, all depends on the availability of the kitsune themselves.
(All of this is only if they can make their fires explode, which should determine if the artillery idea is possible as well, you could discard half the mechanisms of the primitive matchlock rifle, and just have them create mini-explosions from behind a projectile resting inside a tubular contraption. Knowing a thing or two about these creatures, this shouldn't be a problem...)
Anyway, hope something from here gave you some new material. Good luck on your project.
[Answer]
Ignoring what other answers have been given already, let's look at the different possibilities.
* The Kitsune stand low in society in general
* The Kitsune are treated normally, yet feared for their powers
* The Kitsune are worshiped more than feared
In each case, there will be some worship, just not largely spread throughout the world.
With these baselines in place, we can go look at their use, the treatment that leads out of that and possible results from that.
# Low society
Assuming Kitsune are not respected by the general populous and are more feared than worshiped, they will either work as simple workforce, lighting arrows, torches or in mobile smithies, as their fire will allow craftsmanship to repair weapons and armor much closer to the battlefield.
Since they have no large value in society, they will likely be pushed to their limits, treated more as slaves in armies, causing these Kitsune to be forced to be very proficient in the use of their mana. This lack of respect makes them a dangerous tool to use in the army, as a rebellion of Kitsune could cause massive damage to the existing army. Therefore, Kitsune will be handled almost the same way we handle explosives nowadays, stuffed away until of use.
# Normal treatment
In this case, we can assume that Kitsune will be free to join the army themselves, and if they do, will often be trained as if they were one of the more capable humans. Their training will therefore allow them to make proficient use of their skills, yet still remain one of many other foot soldiers. Uses would vary from much more dangerous archers, to low level mages, to immensely lethal close quarters combat units. They'll likely be the inspiring officer that leads the charge, and instills fear in both ally and enemy.
This kind of Kitsune will likely never be any higher than an officer in society, simply because of the fear they instill in men and the lack of trust that comes along with that. Therefore, the rare few Kitsune that do exist, will likely be drawn to other fields, causing the few Kitsune that do join to be huge assets in a war.
# Worship
Kistune in these situations will more likely have be generals, or highly trained special ops. The ability to cast fire at will make close quarters combat against them very deadly, and their ability to enhance any kind of weapon, projectile or even armor will make them a very valuable asset to any kind of smaller, more specialized force.
Even though they are feared, their divine image prevents people from discrediting them or keeping them out of the higher echelons of society, making it a very common thing for two armies to be lead by Kitsune, with men advising them instead.
It gets much more interesting if you mix these different treatments up with each other however. Imagine a divine war against a country that mistreats Kitsune, or the stories that could evolve from a "soldier"-Kitsune seeing a "slave"-Kitsune or "general"-Kitsune, or any other combination of that.
In short, you can use Kitsune for *almost everything*, it's more about what makes more **sense**.
[Answer]
I would see their use less in the offensive department but more for defence.
Using them as artillery is more dangerous for them as a valuable resource. You could better employ them to guard your fortresses, ships and siege engines from fire (assuming they can control other flames as well and not only those they create themselves.)
Some might be used as part of guerrilla actions, too.
There might be experiments for technologies fuelled by Kitsune flames. Like hot air balloons that fly high enough to be out of range for arrows and that are used for recon. Their enhanced senses could allow them to then use flag signals to other kitsune on the ground.
[Answer]
Of course they could be used in Warfare. They are demigods, living flame throwers. They could be very useful in Warfare not only for battle but intimidation. You said that they are feared, what if a commander let it slip that he had a few hundred kitsune on his side? are they fair enough then alining with anything cause the enemy to retreat?
Let's not forget also that they worshipped as deities. Their presence on the battlefield can be used to inspire the troops much the same way that religious objects were carried into battle in our own histories, or the way Kings and Generals would ride in the front lines.
Of course if not used carefully they could be disastrous to your army. A Untrained Kitsune on the battlefield mite accidentally set his own Man on Fire. And if they were to be killed the troops might lose heart at seeing one of their gods die. Similar to the way airmes would lose heart after their generals were killed. however all these can be avoided with good training and proper planning.
[Answer]
So, what puts your kitsune apart from the normal rank and file?
1. They can create fire.
2. They have an effective range larger than any melee weapon.
3. They have more controll over their missiles than any conventional missile soldier (archers, slingers, crossbowmen).
What is the same as your everyday human?
1. Swords kill them.
2. Arrows kill them.
3. Horses trample them.
What are their disadvantages?
1. They are rare.
2. They take a long time to replenish, should one of them die.
3. Compared to classical missile weapons their range is abomninable short.
---
Now lets draw some conclusions from that:
* Your Kitsune wouldn't be placed in the frontline, since they are too rare.
* Your Kitsune would be helpfull during battle downtimes, since they provide easier access to fire than any contemporary method (read: glorified pocket lighter).
* Your Kitsune could easily work as ranged support were classical ranged soldiers would pose to big a threat for your own troops. Much like the use of normal fire, their role would probably focus on harassment, and area controll. Fire just doesn't do enough immediate dammage to be usefull as classic missile weapon, but it excells at blinding enemies, panicing war beasts, and disabling equipment.
Assuming that your Kitsune would be used as field units, they would probably spend their time behind lines of more classical soldiers, where they would be somewhat protected from missile fire, but not exposed to actual frontline combar.
Since classical combat was all about hammer and anvil tactics, with a stable core army and a flanking army to make the enemy route, their position would be on the outer edges of the main army, where they could provide support to the anvil, and could make potential flanking attacks with cavalry falter.
[Answer]
# Message transmitters.
Having heightened senses would be great for a spying role, but you're not wrong in mentioning their flames and long tails could give away positioning. So why not make use of that visibility?
I would propose assigning them as message carriers. I assume they're energetic and fast? Why not have them physically travel between base camps, spreading vital war tactics. Their impressive agility would allow them to trek efficiently.
Don't want to have them travel vast distances? Let's not forget about their magic. Flickering on and off their flames could represent visual transmission, similar to Morse Code. They could act as look outs and notify allies when dangers are spotted.
Their super hearing and vision could also help leak encrypted, enemy, information. Perhaps they could utilise their magic in the form of code breaking? Medieval and Renaissance cryptography did exist and deciphering that kind of data could often be the key to winning a war.
---
I would like to add that given 25 years, until their abilities develop - putting them on the frontline or in some type of fighting position just doesn't make sense, they're too valuable.
[Answer]
## Battlefield ready forge
Having a flame this hot can make them walking forges for small repairs and jobs.
Making a katana or shied from scratch would not be plausible, but repairing broken swords and shields with scrap metal found in the battlefield can be.
Also they can be used to metal salvaging by smelting broken weapons in the battlefield to easier transportation in a cube shaped mold.
## Sabotage team
Having a intense flame with no need for fuel can be really useful on supply sabotage mission.
A single humanoid can have the firepower to ignite an entire supply of food of an enemy army efficiently, and the no reliance of fuel or climate conditions (rain) can make this approach better than a human with molotov like weapons or fire arrows.
[Answer]
Weapons, fighting; bah. Catapults, forges; bah; bah. You can have all that already. I suppose if this is some Magic the Gathering card fighting game then you will have to do with that. If this is for a story, consider: these fox folk are the only magic things in the universe. And a cursory Google image will reveal (I mean it) that many kitsune are smokingly hot. That League of Legends girl being a prime example.
They should be there for the sex. I do not mean like tragic poxy camp followers. I mean magic holy Sex Priestesess.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_prostitution>
For one this will liven up the sausage party type battle story I smell brewing here. For 2 their flame powers will keep any soldiers they choose (they do the choosing) on good behavior. For 3 they are magic so it is plausible that being chosen for attention by the fox confers power or luck. Definitely luck. And if the soldiers believe that then the leaders will like it too and so allow the kitsune. For 4 there can be talk of "getting some tail" (sorry).
And for 5 the real motivations of the kitsune who choose this path can remain obscure. This gives asymmetric energy to a narrative.
[Answer]
Breed the foxes, at least 1-3 children per female fox so the entire army would consist of these foxes. Then there should be fewer humans trying to wage war over useless crap. Also then, the foxes become the majority so humans cannot dictate what the foxes should and should not do.
Edit: Since all living organisms have DNA, simply find the genetic pattern among existing foxes, then we can breed them without waiting generations by forcing all people to have their DNA sequenced and stored in a DB.
We can have war in 25 years then, not entire generations.
OR just sacrifice 1 fox in the image of your own people like a Jesus Christ, then you can create a religion based on people who look like him and then use the worship from the opposing sides females in a sexual imperialism. Once the hearts of the women are on the ground, it doesn't matter how strong the men are.
] |
[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.
The story begins in classic disaster film style. A small rogue black hole is approaching our Solar System. It isn’t going to get close enough to destroy everything, but it will agitate our Sun, causing horrific solar flares as it reaches perihelion. Those flares are going to bake the Earth’s surface in fatal levels of radiation. Conservative estimates suggest that it will take a thousand years for the planet’s magnetic fields to recover, at which time it will be fit for recolonization.
We don’t have FTL travel and we’ve only got a decade to prepare, so the world unites in an effort to build a fleet of generation ships capable of holding ten thousand souls, plus a Noah’s ark assortment of domesticated animals. The trick will be to keep that viable gene pool alive for a thousand years in deep space. The finest minds alive work on the problem, but there is just no way to bring even a fraction of the oxygen, food and water needed.
In desperation, an insane plan is adopted.
The ships will launch about a year before perihelion and will proceed on a collision course with the approaching black hole. At the moment when the singularity passes closest to our Sun, the ships will dive into its gravity well, slingshoting in close enough to the event horizon to cause significant time dilation.
Emerging after half an orbit of the hole (by firing Orion nuclear engines to reach escape velocity), they will race back towards earth, arriving just before the life support supplies run out. If the time dilation does what it should, the fleet's two year round trip, will find an Earth more than a thousand years older and completely healed.
Now for my question…
**What combination of black hole size/mass and distance from our Solar System would make this story viable?**
* It needs to get close enough that an Orion nuclear drive (and maybe a
sun-dive/slingshot outbound maneuver) can get our ships there in a
relatively short time (so that we don’t run out of life support on
the way there).
* It needs to be small enough that it doesn’t rip Earth out of its
orbit as it passes by. It can take the rest of the planets, but
Earth and our moon have to survive.
* It needs to be big enough that it can generate enough time dilation
that a thousand years can pass on Earth during the fleet’s one or two
year journey.
One additional question…
**Is it believable that a cosmically short-term interaction with a distant black hole, could temporarily cause our sun to intensify, throwing off solar flare for a few years before settling back down to normal?**
[Answer]
That's some extreme time dilation.
It is possible, but the black hole needs to be insanely massive for your ship to orbit it without falling into the event horizon and have the proper amount of time pass.
[Gravitational time dilation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation) goes like this:
$$t\_0 = t\_f \sqrt{1-{{r\_0}\over{r}}}$$
Where,
* $t\_0$ is the proper time between events A and B for a slow-ticking
observer within the gravitational field
* $t\_f$ is the coordinate time between events A and B for a
fast-ticking observer at an arbitrarily large distance from the
massive object
* $r$ is the radial coordinate of the observer (which is analogous to
the classical distance from the center of the object, but is actually
a Schwarzschild coordinate)
* $r\_0 = {{2GM}\over{c^2}}$ is the Schwarzschild radius of M.
I initially solved this by estimating the *insane* minimum distance of 1km from the event horizon. This was supposed to be a minimum bound for the size of the black hole, but it appears to not be insane enough. You said you wanted half an orbit, a slingshot, it's hard to say how long that would take. I'm guessing a tenth of one year; about five weeks.
$$0.1\ year = 1000\ years \sqrt{1-{{r\_0}\over{r\_0 + 1000\ meters}}}$$
Solving this gives a Schwarzschild radius of about 99,999,999,000 meters. Which requires 33,851,584 solar masses to produce. This would be a supermassive black hole larger than the one at the center of our galaxy. Larger by almost an order of magnitude.
To have such a thing pass near enough to our solar system that the ship could get there in one year is likely to do more than make our sun fizzle a bit. Placing the black hole farther away means it needs to be even more massive in order to make up for the extra travel time. Which might not work anyway because the ship would also have to orbit in less time, which starts to become impossible as the black hole gets larger.
To make this story plausible, the elapsed time needs to be significantly reduced. Unfortunately that reduction would likely need to be to less than ten years. Even getting closer to the black hole doesn't solve it. Getting to just ten meters away still requires a black hole of around 338,500 solar masses. But, 1km was already insane and very likely impossible to achieve.
I don't think a passing black hole is a viable method for "intensifying" our Sun's weather. I can't think of anything you could do to the Sun to make it act weirdly for only 1000 years, it's been around for so much longer than that.
[Answer]
This is probably more of a comment than an answer, but as I don't have enough reputation to comment I'll see how this goes:
Have you considered using a [cosmic string](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_string) instead of a black hole? You might be able to still get the time dilation effect due to the string acting like it has high mass, and the crew could travel along the length of the string as it passes near the solar system so they exit at the other end of the string, still near the solar system but at a time when the string has passed out of harm's way (rather than with the black hole where they would exit very far from where they started).
[Answer]
I suppose I'll address the solar flares angle, since nobody appears to have tried that yet.
My main objection here is that an external source will have a very hard time causing solar flares. Solar flares are, at their hearts, magnetic phenomena. While the exact mechanism behind them is unknown, one fundamental component is [charged particles traveling along magnetic field lines](http://solar-center.stanford.edu/FAQ/Qsolflares.html), formed inside the star. There are various ideas as to the events that lead to these particles being ejected: kink instabilities in coronal loops ([Wood & Priest (1979)](http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1979SoPh...64..303H&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf)), coronal mass ejections (discussed in [Zhang et al. (2001)](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/322405/pdf;jsessionid=EF05A679DC3EBC3828CAB19FFEF5278B.c1.iopscience.cld.iop.org)), or more exotic structures ([Kusano et al. (2012)](http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/760/1/31/pdf)). A good overview of many different theories is given in [Shibata (2011)](http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2011-6/download/lrsp-2011-6Color.pdf).
The point is, an external source is most likely not going to cause solar flares. It's true that black holes can have magnetic fields, but, [as I explained here](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/13570/how-does-an-accreting-black-hole-acquire-magnetic-fields/13580#13580), they are generated by the accretion disk surrounding the black hole, not the black hole itself. You would need to have it bring its accretion disk along with it for it to have a magnetic field itself, which would really screw up the Solar System in other ways - and still probably not cause solar flares, unless you take into account the other extreme consequences of a black hole entering the Solar System.
] |
[Question]
[
Is there any feasible way to create a long-term sustainable habitat on the sun?
My target region for habitation is the temperature minimum at the bottom of the solar atmosphere. Metals would have to be flown in through the outer atmosphere, but at a mere 4100 K, it's at least cool enough for basic molecules like CO2 and water to form. I'm hoping to condense these out to serve as the basis of some farming agriculture, from which I'll derive oxygen and solid carbon for my colonists.
The main problem is whether I can get the AC up and running. Without it, all of my colonists are going to rapidly do some combination of boiling and burning. However, I'm not sure what technologies could be used to cool a habitat down from a temperature of 4100 K. I'm also not sure if there are any materials which could remain solid at 4100 K if I need some sort of shell on the outside of my habitat that I can't cool down on its own.
Is there any possible way to do this with sufficiently advanced technology that could theoretically exist without a massive paradigm shift occurring in our knowledge of physics?
[Answer]
cooling? no, where is it going to 'move' the heat to?
My best guess would be some kind of special shielding. Most likely force fields. You are already going to need advanced tech in order to have artificial gravity since the surface of the [sun is 28 times](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_gravity) that of earth. It would crush us like a bug with an anvil.
The surface is also 1/4 as dense so the gravity fields would have to both prevent those inside from being crushed and keep the station from sinking into the surface of the sun. The shielding would also have to 'redirect' the heat around the station to keep it from turning into metal play-dough. If you want to synthesize stuff from the 'atmosphere' you will need a way to capture it, bring it through the shielding and cool it down.
On top of all these the surface is very turbulent. we all know about flares, but the size of a flare or an eruption can eject mass the [distance of 30 earth diameters](http://www.universetoday.com/88013/how-big-are-solar-flares/) and the mass would be enough to easily 'drown' a space habitat in it's path. That much more work the shielding will have to handle.
Of course the good news is you will have plenty of energy to power this tech...
ETA
As someone pointed out even if the shielding was perfect, there would still have to be some level of cooling for the inside, as people and machines give off heat. though this is a much smaller amount of energy to move out. the shields might have a 'chimney' affect to help funnel the heat in one direction. This should be 'relatively' easy after figuring out the anti-gravity system and regular heat shield.
[Answer]
The David Brin novel [Sundiver](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundiver) featured a solar explorer spacecraft cooled by a "refrigerator laser" which expelled the heat in the form of X-rays. If I recall the light pressure from this also provided for some part of the propulsion of the ship.
[Answer]
On the sun is as dubious as on Jupiter due to nothing solid to build on. On Jupiter you can solve this with balloons floating in the atmosphere. On the sun it is just too hot. For my taste it is more reasonable to back off some distance to where you get enough power coming in from the sun's radiation without burning up. This is typically a structure like Niven's ring world (or the Halo rings) or a Dyson Sphere, or the plates from Bank's Culture novels.
Getting closer to the sun is good for things like computronium or Matrioshka brains that need the energy to power computation. At that level of technology colonists are either virtual, running inside the computing parts, or perhaps adapted to be so much closer to the sun. Or both, perhaps the living "real" ones do maintenance.
If you do need a difficult to get to prison, perhaps it could be at the bottom of a mine shaft on Mercury. It would be inaccessible during daytime (88 earth days long). Perhaps there are two prisons and you transfer the nightfall ones to the daybreak side. This leaves a tiny window of vulnerability for rescues surrounded by harsh sunlight conditions.
[Answer]
My main concern with this wouldn't be with heat... It would be with the magnetic fields of the Sun and sunspots. A delta class sunspot (one penumbra with 2 opposite polarity umbra's) would play absolute havoc with any station in orbit and unfortunately our ability to predict these is pretty non-existent (observe and classify is about where we are at here). These sunspots are often at the heart of solar flaring and potentially CMEs. The Sun's surface is considerably cooler ($4000-8000\;\text{K}$) than the $10-100 \cdot 10^{6} \;\text{K}$ that these flares can reach (that isn't a typo - 10 million Kelvin is a flare's temperature)... A station would be nearly instantly disintegrated had it been in the proximity of a flare.
To give you an idea of the energy involved in these events, here is quote from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_flare):
>
> *A solar flare is a sudden flash of brightness observed over the Sun's surface or the solar limb, which is interpreted as a large energy release of up to $6 \cdot 10^{25}\;\text{J}$ of energy (about a sixth of the total energy output of the Sun each second or $160,000,000,000$ megatons of TNT equivalent, over $25,000$ times more energy than released from the impact of comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with Jupiter).*
>
>
>
It's hard to give an earth comparison to this that doesn't get into the range of silly. Imagine Mount St. Helens has erupted with the same ferocity as its 1980 eruption and has continued to provide an eruption at the same intensity once a month every month since then. I'd imagine a full city built on the caldera of this fictional Mount St. Helens would have a better chance of survival.
[Answer]
Proposal: **A quantum teleportation-based heat distributor**.
* Heat equilibrium may happen because of quantum entanglement:
>
> “Finally, we can understand why a cup of coffee equilibrates in a room [...]: Entanglement builds up between the state of the coffee cup and the state of the room.” - [Source](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140416-times-arrow-traced-to-quantum-source/)
>
>
>
* Quantum teleportation can transfer states between objects far apart:
>
> “Quantum entanglement allows for carrying out quantum teleportation, wherein a quantum object, for example, an atom, in a certain state in one laboratory transmits its quantum state to another object in another laboratory.” - [Source](http://phys.org/news/2014-07-scientists-quantum-entanglement-amplified.html)
>
>
>
Setup:
1. Entangle a bunch of particles.
2. Set some around the Sun colonists.
3. Send their counterparts (the particle's, not the colonists) to a frigid planet - say, Pluto.
4. (Wait, I take that back) Bonus stage: Send the Sun colonist's counterparts to Pluto as well. Create a colony there.
5. As the Sun colonist's ship approaches the corona, the heat state will be shared between both environments. Pluto colony will heat up, Sun colony will cool down.
[Answer]
If you're not 100% concerned with complete science, turn it into a power generation plant which vents its heat out (via portals/wormholes and some form of heat transfer ) to an orbital thermal powerplant orbiting earth. Presto, two problems solved in one. "Accommodation" for the solar system's most dangerous prisoners, and limitless power.
You've even got a plausible reason for establishing such a strangely OTT prison - free labour. Simply have it so the portals cut out if the power dies, and you have the perfect reason for having them continue to work. If the power dies, the station gets too hot to live in, and the robot custodians step in, jettison the dead bodies into the sun and start the portals up again.
(why not run it with robots? Sunspots play havoc with them so they can only run for short periods)
Sure, it's hot, unpleasant and sometimes dangerous work running the AC and heat convertors, but the New World Government doesn't care about "Cruel And Unusual" - just so long as they get their power.
EDIT: as for how you keep it where it is - have some power syphoned off before it gets to earth to keep it in geostationary orbit. Advanced Ion thrusters should do the trick.
[Answer]
In David Brin's *Sundiver*, a "refrigeration laser" was used to shed heat. In Stephen Baxter's *Lieserl* a wormhole is used to vent gas to a station outside the sun.
I think the laser idea would work in a hard SF story.
A habitat could be encased in a thermal superconductor that carries energy up a teather to the next step in the heat sink. Plasma can be controlled with magnetic fields, like in fusion experiments. Say that under these conditions a field line is like wood, and with (patented mechanism) they are controlled and the outside force just makes them stronger, as long as a temperature differential exists.
[Answer]
Unlike what others say I believe the AC is just barely possible, although material limits might mean it won't actually work.
Tantalum hafnium carbide still has 388 degrees left before it melts in that environment. Thus just about the entire outside of your base is going to have to be the radiators. Inside that you will need a layer of very good insulation to cut down on the amount of heat you have to remove. The radiators have to be hotter than the environment they are radiating into and you're awfully close to the limit—and remember that a metal near its melting point isn't nearly as strong as it is cold. Whether the outerworks of your base hold together is questionable but not categorically impossible.
There are two showstoppers, though—support (I really doubt you can build a lighter-than-sun craft with a thick metal skin) and gravity (it's crushing.)
[Answer]
What about a Dyson sphere which is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures most or all of its power output. The concept was first described by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel Star Maker (1937), and later popularized by Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation".Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilization and would be a necessity for its long-term survival. He proposed that searching for such structures could lead to the detection of advanced, intelligent extraterrestrial life. Different types of Dyson spheres and their energy-harvesting ability would correspond to levels of technological advancement on the Kardashev scale.
Since then, other variant designs involving building an artificial structure or series of structures to encompass a star have been proposed in exploratory engineering or described in science fiction under the name "Dyson sphere". These later proposals have not been limited to solar-power stations, with many involving habitation or industrial elements. Most fictional depictions describe a solid shell of matter enclosing a star, which is considered the least plausible variant of the idea. In May 2013, at the Starship Century Symposium in San Diego, Dyson repeated his comments that he wished the concept had not been named after him
] |
[Question]
[
There is no genetic engineering allowed, just selected breeding and offspring selection. There is no genome sequencing, imagine medieval technology plus [mendelian principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendelian_inheritance). The laws of heredity are understood quite well, if perhaps not perfectly. The species we can use are those that were present on Earth circa 10,000 BC, so pretty much the same as today. Assume that an effective political or social organization exists that can maintain this breeding focus across the generations needed. The goal is to achieve another human-level intelligent species.
**Is it possible to breed another species into intelligence? How long would it likely take?**
[Answer]
**Yes, we can do it in 5,000 to 250,000 years.**
It's possible, by way of not being against any laws of physics. That's the easy part of the answer.
The time it would take is all kinds of guessing. To simplify the measurement of the final product we should choose a species that would closely resemble us, that is, a primate. It's unclear where in our own evolutionary history we could be considered to be at the same intelligence of other higher primates, but it probably happened in the last million years.
The selective breeding will have a significant advantage over natural selection in guiding towards a single trait. That advantage will certainly provide at minimum a 4x improvement over the natural selection Humans used.
Just think how long we would be waiting for a wolf to turn into a poodle, or even a labrador, without guiding them. This can be thought of as rolling a handful of dice attempting to match some set of values, with selective breeding we get to just roll the ones that don't match.
[Answer]
Via selective breeding as you have defined it cannot achieve novel features. Breeding is a selective process using available genetic material. You select for attributes you desire and filter out attributes you don't want. Nothing in this practice produces novel features.
Even the smartest animals do not have the ability to breed via selection offspring with normal human intelligence (or more accurately, there is no reason to believe that this possibility exists within their gene pools)
Some breeding techniques prior to gene sequencing introduce novel features via exposure to radiation -- such techniques are slow and random, but do result in novel sequences. Use of retroviruses may also be a possible technique that could be considered valid in your scenario although you don't really get novel sequences as you are copying them from a different source.
---
The vast majority of dog variation is a result of breeding over the past 200 years or so, clearly the wide variation is not a result of mutation, but the pre-existing genetic potential -- otherwise we would see large changes in many other species as well.
While there is a natural level of mutation, estimates of that rate vary considerably. But this natural mutation does not fit in the definition of "selected breeding and offspring selection". I.e., the question is how fast can selection and selection along accomplish an evolutionary goal.
I tried to make it clear that I was saying that selection and selection alone can't produce novel features. New species on the other hand is possible via selection as a difference in species does not necessarily require novel features. If dog variation was not a result a human breeding, I have little doubt that they would be considered different species as the variation is considerably larger than that of any number of species.
[Answer]
We've sort of been doing this already with the smartest dog breeds, such as border collies. As best I can tell, most of the really smart breeds were originally bred as shepherds. The first use of dogs as shepherds probably dates back to antiquity, but there was a massive explosion in dog breeding in the 1800s, which is when most of the modern dog breeds originated. Although there certainly was some artificial selection on dogs all along, the really deliberate selective breeding started then.
Currently, some of the smartest shepherd dogs are doing tasks similar to human toddlers. Chaser, a famous border collie, has over a hundred dog toys which she knows by name, and will find the correct one on command. A researcher placed several toys she knew and an unfamiliar toy, and then asked her to find a toy with an unfamiliar name, and she was able to guess that the name she didn't know went with the toy she didn't know. This is something researchers have previously only seen human children doing, around the time of the language boom at 18 months or so.
In comparison, Jenna Marbles did a dog IQ test on her chihuahua and two Italian greyhounds, prompting a pile of Youtubers to test their own dogs, and they found that around half of all dogs fail stage 4 object permanence, putting the majority of dogs around an 8 month old level in human terms.
If we keep on breeding border collies and similar breeds for smarts, eventually we conceivably might get them to be sentient. But who knows how long it would take? It's taken roughly two hundred years or longer to go from around an 8 month level to an 18 month level, so a rough, probably wildly inaccurate estimate would be almost 4,000 years to get them to a human level. And that's assuming a steady rate of increase in intelligence, which I have no idea if that's plausible in the slightest.
[Answer]
## Fast, except we have no idea how to measure it.
Selective breeding is *powerful*.
In the past few thousand years, we have managed to turn a single species -
the wolf - into a range of animals incredibly different from one another. Natural evolution is slow because it has no direction, but if you know what you're aiming for, you can breed a single trait into pretty much whatever you want.
The problem with breeding a species to become *intelligent* (in the sense of human-like intelligence) is that we don't really understand what intelligence *is*, let alone how it works.
It's one thing to measure the legs of a puppy, raise and breed the dogs with the shortest legs and the longest bodies together and make a dachshund, but we can't even figure out how to properly measure the intelligence of our *own* species. How could we measure it in another?
Border collies are considered to be the most intelligent dogs, but they are intelligent in the way *we* made them to be - they are good at following directions and herding sheep. Ultimately, our ability to breed an animal for a trait is dependent on our ability to measure that trait, and the foundations of true sapience are still too much of a "black box" to measure properly.
It could be that some of the vital steps to creating sapience are qualities we wouldn't be testing for. For example, social behavior is now considered to be an important part of the root of intelligence, but most of our "intelligence tests" do not test for social ability. There is also the issue that as an animal grows smarter, it may become less interested in doing silly tests for humans, and may get lower scores as a result.
How would one measure whether, say, any given rat was closer or further away from sapience? We could breed them based on how quickly they can run a maze, but we don't really know if maze-running has anything to do with the *basis* of human intelligence. Ultimately we'd wind up with rats who were good at running mazes, but probably no closer to thinking like a human.
[Answer]
There are metrics for non-human intelligence that are comparably as effective as those we currently use for humans. Multiple species demonstrate problem-solving, theory-of-mind, self-recognition, and possibly even symbolic reasoning (Google 'corvids intelligence' or 'non-human intelligence metrics' for multiple references). Individual animals already find evolutionary advantage in intelligence, and therefore its development is ensured, given not too much suppression by other intelligences.
The development of an intelligent *civilization* relies on more than intelligence: our single existing data point strongly suggests that collective learning is the necessary spark. Human culture exploded after we learned to use language (not just to speak) AND grew in population density to the point that trade in ideas could have significant impact on individual lives within individual lifetimes.
The big questions become:
1) How did humans develop the ability to use language to convey symbolic information?, and
2) How long would it take for another species to do so?
The Chomskian concept of a human Universal Grammar (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar>) is a tidy concept, but does little to explain any evolutionary process. Recent research into FOXP2 and other genes (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Jun 2;112(22):6848-54. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1411270111. Epub 2014 Nov 24.) starts to reveal genetic pathways towards speech and possibly toward language formation and comprehension, but we'll probably be in the dark ages for a few decades more. Even if taken at face value, this analysis offers very little progress toward an answer today for the OP.
[Answer]
About as long as it took for humans to evolve to our level of intelligence.
Maybe a marginally shorter period of time.
I'll make the claim that intelligence breeds by itself. Being smart confers a survival advantage, that gives you a reproductive advantage. Humans evolved intelligence as fast as biology and the environment allowed - the individuals that didn't were quickly eliminated by those that did. Identifying other smart individuals and copulating with them is a very smart strategy.
In nature, this would only be slowed down by cases of an intelligent individual having the misfortune of being sick, or injured, to the extent that a less-intelligent individual becomes a better choice. Being supervised by already intelligent people, you can protect and take care of those to stop the process from slowing.
I think the optimal strategy is to put them in an environment that favours intelligence over, say, brute-strength, then leave natural-selection do what it does best, and only interfere when you're confident that nature is going to make a sub-optimal choice.
[Answer]
Possibly as fast as zero years or zero generations.
Nobody knows how intelligent various non human species on Earth are. There are already about a hundred species of mammals on Earth that - like Humans - would probably seem to be semi intelligent or even fully intelligent to objective extraterrestrial observers. And also some non mammal species might fall in this category.
Until the intelligence of all those species is accurately measured some unknown time in the future, nobody knows how much - if any - improvement they need to be considered sentient, and thus how long or short a time it might take to make them as intelligent, on the average, as average humans. For all that is known at the present, it is possible that for some of those species a stupidity program might be needed to make their intelligence equal to that of Humans.
[Answer]
The biggest hurdle in selective breeding programs like this is ... how are you going to determine the intelligence level of a non-primate creature? Once this is established (and it would be **really** troublesome when two creatures have very little difference in intelligence), the rest is easy.
The next thing you need to do, after determining intelligence level is to **push** your creatures for greater intelligence. Make intelligence a difference between meal and no meal. Unlike what many people believe, evolutionary changes are *not* always random mutations. Genes changes, but the changes have more to do the way creatures *want* to change (this is completely subconscious, and determined by the instincts and requirements of the creature). Hence, if driven for intelligence (as opposed to waiting for intelligence to happen randomly), the creatures would get intelligent faster.
Having said that, I must say that it is impossible to determine the time span in which any given target of intellect can be reached by any given species.
[Answer]
Why not just use brain size as a proxy for intelligence? It seems to work:
<https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2013/01/03/scientists-breed-smarter-fish-but-reveal-the-costs-of-big-brains/>
.
] |
[Question]
[
I was reading a book on the Byzantine Empire, and at its height it controlled much of the Mediterranean. I looked up the Arabs and saw that at the dawn of Islam they built an empire that lasted for a short time stretching from Spain to China and India. It began to break up after reaching a certain size, though. The Mongol Empire conquered everything from China to Poland and it was divided into several smaller Mongol ruled empires because Genghis Khan's descendants realised the empire was too big.
My question is:
**Over many generations, how large could an Empire with Early to Middle Medieval technology get before collapsing due to communication problems, rebellions, economic problems, tyrannical leaders, and enemy incursions?**
Assume that this Empire relies mainly on taxing trade for income, and that many of the surrounding nations hate it because of its riches (causing wars that this empire, which we will call Imperium for now, wins due to the technological edge.
Also, assume that it only mildly incorporates [Feudalism](http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism) (e.g. having land granted to knights, but those knights cannot legally have [vassals](http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal) of their own, which will dramatically limit the breakup of central authority).
[Answer]
There is no **hard** limit, it really depends on the geography, administration and history of the empire.
The first main factor is the ability of the empire to decentralize administration (in the EU I think it is called [Subsidiarity principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity)) and the basic principle was known and used by large empires in ancient times. The Persians, the Romans, and the Chinese all used decentralization to manage large empires. As the central power weakens the empire gets unstable and satraps, governors, local kings, or whatever, will rebel, but in times of strong central power the system was proven to work well enough.
How large an empire the system can support depends on how strong the bureaucracy and the tradition of the empire are in relation to the ambition of a strong charismatic leader. The empires I mentioned had very strong grip on being the source of legitimate authority in their region. Kings were claiming the title of the Roman emperor centuries after it was actually relevant because of the prestige. Similarly Chinese dynasties had strong continuity even then the new dynasty was originally of foreign origin.
Communication lag is also critical. Large empires put high priority on good communications. The Roman and British empires were built around sea travel. The Romans and Persians built great roads to connect their empire. The Chinese built great canals. This is where geography matters.
Generally as long as there is no external threat the empire can't handle and the administration does not collapse from within, the empires survived well enough. The issue is that if there is an external threat, responding to attacks efficiently becomes progressively more difficult the larger the empire is. Eventually the local forces responsible for defense will have so much autonomy they will become independent countries in practice, although they will generally remain nominally loyal as long as the administration is stable. Having the support of the emperor had very real political value, even if you were actually independent.
Note that the British empire had areas all over the world with very large communication lags. This was possible because in colonialism the ruling elite was attached to the homeland, not to the people and land they administrated. This obviously sucked for the people being ruled, but allows very large empires. The Chinese had similar system based on centralized system of imperial examinations. The Romans did a good job of attaching the provincial elites to the Roman politics and civilization. So good that much of the areas they romanized still speak languages derived from latin. The Persians also were good at this, and a good source to copy as their approach of winning popular support by protecting local religions resonates well with modern people.
Another simple solution used by great empires was "divide et impera". If your administrative units are too weak to rebel successfully and like you better than each other... Your empire can grow very large. I could mention the usual suspects as examples, but there is no point, really.
Fundamentally, the Persians, the Romans, and the Chinese stopped expanding because they chose to do so. The Persians could have annexed Greece in its time of weakness before rise of Macedonia. The Romans had an edge over the Parthians and could have taken Germany back if they chose to. The Chinese could have usually taken Korea, Japan, or any of their neighbours, really.
So why didn't they? Well, once the distance from capital becomes large enough, you either go along the army and lose effective control of your empire for the duration of the war or give some ambitious and competent general control of a powerful military force you can't effectively control. Neither is really very appealing option. When you factor in that the potential profit becomes smaller in relation to potential loss, the larger the empire becomes, it is easy to understand why large empires simply claimed to rule the world instead of actually trying to do so.
The natural borders for a large empire are therefore areas of low value or large opponents that would require large army to defeat. In either of those cases the gain does not justify the potential losses.
[Answer]
This also has a lot to do with the speed of communication, speed and ability to transport material goods, and social homogeneity of its peoples.
The longer it takes to communicate, or transport goods, with the farthest reaches of your dominion, the more autonomous it naturally becomes. Greater autonomy means less reliance on the distant, central government.
Geography, bureaucracy, technology all help decide how fast communication crosses the empire.
---
**Social Homogeneity...**
There are a few modern examples showing that a socially mixed group fosters political factions: the EU, United States, Jerusalem.
As a political and financial collective of countries it is worth putting in this list because a collective of confederate countries is a political pathway toward a unified political system. However, the EU is having trouble maintaining cohesion because of member countries like Greece. Greece has a separate social, political and financial approach when compared to countries like Germany. Greece isn't only financially unable to support itself, but often times seems socially unable to right its own financial practices. This is hard on Greece, AND it threatens the strength of the EU because agreed rules and practices are not being met.
The United States is an excellent candidate when discussing political unrest due to a socially heterogeneous collective. To this day, the country faces ideological fighting from its civil war: the systemic racism in politics and government, the growing animosity in a political discourse that has no apparent reason for it, and the fight over a Southern flag and what it means even 150 years later. While it's easy to say that America doesn't fit in this discussion because it's still a unified country, the amount of political rhetoric about various states seceding from the Union gives a non-trivial hint that all is not well - despite the country having suffered worse. A look at the origins of the US will also show that it was formed because a few key conditions were met. The time to communicate with the central government was so slow that the Crown purposefully established governors to act on its behalf. A few generations in and all the governors were now local born citizens of colonies who were more aware of the troubles of the colonists than of the Crown. They were rooted in the community, not the Crown.
The ability to ship goods was slow, and therefore expensive, this forced the colonists to become self-reliant, again making the generations of colonists more aware of their problems as farmers and providers, then of the problems of the the distant and absent economic presence of the Crown. The colonists were allowed to become more self-sufficient because of the access to material goods at their hands. This unique circumstance also worked against the strength of the Crown.
Jerusalem has, for thousands of years, been a land of contested ownership, with the major Abrahamic religions warring each other over control. Even now, the city is split, like Berlin was after WW2. Like Jerusalem, Berlin (and therefore Germany) was controlled by political groups with cross purposes. In fact, I think we can say that much of the Middle East is at a constant war whether the war come in the form of political, martial, ideological or financial methods. With these wars, and these factious beliefs, there can be no unifying political or social body.
**Speed of Communication and Transport...**
The size of the known world, and the speed of light, both relate to a political entity's communication. These also relate to technology, geography and bureaucracy.
There was a time when the peoples Europe and Asia believed that the world ended with them. To explore meant to send ships, if they had ships. Simply, there was a time before ships which greatly impeded travel which necessarily impeded communication and transportation. Fine, so ships came along. But they weren't really great ships at first, and definitely not technologically sound enough to travel the oceans and do so reliably. How could anyone navigate when the clouds hid the night stars? How could they accurately tell time, to measure distance, even if the stars were out? These missing technologies caused many adventurers to go missing therefore making communication and transportation unreliable.
So, fast forward a few hundred years. Now, we have accurate naval time pieces and GPS and satellites and cell phones and such. All this means is that we are better able to colonize farther reaches. But, we're still hindered by the very fabric of the universe itself. If we were to talk on the phone and experience a delay between speaker and listener, of more than a half second then we would become irritated therefore making it less likely that we would talk. It would take effort and patience and live communication wouldn't be spontaneous. It would become a series of reports, or a Q&A, and a pre-planned one. This delay in communication only gets worse as we start to imagine an empire that spans neighbors in a single solar system. Imagine a half hour delay between speaker and listener as we talked to a friend on the nearby planet. Now, imagine running a full parliamentary procedure that involved a teleconference with that neighboring colony. To be sure, that neighboring colony would need a political figurehead, like a governor, to oversee the daily operations of the business of the pan solar collective. Of course, now the local figureheads and colonies are being discussed, we come back to a very old problem in social segmentation... autonomy via self-reliance and self-identification (ie. Us vs them). Technologically, how do you slow this erosion of political influence? Increase technology or keep like minded colonists on your planets and rotate them out occasionally.
[Answer]
The splits in the Mongol empire were due to wars of succession amongst Genghis Khan's descendants.
Genghis Khan himself was a spectacularly effective empire-builder because of the basic principle followed earlier by the Romans. Once you've conquered your enemy militarily, you don't put your own people in place to rule them, and expand your laws everywhere. Or if you are going to put your laws in place, you make sure it's for things which everyone agrees on. (The saying goes that a virgin girl could walk unmolested the length of the empire, for example; at least until she met Khan himself anyway!) Instead, you put in one of their own people at the top of the local feudal hierarchy, and you let them run things their way. So long as they're sending you taxes and they aren't trying to rebel, you basically leave them to it. In your own administration (Khan was illiterate) you put people in place to do the stuff you can't do, and to run things day-to-day for you.
In other words, basically you invent middle management.
In the meantime, by the rulers having better conditions than everyone else, and trade being opened up, you make sure that all these new people *want* to be like you. The empire stops the neighbouring tribes from raiding you, and their armies nail any external tribes who were raiding you. The empire is *good*. Internal rebellion then largely dies out - for sure you'll get ambitious people playing politics, but you're not up against continuous guerilla warfare.
This is a model which was somewhat followed by the British empire too. Often not very well of course (Amritsar, for example), but it was the ideal which apologists like Rudyard Kipling hoped to aim for.
So how do you keep the empire from falling apart? Like I said at the start, the reasons most empires died was because of bad succession management. That's what killed Rome, not the Visigoths. If you put a structure in place which ensures competence at the highest level, and which provides a well-defined way to continue that, then your empire can in principle keep going for as long as the people being ruled are still happy to be part of the empire.
In medieval Europe, there's only one institution which was capable of that, and that was the Catholic Church. Of course it was fundamentally corrupt, and religion had become a weapon. But as an organisation, it ensured the Pope was either a competent politician in his own right or a weak puppet who could be controlled by competent politicians behind the scenes. For an empire, either solution works. Feudal hierarchies of inheritance simply don't work for maintaining an empire, because (as all the European countries found) you only need one bad ruler to ruin things permanently. As a nice side effect of this, you can then use religion to tie your disparate puppet states together, which works very well.
] |
[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.
The [Biblical story of the Flood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_flood_narrative) describes how over a period of 40 days the earth is flooded so that the peak of the highest mountain is 15 cubits/22.5ft/6.858m below the new mean sea level. The flood waters remain stable over for 150 days before being removed over the period of the following 220 days.
We could achieve such a flood by locating ice asteroids and depositing them on earth. We can assume that this is being done by beings with [hard-science](/questions/tagged/hard-science "show questions tagged 'hard-science'") based spaceships which may exceed our current capabilities even given an unlimited budget, but must still obey the laws of physics as we know them. For example, if a required ship or ship type has a very large and powerful engine capable of lowering the requisite ice/water at a safe rate, the effects of the drive on the environment must be accounted for.
1. How much water would be required to flood Earth to this level?
2. How could the water be deposited to do the *least* damage or alteration possible (including heating or cooling or altering Earth's rotation or axial tilt) to Earth - aside from flooding it, of course? We *could* simply drop the ice as a single bolide, but there would be a great deal of cratering and other damage, the avoidance of which is highly desirable.
3. Given that the water must be deposited over a period of 40 days, and assuming an effectively equal rate of deposition over the entire surface of the globe during the majority of this period (at least 99% of the 40 days, with *at most* the initial and terminal 0.5% of this time ramping up and tailing off the rate of deposition respectively), at what rate must the water be deposited, and how would that compare to natural rainfall?
4. How could that amount of water be removed over a period of 220 days, again causing minimal damage or alteration to submerged land features. The maximum preparation time for this removal of the excess water is the aforementioned 150 days, though it may be less.
5. What would the world look like after 150 to 370 days entirely under water? What species (animal, plant or otherwise) could survive?
[Answer]
Although I have my reserves about the Biblical Flood (I believe it was limited to Noah's region and did not drown the whole earth) but for the sake of answering the question, I would put my two cents about flooding the whole earth.
**Flooding The Planet**
As stated by user6760 in the comments, you would require a water volume of astoundingly astounding, brain-reeling amounts to bring about a flood of this extent. Here is how you can do that, provided you have endless funds and countless spaceships (not to mention a truly limitless volume of water).
Step-1. You will need to silently land (and then sink) 50 mega-submarines, running on nuclear fuel, to the depths of the oceans. Each submarine is capable of producing a temperature of 4000°C, but they are not active right now. Lets call these Dec Subs.
Step-2. You will need to station some 36000 spaceships at a distance of nearly 10000 km from earth, in a spherical shape. These ships are all "sitting" on the colossal ball of ice you are going to fire on the poor earth inhabitants.
Step-3. Start shooting ice-balls on earth from spaceships' cannons at medium velocities (~2km/s). Each ice-ball should be ~27 cubic ft in size (3 x 3 x 3 ft) and each cannon should be machine-gunning 10 such ice-balls per second. Keep shooting until all the block of ice is shot at the hapless earth.
Effects (phase 1). The ice-balls enter the earth's atmosphere like asteroids. Due to earth's gravity, their velocity would have further increased and reached an extent of ~5 km/s. Friction with air would trigger immense heat generation and the ice-ball would simply melt, then quickly boil and vaporize before ever hitting the surface. The inhabitants on the night-side of the planet will see a confounding series of flash streaks in the night sky. Notice that all this shooting will have very little to no effect on the overall temperature of the earth's atmosphere. The heat generated by friction would be compensated for, by the heat absorbed by the ice during melting and vaporizing. For extra precision, you can go on calculate the precise amount of heat generated and then initially place the ice-balls at a temperature low enough to compensate for all the friction heat.
Effects (phase 2). You are bombarding earth's atmosphere day and night, relentlessly with water vapor. What is going to happen now? What *could* happen in the water cycle of our planet? Excessive increase in humidity would lead to excessive amounts of clouds, leading to excessive amounts of rainfall ... What else did you expect? Thanks to you and your ice-firing, earth has become a water-planet now :(
**Removing the water.**
1- You will need to safely land some 1000 submarines on earth. Each of them is capable of generating a temperature of 4000°C in a closed space (they are running on nuclear fission fuel). Also, now activate the Dec Subs (remember we installed them deep in ocean depths before we flooded the planet?) All these submarines would be splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen by means of [Thermal Decomposition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_splitting#Thermal_decomposition_of_water). There would be another set of 1000 submarines which would be actively carrying out electrolysis of water. Together these systems would be decomposing some 14000 cubic meters of water per second, releasing the resulting oxygen and hydrogen into the ocean which would bubble out of the surface.
Hydrogen, being the lightermost of all gases would float to the top layer of the atmosphere where several spaceships would be ready to filter it out of the atmosphere.
2- Several spaceships would be floating on the surface of the giant ocean (disguised as giant floating chunks of polar ice), filtering out excess oxygen from the atmosphere so as to keep the 21% ratio. These spaceships would also be boiling and vaporizing a lot of the ocean surface water.
3- There is yet another set of spaceships which would be filtering out water vapor from the atmosphere and transporting it regularly out of the earth's atmosphere into the mother-ship.
The water surface would be falling down slowly, but gradually. You are going to have to run your water decomposition and vaporization ships' engines at really high levels to be able to transport back all the water vapor and water gases (hydrogen and oxygen) back into the space where it came from.
Congratulations (not)! You have flooded and killed 95% of all terrestrial species with only a "temporary" increase in ocean levels of the earth.
NOTE: Don't forget to remove your oxygen and hydrogen filtering spaceships after their job is done.
P.S. Also remove your ugly Dec Subs. The benthic creatures don't like them. Thank you!
[Answer]
1. How much water would be required to flood Earth to this level?
1.1. $V=\frac{4}{3}\pi r^3$
1.2. The radius of Earth at the equator is $6378.1$ kilometers. The radius of Earth plus the height of Mt. Everest + flood coverage is $6378.1+8.849=6386.949$ meters.
1.3. To make this easier, I'm going to assume that Earth is a perfectly flat ball. The volume of Earth, plus flood is $1091361395266.3 km^3$ or $1.0913x10^{12} km^3$. The normal Earth's volume is $1086831493929.56 km^3$ or $1.0868x10^12$. The volume of water to be deposited is $4.5x10^9 km^3$. For comparison, the largest body of water on earth is the Caspian Sea is $69,400 km^3$. All water on Earth is only $1.386x10^9$ cubic kilometers km3. We are adding 3.247x the amount of water on earth. Dang.
2. How could the water be deposited to do the least damage or alteration possible (including heating or cooling or altering Earth's rotation or axial tilt) to Earth - aside from flooding it, of course? We could simply drop the ice as a single bolide, but there would be a great deal of cratering and other damage, the avoidance of which is highly desirable.
2.1. Applying that much mass to the atmosphere in such a short period of time will surely alter Earth's rate of spin if applied to same side of Earth. To counteract this, we will need to send in the water asteroids in pairs, one to each side of the planet so that the impact of one asteroid is counteracted by the impact of the other.
2.2. (I don't have the math/science to figure out how much energy all these asteroids will add to the atmosphere on reentry or how much of that energy will be absorbed by the water in the asteroid itself. I definitely don't have the science/math to figure out how all that water will change Earth's albedo. Sorry.)
2.3. *Delivery Alternatives*
2.3.1. If the asteroids break up in the upper atmosphere and *handwave* turn into water droplets then they could come down as rain. However, this much water over land will cause significant flooding and erosion and thus fails the "minimal changes to landscape" requirement.
2.3.2. If the asteroids break up over the ocean and come down as rain on the ocean then there's not much immediate erosion. The oceans will just rapidly rise.
2.3.3. Aliens are "kindly" depositing water directly to the oceans without the heat of reentry.
3. Given that the water must be deposited over a period of 40 days, and assuming an effectively equal rate of deposition over the entire surface of the globe during the majority of this period (at least 99% of the 40 days, with at most the initial and terminal 0.5% of this time ramping up and tailing off the rate of deposition respectively), *at what rate must the water be deposited, and how would that compare to natural rainfall?*
3.1. To keep to the flood time line, we need to deposit $4.5x10^9 km^3$ over 40 days so that's $\frac{1.125x10^8 km^3}{day}$. [Annual global rainfall](http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2008/VernonWu.shtml) is about $\frac{5.23x10^5 km^3}{year}$ or $\frac{1433km^3}{day}$. Five orders of magnitude more rain will fall per day than usual. If average daily rainfall for the planet is $\frac{.27cm}{day}$ then a five orders increase would be $\frac{~270 meters}{day}$ or $\frac{11.25 meters}{hour}$. Done. Humanity doesn't last two days since [half the world's population](http://www.unep.org/urban_environment/issues/coastal_zones.asp) lives in coastal zones. There's no way to move that many people. Whether killed by weight of the waterfall rain or washed away with by the tsunamis, everybody dies.
4. *How could that amount of water be removed over a period of 220 days, again causing minimal damage or alteration to submerged land features.* The maximum preparation time for this removal of the excess water is the aforementioned 150 days, though it may be less.
4.1. Lots and lots and lots of energy. Getting water into Earth's gravity well is easy. Getting it out again under a [hard-science](/questions/tagged/hard-science "show questions tagged 'hard-science'") requirement is incredibly difficult. According to this [What If question](https://what-if.xkcd.com/7/) about getting just all the humans off earth,
> would tax our resources to the limit and possibly destroy the planet.
Lifting 3.247x Earth's original water supply just isn't going to happen without considerable external power sources. Thankfully, the Magratheans know how to do this kind of thing.
4.2. *Extraction Alternatives*
4.2.1. *What if Earth absorbed that much water like a giant sponge?* Huge earth quakes while the crust and mantle open up "pores" to make way for all that water to come in. Huge steam explosions when hot magma hits cold water. Making pockets to hold all that steam is going to make for greater instability later on....thus disqualifying this approach from the "change as little as possible".
4.2.2. The aliens who "loaned" us all that water now want it back. Using their "Infinite Energy Drives (TM)" they shuttle the water off the planet in their Big Gulp mega-barges.
5. *What would the world look like after 150 to 370 days entirely under water?* What species (animal, plant or otherwise) could survive?
5.1. *All the land animals that can't grasp onto floating debris are dead.* Drowned. Amphibious or aquatic species may survive if they can make it past the initial flooding though non-carrion food and shelter will be difficult or impossible to come by. Crocodilians may survive just fine as they are accustomed to long periods in the water and can eat carrion.
5.1.1. *Quick thinking humans may survive by making small rafts or piling into existing ships.* Food and water are going to be a really difficult problem as untreated fresh water doesn't last longer than 2 or 3 months. Not many ships carry sufficient food for a year for max crew and passenger loads. Starvation is the likely end for those humans who make it onto ships.
5.2. *Most sea life would die too.* Corral reefs host an incredible amount and variety of life, all of which depends on being in relatively shallow, sunny waters. With the addition of 8 km of water overhead, the increase in pressure plus the lack of sunlight would kill practically all coral reef life. Ocean vent life *may* survive the increase in pressure though I have no way to prove that.
5.3 *Vast majority of plant life is dead too.* Few planet species can survive long term immersion in salt or fresh water. And those that can, how well do they do under 6 to 8km of water and absolute darkness? Probably not well enough to survive a year down there. For comparison, the [Marianas Trench](http://geology.com/records/deepest-part-of-the-ocean.shtml) is 10,994 meters deep and hosts [some really strange life](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/what-lives-at-the-bottom-of-the-mariana-trench-more-than-you-might-think/).
5.4 I don't know the chemistry but based on the Marianas Trench article in 5.3,
>
> At the bottom of Challenger Deep, calcium carbonate shells are not an option because the intense pressure -- over 1,000 times sea-level -- dissolves the mineral.
>
>
>
[coral reefs](http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/corals/coral03_growth.html) as we knew them will disappear. Extending this dissolving behavior to other minerals, it may not be possible to avoid significant changes to the topographic features of Earth.
5.5 Depending on how the aliens remove the water and where they suck it up from, there may be significant erosion as the water drains away. Erosion characteristics of [megafloods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outburst_flood) will show up everywhere. To compound the problem, all the plants that used to prevent massive erosion are dead or simply disintegrated by water pressure.
(I'd like to thank [Wolfram Alpha](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/) for making some parts of the calculations far easier.)
[Answer]
**Nice planet, we will take it**.
*Self-reproducing sonde >unintelligible sound< detected a planet with a rich source of deuterium on the surface. Prepare landing and exploitation.*
We did not know from where they came. Some people recorded a great fireball appeared before the level rise but noone was sure.
*The sonde landed perfectly in the ocean and sank to the bottom. A self-replicating Neumann machine it extracted deuterium and tritium from ocean water for its nuclear fusion reactor. It started to build copies of itself from the resources on the ocean bottom. The numbers of sondes began to grow exponentially. Each sonde has a balloon which stored the hydrogen and oxygen removed from the precious deuterium and tritium. This balloons had liquid hydrogen and oxygen due to the enormous pressure on the ocean bottoms.*
The water rised, slowly but steadily. First it was seen as an unusual flood but the water did not recede.
*First one, then ten. Then hundred, thousand, then millions of machines. While deuterium was only a part of 15 in 100 000, it amounts to 25 billion tons. The land part of earth was flooded and the water pressure sank. Finally the pressure was not enough to hold hydrogen and oxygen fluid, it began to boil and violently expand. The steady increase was now replaced by explosive growth, causing megatsunamis.*
The water came and it took everything. Only people on boats survived, everything else died.
*The sondes were finally complete. For ecological balance it was programmed to reconvert the stored hydrogen and oxgen in the balloons back to water. Because deuterium was rare, the water decrease was in the vicinity of meters. Finally all sondes started and left the Earth to bring the precious deuterium and tritium back to their civilization. It was really very unusual to find such a rich resource of water, it was an opportunity to be not missed. Alas, earthlings, but you had no use for the deuterium, we are very sorry.*
[Answer]
This is not a complete answer but you may not need spaceships or asteroids since there is a lot of water [locked up in the earth's crust](http://www.livescience.com/46292-hidden-ocean-locked-in-earth-mantle.html)
>
> "Deep within the Earth's rocky mantle lies oceans' worth of water
> locked up in a type of mineral called ringwoodite, new research shows.
>
>
> The results of the study will help scientists understand Earth's water
> cycle, and how plate tectonics moves water between the surface of the
> planet and interior reservoirs, researchers say."
>
>
>
Another [link](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jun/13/earth-may-have-underground-ocean-three-times-that-on-surface):
>
> "After decades of searching scientists have discovered that a vast
> reservoir of water, enough to fill the Earth’s oceans three times
> over, may be trapped hundreds of miles beneath the surface,
> potentially transforming our understanding of how the planet was
> formed.
>
>
> The water is locked up in a mineral called ringwoodite about 660km
> (400 miles) beneath the crust of the Earth, researchers say."
>
>
>
No idea how you could release this water (or put it back), but it is there...
[Answer]
Ignoring the logistical problems with causing a biblical flood for a moment, lets answer some of your questions from some one who did a lot of the math and look at some consequences most people don't consider because their intuition completely fails them at these scales. All numbers and calculations pulled from this analysis: <http://www.holysmoke.org/cretins/fludmath.htm>
>
> 1.) How much water would be required to flood Earth to this level?
>
>
>
~ 4.252x10^9 km^3 or more than 4 billion cubic kilometers
Note that we currently only have 1.37 x 10^9 km^3 of water on the planet.
>
> 2.) How could the water be deposited to do the least damage or alteration possible (including heating or cooling or altering Earth's rotation or axial tilt) to Earth - aside from flooding it, of course? We could simply drop the ice as a single bolide, but there would be a great deal of cratering and other damage, the avoidance of which is highly desirable.
>
>
>
Even if you could drop it from just 10 miles above the surface of the planet in an already liquid state, the act of dropping that much water over the course of 40 days would heat the surface of the planet to ~ 1800K or ~ 2,780F. That's just hot enough to melt steel which melts at around [2500F](http://education.jlab.org/qa/meltingpoint_01.html) (since when is water hot enough to melt steel beams?). All the multi-cellular life on the planet doesn't need to worry about drowning, it will all cook and then melt.
And remember, this is all from just dropping it from a relatively low height of 10 miles. I haven't the faintest idea how that much thermal energy could be safely dissipated and removed. You'd pretty much have to deposit all the water not as rain but just directly onto the surface using portals, but this is hard science and any real wormhole would likely just tear the planet apart.
>
> 3.) Given that the water must be deposited over a period of 40 days, and assuming an effectively equal rate of deposition over the entire surface of the globe during the majority of this period (at least 99% of the 40 days, with at most the initial and terminal 0.5% of this time ramping up and tailing off the rate of deposition respectively), at what rate must the water be deposited, and how would that compare to natural rainfall?
>
>
>
From [1](http://education.jlab.org/qa/meltingpoint_01.html) for the amount per day, dividing by the surface area of the earth with wolfram alpha, the amount of rain falling would be about 2.5 kg/m^2 per SECOND. Doing some more conversion with wolfram alpha, it looks like the highest recorded rainfall rate is ~ 0.6 kg/m^2 per second. So, the rain will be about 4 times as heavy as the heaviest anyone's ever measured.
>
> 4.) How could that amount of water be removed over a period of 220 days, again causing minimal damage or alteration to submerged land features. The maximum preparation time for this removal of the excess water is the aforementioned 150 days, though it may be less.
>
>
>
I have no idea how either the adding or removal could possibly be accomplished. The previous calculation assumed dropping the water from a height of 10 miles. But to remove it, you'll have to spend the energy necessary to push all of that water to escape velocity which will be many orders of magnitude greater, and because of the law about each action requiring an equal an opposite reaction, shooting all the water back into space would probably end up depositing even more thermal energy back on the planet; baking it again.
>
> 5.) What would the world look like after 150 to 370 days entirely under water? What species (animal, plant or otherwise) could survive?
>
>
>
Forget the time spent underwater, probably only microscopic life and perhaps some critters in the deepest part of the ocean could survive the heat.
[Answer]
Terraforming would accomplish this. Assume first that the highest mountain is really very short, and that most of the earth is within 800 feet of the ocean's surface.
A few tectonic plate movements and the water level of the whole planet is now above the highest point of land. A few more, and the land appears again. The rain is merely a consequence of increasing the water surface of the planet by 50% suddenly.
Probably the easiest way to manage this is to start off with an Earth that has only one above-water continent. We'll call in Pangaea for simplicity. We don't want the inhabitants of Pangaea to know what's really going on, though, so we're going to arrange things on the other side of the planet. The easiest method is to simply start freezing the ocean. This will expand the volume of water, and eventually you'll find that you've frozen enough to submerge Pangaea on the other side - it's only 800 feet tall at the tallest.
While your earnest crew is awaiting relief from your wrath, you might as well spend the next 150 days rearranging Pangaea into a set of continents more to your liking. Take your time, you don't want any tsunamis capsizing humanity. Carefully placed massive underground explosions along the tectonic plate lines forming Pangaea should encourage them to move. Now, while it might be tempting to move everything all at once to its final spot, for now you only need to move them enough so they can't be seen over the horizon from each other, and to start the process of movement. Let the next few thousand years of occasional earthquakes finish the job for you.
Moving them will result in some mountains forming, and new geological features, just make sure your crew is out of sight of them and that all they see is water.
Then melt the ice you created on the other side, and direct their boat (ocean currents, maybe) to the mountain you plan on landing them on.
Keeping the continents far enough they can't be seen, but close enough to travel to means that the small band and their animals can repopulate all the contents over the next few thousand years through a variety of means. If you want to speed this up, form temporary bridges, like the one between Russia and Alaska, when a few tribes are on the move. As they separate, this will become more difficult and you'll end up with a great deal of variety in species.
While tectonic actions can be quite violent, doing them carefully, slowly, underwater should have much less impact on the passengers than shooting meteorites of ice at the earth and then trying to get rid of the additional water.
Pretty sure this would come in under budget, too.
] |
[Question]
[
So [Joe is no longer that much pennyless anymore](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/32084/353). He drank the potion, won the state lottery, and now is having much missed comfort in his life.
But he miscalculated the effects of the groundhog potion. It didn't wear off after a single day. Now he "groundhogs" every day around 3-7 times (he re-lives each day that much, then moves on to the next day).
Everyone else only remembers the last day Joe repeats (and anything that happens in this last repetition is kept in "permanent record"). Also, Joe has no way to know how many repetitions of each day he will get. His only clue that the calendar has turned is when external factors (his phone, radio, newspaper) change when he wakes up.
Joe is smarter than average, but he finds out that his "foresight", "luck", and the recent habit of finishing others' sentences or never being surprised by anything is making people around him suspect something.
Recently he was contacted by a shady character, who proved that he knew Joe was a groundhogger (he behaved differently on each repetition of the day of the meeting, from Joe's POV), and warned him that other groups were also closing in on Joe, and they did not have Joe's best interests in mind.
Actually that is completely BS (can I say BS here? if not, edit it out), if they get Joe, Joe will never again see daylight. Or something like that.
He also informs Joe that he is not the only groundhogger in the world, although there is less than a dozen alive.
Now Joe needs to live the most normal way possible, hiding the fact that he is a groundhogger.
The default answer of "hole up in your house" does not work too well the first few days he tries, because he often misses the day entirely, when the number of repetitions is low. He has no way of knowing how many times the day will repeat.
How can he still live each day over and over and act in the most normal way possible (in the least "groundhogger" way possible)?
[Answer]
My answer is the opposite of Andy's.
**Avoid all forms of routine.**
He has the income. He won the lottery, after all. He knows that this is happening and he can plan for a set of rotations of being a nomad. He can backpack all over the country and experience all kinds of different things, living life to the fullest and never knowing what'll happen next. There's nothing too abnormal about this lifestyle since it is after all a lifestyle for many.
He would have to travel to a different place even on the repeated days, though, and possibly use different forms of travel each time in order to evade other groundhoggers.
His routine:
* Monday - Is in Wisconsin. Travels to California.
* Monday - Is in Wisconsin. Travels to Minnesota.
Their routine:
* Monday - Is in Wisconsin. Finds him. Knows he's going to California.
* Monday - Is in Wisconsin. Goes to California, only to find he's not there.
This fits your criterion of "not very Groundhogger-like" because he's not sitting around finishing everyone's sentence and being in a perpetual state of future-omniscience. To all observers, he's another backpacking nomad. To the other groundhoggers who already know he's a groundhogger, he's a nuisance who's so difficult to capture it might as well be impossible.
With less than twelve other groundhoggers, it would be impossible for them to ever find him, and he still gets to live a very fulfilling life. If he still wants routine, he can still work online, using TOR and a VPN connection in order to evade a very determined hacker groundhogger.
[Answer]
I would combine a bit of the two given answers. As soon as he's told people are watching him, run. Follow Anathema's advice by running a different direction on each repeat day. Repeat this for several repeats. Move all his money to different accounts, ideally changing identity a couple of times (not sure how practical that is in real life). Grow a beard, or shave the one he has. Change his hairstyle. Possibly get cosmetic surgery.
After several months of this, set up roots somewhere. It really doesn't matter, just not near any place he's previously frequented. Ask a random 6-year-old in the airport what state they really like so it's not even his choice (repeating the experiment a few times if the kid points to his home state). Buy a secluded bit of land with a nice house on it.
Hire security guards. Each morning, call them and instruct them on a slightly different security routine so if you're found, the other groundhoggers can't take advantage. You're rich and paying them plenty of money to do whatever you tell them. If security catches someone multiple times, watch the video tapes. If they behaved about the same way both days, they're probably safe. If they obviously changed their tactics the second day, they're groundhoggers. Go back to step 1.
If you're going out for the evening, again follow Anathema's advice. Go to a different restaurant, even on repeat days (why would you want to go the same place all the time anyways?). Go bowling today at 4 PM. Go ice skating tomorrow at 8 AM. The only way anyone else is going to have any idea you've changed your habits is if you're involved in something big.
Basic chaos theory says 12 groundhoggers in the world are going to occasionally alter events on the other side of the planet by accident. There's no way to know if the different major event in Boston today (compared to repeat yesterday) are because one of them bought a stock that happened to send some guy bankrupt and he went crazy / drove home early and got into a wreck with a tanker / etc. Or if it was Joe. So as long as Joe stays away from anything major, nobody is going to notice he's there.
That said, he needs to keep track of the news. If the major headlines in the local towns are different several times, he should probably pick up and go back to step 1 just to be safe. Maybe move to a different country next time.
An alternate plan here is to track down other groundhoggers. If there are three or four living in one major city, he can blend in no problem. Any major events will be attributable to them, not him.
[Answer]
Set up a routine you do every single day, like an OCD thing.
Kind of like get up, get dressed, get breakfast, etc. Something he does that is always the same whether it's a loop day or a fresh day. Anything he only wants to do once he should do the first day, like read the paper. That way on the loop days it looks like he never reads the paper and no one will notice.
Edit: the point of the routine is to blend in by becoming part of the scenery.
"That's just Joe. He's in every day."
Past that try to avoid situations where you're going to be tempted to finish sentences.
After winning the lottery Joe doesn't need to work for a while, so then he should have a few random choices to pick from for the days activities.
That way he'll keep from repeating the same stuff over and over, and if he really enjoyed something he can do it twice.
Edit: Some activities would be skill classes, ones with minimal lecturing; art, welding, music, blacksmithing, etc. Things where repeating it over and over just make you better.
[Answer]
Get used to reading lots of books, solving lots of crosswords, etc. These are activities that you look exactly the same the first or seventh time you do them, and it doesn't exactly make you prodigious to read three times as much or solve a crossword three times as fast as others.
It's not quite as strong as "routine," but rather a day that looks different to you but the same to others.
It's probably easier to adapt to an introverted, solitudinous, but not quite hermetic lifestyle.
I'd be more careful with TV, learning foreign languages, etc., which take different people about the same amount of time. It's interesting if you know French, but might stand out if you know 7 European languages (without plausible cover).
[Answer]
## Fight back
I know you have different story in your head, but Joe should change his mindset. He has means and time to fight those \*@#! back:
1. **Obtain weapons**: As it looks like, Joe is from USA. So although there are going to be some gun regulations, my stereotypical thinking about USA tells me that this step should be not so hard (especially when you have money)
2. **Train self**: Again, Joe has time, means and motivation. Spend it on some training. Martial arts, Krav Maga, or something like that
3. **Observe your surroundings** Other groundhoggers should be recognizable, because they (hopefully) adhere to same rules as Joe does
4. **Learn to lie**: Basically most important skill. What happens if other groundhogger kills you on your "looping day"? I suppose you wake up the next morning. So if Joe is close to getting killed/detained, he should lie about the fact that he *knows* it is his looping day. That should buy him some time and give him some advantage
] |
[Question]
[
Visiting the Worldbuilding site plays with my creativity and imagination. So I am going to describe the dream I had:
I am member of a different (alien) culture, from a different star system. Also, I am an explorer. Living on the edge, adventure seeker.
The other day, I made a trip around the galaxy, but the hyperspace engine crashed in disastrous way (probably forgot to change oil after 20 000 light years). My on-ship computer did emergency hyperspace leave at the edge of star system, which can support my biological needs. Yes, you guessed it right, it is this star system.
I was able to send "SOS" signal and the rescue mission is on their way. But talk about "speed" ... it will take 30 Earth-years for the rescue mission to come and save me.
I told them, that my on-board systems claim, that it can keep me alive for 2 years, if I keep everything turned on; 5 years, if I keep living at the absolute power saving mode. To make things worse, my on-board computer realized, that Earth is survivable for me, but it has Humans. And they are on technological level high enough to ask them for "clearance to land."
Also, the rescue mission told me clearly: **Leave humans as least tech, as possible, do not allow them to disassemble your stuff to jump uncontrollably to higher tech level.**
I am in pretty bad situation, am I?
* I need to land on Earth. No other planet in the solar system is suitable for my survival
* I can land in a manner, that only the stuff I wear will remain. I can program my ship to go directly to the Sun, thus disallowing Humans to work on my tech
* I look like human, but for whatever reason, my skin color is blue. So, my looks could be comparable to how god [Krishna](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna) looks like
* I need to survive on Earth at least 30 years. Earth has compatible biosphere, however, I am not able to eat meat. I can eat only vegetarian.
* My biology is comparable to Human one. I need to sleep, to drink, to eat. I bleed and whatever can kill ordinary human, can kill also me.
* But I want to live
* I am not allowed to offer any technology advances to humans
* But legally, I am required to ask for landing
* My ship can communicate with Earth on the same manner as we are used to (I have radio antenna and my ship computer could decipher any communication incoming from Earth)
* I posses "universal translator" which can make me sound fluent English, German and (for no good reason) Czech
* I am "common traveler". So my knowledge about faster than light travel is the same, as your top from the head knowledge about nuclear power or cancer treatment.
* At this moment, my ship is on level of planet\* Pluto. It will take me one year to approach Earth
* Knowing Earth "countries" system, I am allowed to land if one country says "yes". In such case, if there is no common decision (100% votes yes on [UN](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations) level), I am allowed to stay only in countries which said yes to my landing
* I am law abiding citizen. Behaving against the law is not compatible with my morale. However, I will "push the limits" if my survival depends on it.
* My on board computer tells me, that most of Earth recognizes *today* as "20th December 2014"
**How am I going to make sure that humans will accept me and not kill me in next 30 years?**
Also, I do not want to end up in jail, or in Area 51 being interrogated about my glorious technology.
\*My onboard maps claim that Pluto is a planet
[Answer]
You are a representative of an alien species, with friends coming. No government will dare do anything harsh with you, because they don't want their first contact with an entire species to be "we killed your people"; that way tends to lead to wars and lots of death, considering the other species has a vast technological advantage.
Make yourself known to all the governments. Tell them you will be happy to answer questions without giving away your technology, but only if you're given fair treatment. In particular stress that you want to be available to all countries, no one country hogs your attention. This both keeps any rogue country from trying to hold you (not that most non-dictators would even consider it) and keeps countries from fighting over you.
Yes you won't give away technology, but you still have a lot to offer. Scientists would kill just to be able to ask you about your home planet and culture. The sociological answers you could give us are fascinating, and likely don't violate your oath to not elevate our technology. If your tell them about your species, the planet you evolved on, and how your species works that will keep them happy and busy for many decades. You make it clear you won't give away any real secrets of technology though from the beginning, in fact tell them you don't know any; I would go so far as to downplay your understanding of your tech some to make them think you are not useful.
Still, the point is countries would never try to force you into anything. It wouldn't get them much, and if all the other countries knew what they were doing it would end badly. Imagine any 1st world country holding your favorite musician hostage to hear them sing. The world would NOT take kindly to it. You've immediately got 10 times the celebrity of anyone else on the planet, and will be treated as such. You will get the royal treatment, and since you're known to all the countries and move between them you're safe from *the governments* causing you harm.
Now, the natives are another story. The realization that alien life exists is going to drastically change human existence. There will be all kinds of responses, from praise and near-worship of you to people who call you a demon. Like any celebrity your need your own bodyguards to save you from the crazy stalkers. Most of humanity will be fine, but there are some crazies everywhere, someone will claim you're using mind control powers to manipulate our president or something like that. Still, this won't be too much of a problem. All the governments will likely be willing to offer you some bodyguards. Celebrities have to worry about stalkers, but they don't usually get killed by them. You just won't want to walk around alone.
The more interesting story is what happens to Earth due to your existence. What kind of a figure head do you become to various ideological battles about humanity and its role in the universe? How many people try to make you love them so your tell your people to treat us well when they arrive (yeah, sounds like your people plain to ditch humanity after saving you, but humans will be insistent that they can open up contact anyways if they try hard enough). Others will hate you, others will see you neither with hatred or loathing, but still as a representation that their world view or philosophies must change.
You're Joe Schmo, everyday explorer, and suddenly you have an entire world's politics and intrigue surrounding you. How do you handle so many people treating you as the most important person on the plant (which ideologically speaking you arguably are). How do you handle someone bowing down to you and asking you to forgive how horrible humanity is and begging you to understand that we're trying to become better, like you're here to pass judgement? How do you handle hostile people accusing you of trying to manipulate the governments, or for refusing to side with their government like it's the only one that matters? How do you speak to those who lost their loved ones who ask you why you wouldn't share your technologies which could have saved them? What about the people who come to you in secret and offer you bribes and wealth if you just slip them some technology under the table? How do you keep people from trying to steal your universal translator, even temporarily 'just for a look'? When you get to earth and are asked to make a speech in front of all of humanity, the most important speech humans will ever hear, what do you say to the world? Do you get stage fright? How will you hold up under the weight of responsibility that the world is placing on an average guy who just had car trouble?
Survival won't be a problem, but you're going to live an interesting 30 years.
[Answer]
Make yourself known to the population in general. That way you avoid government keeping a lid on you. Hire an agent and make plans while approaching. Become the latest Reality TV star, just because you are a celebrity. No skill or talent needed, for a few years while the public is fascinated. Then, tell jokes based on your outsider perspective and years living in the TMZ crowd; get a late night talk show.
[Answer]
I suspect that whilst you still had knowledge of advanced technology such as Hyperdrives, you would not be killed. You would be too valuable.
That said, if you've only got 30 years to lives, the various governments of the world would become increasingly desperate to get the information from you.
I think it's unlikely you'd be allowed to mingle with regular people - at least for several years. You'd be analysed in-depth (at the least) for foreign bacteria or anything that could wipe out Earth's life. This depends largely on the country who 'obtains' you.
Ideally you'd need to land in a country who are fairly forgiving and value your life, but also in one with enough military strength that you couldn't be taken by force.
The human population would likely want to contact the race you can from. Would that count as giving them advanced tech?
Apologies for the scattered nature of this answer.
] |
[Question]
[
My [answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/367/75) to the question [Is there a scientifically sound faster-than-light travel system for a spaceship?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/363/75) involved an [Alcubierre-drive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive) starship.
However, that then got me thinking. What would an external observer see when passed by such a ship? When not operating, an observer would see just a stationary ship, but what about when it was operating and travelling faster than light? Would there be any redshift or blueshift? Would there be any distortion of the image, and if so, how? Would the drive field be visible? Would it look like it was going forward, or since it is moving faster than light relative to the observer, would it look like it was going backwards? Can you describe what you'd see from the moment it became visible to the moment it vanished into the distance, and how that would relate to its actual direction of travel?
Ignore the fact that a human observer probably wouldn't have time to see anything as it would pass too quickly to see, assume a theoretically perfect observer.
[Answer]
This is a fairly standard Special Relativity problem.
Not to grok all the maths here, what you need to account for is the individual photons coming from different points of the ship, travelling exactly at the speed of light towards the observer. Extra care for the moment the photon jumps the Alcubierre drive bubble frontier.
Since wavelength (or frequency) is affected by relative speed of the emitter and the observer, we should start thinking that a standard Doppler Effect belongs here, with reddish light for a receding spaceship and blueish for an approximating one, but that is not true. A ship in an Alcubierre drive bubble is not moving, the bubble itself is, so there is no wavelength change.
What is interesting is how the photons traverse the bubble. I think of that as a very extreme refraction, not caused by any material but by the metric of space-time being compressed or expanded.
Two effects there: one is that of photons coming from different distances (the standard effect that causes you to see both a complete side of a cube perpendicular to you and its front at the same side) and another caused by refraction, in which the photons' direction is being changed.
A summary would be that you see a very very distorted image, in true color.
[Answer]
A streak of light heading away from you in two directions.
There'd be no doppler shift, but, with more modern interpretations that'd take less than a universe-full of energy to achieve, the bubble is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Everything inside would look really small from an external observer.
You'd see the light receding from it after it passed by, of course, but it'd also appear to move back along the way it came because it was outracing its own light on the way to you.
[Answer]
An Alcubierre drive essentially creates a black hole like compression of space-time ahead of the ship, a white hole like expansion behind it, and a time space neutral area in a ring around it. So depending on the angle light hits it will make different things happen.
The area behind the ship will exert an outward curve on all light that approaches it but does not necessarily contain energy to emit; so, it may not be all that bright. At low speeds a negative mass would look like a white translucent plastic blob, but as the field intensifies, it will act more opaque and create a less scattered reflection making it more mirror like. In the case of FTL, moving faster than light means that no light can catch up from behind to reflect off of it and light it overtakes will not be able to be pushed away faster than it's being hit. This means light will radiate out like a cone from the rear field following a similar pattern to a sonic boom.
Light can move through the ring of normal space around your ship but it will all get swept up in your white-hole field meaning you will not be able to see the shape of your ship at all.
The positive mass in front of your ship will absorb all light; so, nothing to see there.
All these factors combined mean that you will only appear as the flat disc of light emanating from your rear negative mass field.
However, light emitted when you are closer to the target as you approached it will show up first followed by what was emitted earlier. This means you will see the "luminescent-boom" in reverse. You may also see the ring of light appear to be imploding faster than light if you are traveling between 1c and 2c. This is just an optical illusion caused by the light all catching up to you at about the same time. The faster you move, the slower the ring will appear to implode and the dimmer the light will be.
Last question is color. Despite many answers saying there will be no redshift, this is simply is not true. Red shift is caused because waves of light emanate in areas of space that are changing over time relative to your position. How that change happens is irrelevant since all light leaving your warp bubble will be moving at 1c. As a ship accelerates towards you approaching the speed of light, you will see it blue shift. As it hits 1c all light waves will be momentarily compacted into a super dense gamma ray burst, but what is cool is that once the warp ship exceeds 1c, it will actually red-shift even while moving towards the observer because the waves will be inverted and you and will only see a blue shift at certain angles where the relative angle of the ship to the observer creates a relative approach velocity between 0c and 1c
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1kFwB.png)
One last detail to be aware of is that by the time you begin to see this light implosion the ship has already either reached you or passed you; so, there is one additional phenomenon that is worth note: **What does an FTL ship look like coming out of warp right next to you?**
Remember the black hole in front of your ship? All of the light and matter it sucked up while in transit will be released when you come out of warp. Let's assume it takes time to slow down a warp ship as you lower your warp field. This means that moments before the ship arrives you will see a very blue shifted orb of light appear out of nowhere as the black hole stops being strong enough to hold all of its light. It will appear to be moving faster than the speed of light, but that is an illusion, once you see this, it means the ship is moving at less than 1c. You will also see a light ring start to expand out from it. This is the light ring I discussed before as it appears at less than 1c. As the ship slows down the blue shift will begin to fall off, and the light ring will begin to reverse direction and redshift as the inverted wave phenomenon begins to catch up to you as previously discussed. When the ship arrives, you will continue to see the still the imploding light ring fading off into the distance behind it.
[Answer]
I would say as an outside observer to the Warp field when it passes, the ship would appear to be very, very long stretching stretching across the entire 'compressed' space. If one mile is compressed into 30 foot, a 30 ft. ship would appear to be a mile long, since it will really be spanning that whole mile at the same time.
[Answer]
I think it would appear firstly on the closest point (or points if the travel path is not line but curve) to the observer (as the bounced light should arrive at first from this place) and than the image (or images) should split to two images traveling forward and backward on the travel path to the farest places of the travel path. Some images, if the travel path is curve, can merge on the further "travel path curve peaks" and than dissapear.
If the travel path is curve, ship images can appear one after another (it can look like there are more of them, minimum two in case of line, not curve path), based on the distance of the "curve peak" to the observer.
But this would still happeng at the light speed, so i assume it would be only some blink, if any. And after that the sound should come (if not in space).
From this blink can spread the engine emissions. But initialy they will have the speed of ship and slow down after a while.
[Answer]
If you can see clear through the [event horizon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_horizon) of the drive bubble then it's a basic relativistics question; answer the ship appears at the point of closest approach and then recedes from there in both directions at a great rate of knots, that's for a straight line transit which is most likely given the issues of turning at those speeds.
Now it may be that the event horizon is opaque or highly distorting in some way, in that case you still see an object appear at point of closest approach and disappear in two directions but now that object isn't a ship it's the bubble around it which may or may not be visible even at pointblank range and may have any appearance imaginable if it is visible.
[Answer]
I am not certain why, but I believe that any FTL technology , regardless of methods, would appear as small burst of gamma radiation , when 'moving' past outside observer. The reason is that space is not a perfect vacuum. There is highlighted diffuse gases, and dust. Alq Drive creates it's own tiny universe. As space is being warped/compressed, u compressed, the matter caught on the boundary Is effectively being accelerated to FTL velocities, as it is brushed with boundary layer of Alq. Drive. As nothing can go faster then light within a same frame of reference, gas and dust become gamma radiation. With Alq. Drive we need to be comfortable with concept of realized velocity. Written as V^r . Where 'r' is a multiple of speed of light , 'v'. V^1 is speed of light in a vacuum. V^2 is twice speed of light, and so on. Where r is smaller then 1 , then V^r is effectively sub light.
[Answer]
Nothing at all.
First the speed at which the Alcubierre bubble is travelling is such that it would be not be in visual range for long enough to see it. It takes about a 10th of a second to see an object. Even if you could see the object from 1000 miles away as it flew by at 182k(assuming just at the speed of light and not faster) miles per second it is only going to be in your range for less than 1 hundredth of a second. No where near long enough for your brain to recognize that the object was even there.
Second an Alcubierre drive works by taking the ship out of normal space time which means that as far as the rest of the universe is concerned the ship no longer exists in the normal reality. So there is nothing to see even if you did have the ability to detect and something moving at that speed.
] |
[Question]
[
I remember a cartoon about some spy guy. In that cartoon they did mass media by projecting from the surface of the earth to the moon in the night sky.
Would that technique be possible? Could an earth-like moon be used as a "blackboard" or is this scientifically not possible? How big would such a device / facility be?
I would like to use this as a one-way channel of podcast without the consumer need of a receiver.
Assuming clouds are not present of course.
[Answer]
# Projection is too expensive
Advertising on the moon using projection would be so costly that it is unlikely anyone would pay for the advertising space. However, there are other methods of advertising on the moon. The convenient fact that the moon is [tidally locked](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_locking) means that if you put a physical advert (rather than a projected one) on the moon's surface it would stay visible (at least during phases of the moon when the advert is lit by the sun).
# A physical advert
Setting this up would still be hugely expensive, but if the advert could be changed simply by sending a signal from Earth, then running costs could be minimal. If an organisation were to provide the initial huge investment, over time it could be paid off provided that the design of the system required minimal maintenance.
For example, a vast army of simple robots that can display black or white could be spread out across the facing surface of the moon. They require no power apart from when a signal arrives to tell them to change colour for the next advertisement. That minimal power requirement can be covered by solar cells and a small battery. Ideally the robots would be mobile so that they can move around to cover any dead robots, so that a small number of failures does not significantly diminish the image quality. This would also mean they could be sent in large batches and spread out autonomously rather than needing to be placed.
# The moon is black
Although the moon has a white appearance due to being only visible when brighter than the sky, it actually has a low [albedo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo) of about 0.12 (dark grey). This means that an area of the moon's surface covered with something white would appear from Earth as an area much brighter than the rest of the moon. Adverts on the moon would not just be pictures, but would be shining out brilliantly and difficult to miss.
# Colour and animation
The same principle could be used with robots able to display red, green, blue or any combination. This would allow for full colour photographs to be displayed on the moon. Since the image would only be visible when that part of the moon's surface is in sunlight, the robots would have power and could change colour periodically provided they were provided with a timer which could be synchronised when the next advert is transmitted. This would allow for cycling through the colours required for an animation, so full colour high definition video could be played on the moon. The frame rate would depend on the efficiency of colour change and the power provided by the solar cells, but the resolution could be as high as the number of available robots would allow. High definition doesn't take more power, just more robots.
# Difficulties
I've made this seem very easy (just expensive) but of course it is not quite so simple. The moon's surface is irregular and there may be parts that the robots cannot reach or regions too steep for them to settle on. The images may have gaps or lines where rough terrain or mountain ridges prevent colour being applied. Initial adverts may be coarse, low definition proofs of concept, with resolution being increased and gaps being filled gradually over time as investors are convinced by the influx of advertising revenue and start to invest more.
Of course covering the moon's surface would take a vast amount of material, but due to the relative brightness of white material (or red, green or blue material) against the dark grey of the moon's surface, leaving large gaps between the robots would just result in a less bright image. The colour would still be reasonably accurate as the moon's surface visible between the panels would contribute relatively little to the perceived image.
# Scientific funding
Part of the cost may be absorbed by combining the purpose of the robot army. There are plenty of scientific uses for a huge array of robots that can each point a sensor in a variable direction. A small robot with a large colour panel and a few small scientific instruments would appear exactly the same from Earth as if it was just a colour panel. Scientific funding may be provided to set up the robot array in return for control over what is measured, or sufficient investment may be gained based on the returns expected from selling both advertising space and time on the scientific array.
[Answer]
In general it would be cost prohibitive. while theoretically it could be done with enough power, (the moon is a reflective surface) the power needed would be extreme. Projecting when the moon is visible you'll need enough power to overpower the sun, since that is what you are seeing. Remember that even though the moon looks like a fairly small object in the sky you would need to broadcast against a screen bigger than the whole of North America. Because of diffusion, to have any chance of a clear picture you will have to use lasers just to get a clear enough picture to reflect back.
When the moon face is dark (earth eclipse etc) it would be slightly easier because you wouldn't be fighting against the sun, but the power out put would be immense.
According to Wiki "The intensity of moonlight varies greatly depending on the lunar cycle but even the full moon typically provides only about 0.2 lux illumination"
[Answer]
Off course thats possible, just a bit expensive.
The beamer kind of "projection" from earth is a bit difficult because of the energy consuming light source (especialy since light bulbs exceeding 60W are prohibited now, at least in Europe), but from a light intensity point of view, a similar idea is quite well worked out here <http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/> (if you have this kind of questions more often i also reccomend reading other topics there). So its possible although you need quite some windmills to power it all up, but then there is also the problem of diffusion trought earths atmosphere if you project from here, it would blur your image a bit, but some lowres logo, would definatly be recognizable. And as you already mentioned there is the problem of clouds every now an then (so dont put your projector lights in Netherlands).
The "easier" approach would be to make some shaddows, do you know how a dia projector works? If you manage to get a space ship at a strategic position between the sun and the moon, i think it should work, quite crisp. The only problem is the size of the "dia picture". Unlike the dia projector the lamp "our sun" is bigger then the projection screen (the moon), so getting closer to the sun, is not going to reduce the size of the necessary dia picture, since most of the light will go around the "dia picture", fading the effect of the dia picture. But if you would make a funny shaped kind of baloon, lets say the size of the earth (think about lunar eclipses), and you could manage to control its position, with respect to the sun, and the moon, you can definatly get your add up there.
[Answer]
If I may quote a (largish) bit of Heinlein:
>
> Harriman was shown into the office of the president of the Moka-Coka Company ("Only a Moke is truly a coke" — "Drink the Cola drink with the Lift"). He paused at the door, some twenty feet from the president's desk and quickly pinned a two-inch wide button to his lapel.
>
>
> Patterson Griggs looked up. "Well, this is really an honor, D.D. Do come in and—" The soft-drink executive stopped suddenly, his expression changed. "What are you doing wearing that?" he snapped. "Trying to annoy me?"
>
>
> "That" was the two-inch disc; Harriman unpinned it and put it in his pocket. It was a celluloid advertising pin, in plain yellow; printed on it in black, almost covering it, was a simple 6+, the trademark of Moka-Coka's only serious rival.
>
>
> "No," answered Harriman, "though I don't blame you for being irritated. I see half the school kids in the country wearing these silly buttons. But I came to give you a friendly tip, not to annoy you."
>
>
> "What do you mean?"
>
>
> "When I paused at your door that pin on my lapel was just the size-to you, standing at your desk-as the full Moon looks when you are standing in your garden, looking up at it. You didn't have any trouble reading what was on the pin, did you? I know you didn't; you yelled at me before either one of us stirred."
>
>
> "What about it?"
>
>
> "How would you feel—and what would the effect be on your sales—if there was 'six-plus' written across the face of the Moon instead of just on a school kid's sweater?"
>
>
> Griggs thought about it, then said, "D.D., don't make poor jokes. I've had a bad day."
>
>
> "I'm not joking. As you have probably heard around the street, I'm behind this Moon trip venture. Between ourselves, Pat, it's quite an expensive undertaking, even for me. A few days ago a man came to me—you'll pardon me if I don't mention names? You can figure it out. Anyhow, this man represented a client who wanted to buy the advertising concession for the Moon. He knew we weren't sure of success; but he said his client would take the risk.
>
>
> "At first I couldn't figure out what he was talking about; he set me straight. Then I thought he was kidding. Then I was shocked. Look at this—" Harriman took out a large sheet of paper and spread it on Griggs' desk. "You see the equipment is set up anywhere near the center of the Moon, as we see it. Eighteen pyrotechnics rockets shoot out in eighteen directions, like the spokes of a wheel, but to carefully calculated distances. They hit and the bombs they carry go off, spreading finely divided carbon black for calculated distances. There's no air on the Moon, you know, Pat—a fine powder will throw just as easily as a javelin. Here's your result." He turned the paper over; on the back there was a picture of the Moon, printed lightly. Overlaying it, in black, heavy print was: 6+
>
>
> *[The Man Who Sold the Moon](http://books.google.nl/books?id=_uZaAAAAMAAJ&q=heinlein+%22the+man+who+sold+the+moon%22+6%2B&dq=heinlein+%22the+man+who+sold+the+moon%22+6%2B&hl=nl&sa=X&ei=oo4uVOmtDM3KaJ6EgeAH&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA)* by R.A. Heinlein
>
>
>
So while [projecting an image on the moon might not be possible](http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/), there *are* other means of displaying an image on it.
[Answer]
As already linked, [Randall Munroe discussed illuminating the moon from earth](http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/) – it's not feasible.
[trichopax' proposal](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/881/9852) to cover significant parts of the moon in white (or even red / green / blue) is perhaps less energy-hungry, but I definitely wouldn't it consider *realistic*, either. The moon may not actually be as bright as it seems to us, but it's not *that* dark either. You'd need to cover a fraction of the surface that's comparable to the albedo. That requires at least something like [$500000\ \mathrm{m^3}$](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.03+*+moon+surface+area+*+wavelength+of+blue) of paint. Going by the price of [16M \$ to launch a ton to GTO](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/2015/what-is-the-current-cost-per-kg-to-send-something-into-gso-geo), even the cost of getting that mass up there would exceed [7 trillion dollars](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=500000+*+16000000$). (I'm only establishing lower bounds here; the real cost would likely be much, much higher).
Both ideas share essentially the same problem: most of the light ([99.97%](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28size+of+the+earth+as+seen+from+moon+in+radians%29%5E2%2F4)) would never hit earth, but scatter – lost in space.
That needn't be though! If you could directly beam from the moon straight to earth, you'd gain a lot. Doing this with lasers would again raise supply problems, but there's a much simpler solution: set up lots of *mirrors* to reflect sunlight. Because you're on the moon, these could be very lightweight – no wind and little gravity to keep against.
The challenge: the mirrors would need to be continually adjusted, to *track* earth. Every single one would need an actuator. But that would of course also mean you can change the advertised message very quickly.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm trying to work out the kinks of an ecosystem on a planet that is rather similar to Earth, but with some species of animal (both carnivores and herbivores) we aren't familiar with in our world. The particular species I'm working with right now are purely land-based creatures.
I've been able to use for example [What is the maximum size of a flying creature?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/946/29) and [What efficiencies make a realistic food chain?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/1148/29) to come up with reasonable amounts of food needed for each step in the food chain. (In my case, I started with the apex predators and am working my way down the food chain.) I'm also looking to real-world Earth species for inspiration. This is the easy part.
However, the numbers that come out of that is an amount of biomass. Borrowing from the accepted answer to the latter question to illustrate this:
>
> The 2.5 tonnes of mountain goats will, by the 10% rule, need 25 tonnes of plants to support them; the lemmings will need about 5.5 tonnes, and the songbirds will need about 1 tonne of fruits and seeds. Treating the 2 tonnes of insect biomass as roughly 100% herbivores means they'll need 20 tonnes of plants to support them (and everything that depends on them), for a total plant biomass of around 50 tonnes. (This figure does not generally include things like tree trunks, which are not easily consumed by herbivores.)
>
>
>
This leaves me with my problem. **Just how much *is*** (for example) **50 tons of the easily digestable plant biomass, *in terms of land area?***
The answer to that will obviously depend on the specific biome, and have a large fudging factor depending on the local environment. I'm hoping for an answer that gives some kind of conversion figure (like, pulling out of thin air, "approximately one ton per square kilometer") at least for each of tundra, northern latitude forest, mediterranean forest, and jungle. Because I'm shooting for reasonable rather than an absolute truth, something that is within half an order of magnitude or so is probably good enough.
Note that this is science-based, not hard-science, but bonus points for citations.
[Answer]
Much depends upon the specific animal in question, the fertility of the land, the weather, the regional climate, and other parameters.
## Lower Bounds
However, in the US Midwest, using modern agricultural techniques, in a typical year, and using high intensity farming, hobby farm enthusiasts estimate that it takes 1 acre of farm to support each person for a year.
Carrying capacity ($C\_{Human}=\frac{kg}{km^2}$)
Estimated human population ($P\_{human}= 1$)
Average Individual human mass ($M\_{human}=100 kg$)
Area of Cultivation ($A\_{\text{Farm}} = 1 Acre = 0.004 km^2$)
$$C\_{Human} = \frac{P\_{Human} \times M\_{Human}}{A\_{\text{Farm}}} \rightarrow \frac{1 \times 100 kg}{0.004 km^2}=24,710 \frac{kg}{km^2}$$
## Real Life Example
A real life estimate for natural carrying capacity could be derived from the bison population of the American plains prior to major European settlements.
Multiply by the population of bison by their average weight and then divide by the area of that region.
Carrying capacity ($C\_{Bison}=\frac{kg}{km^2}$)
[Estimated Bison peak population ($P\_{bison}= 60,000,000$)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Hunting)
[Average Individual Bison mass ($M\_{bison}=700 kg$)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Description)
[Area of Great Plains ($A\_{\text{Great Plains}} =1,300,000 km^2$)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plains#Extent)
$$C\_{Animal} = \frac{P\_{bison} \times M\_{bison}}{A\_{\text{Great Plains}}} \rightarrow \frac{60,000,000 \times 700 kg}{1,300,000 km^2}=32,307 \frac{kg}{km^2}$$
## Conclusion
These results are close enough to be mutually supportive. For North America Midwest and Great Plains regions, a carrying capacity of $25,000\frac{kg}{km^2}$ to $35,000 \frac{kg}{km^2}$ seems quite reasonable.
[Answer]
I'd like to preface this by saying: You really *can* find anything on the Internet.
Apparently the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) does routine studies on world biomass. From [this report](http://www.fao.org/docrep/013/i1757e/i1757e.pdf) (page 41), they state that the world's forests have an average of about 149 tonnes per hectare, with tropical forests reaching above 200 tonnes per hectare. "Above-ground woody biomass" was estimated for the assessment, defined as "The above ground mass of the woody part (stem, bark, branches, twigs) of trees, alive or dead, shrubs and bushes, excluding stumps and roots, foliage, flowers and seeds" ([source](http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/y1997e/y1997e07.htm)). Of course, not all of that is may be easily digestible (depends on species), but that seems a good place to start from.
At the moment, I can't find any data for other biomes. I'll keep looking and edit this for any more information I find.
[Answer]
Since you seem to have a value for tons biomass/ton goats. I'll work with goats values.
[Raising Goats](http://livestocktrail.illinois.edu/sheepnet/paperDisplay.cfm?ContentID=9808) (1 acre is about 4,047 m2)
>
> Poor ground may support 2-4 goats per acre while better pasture may be able to support 6-8 goats per acre.
>
>
>
[Mountain Goats](http://wdfw.wa.gov/living/mountain_goats.html)
>
> Mountain goats continue to grow through their fourth year achieving average weights of 125 to 155 pounds for females and 135 to 180 pounds for males.
>
>
>
From these values I'm taking 15 average goats to the tonne.
On poor pasture (they're mountain goats) you're going to need about 4-8 acres per tonne of goats or **1.66acres/tonne biomass**. Lots of rounding involved, I have no delusions of accuracy. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to convert the units into something sensible.
This would be the value for poor ground. It's reasonable to double it for more fertile areas. Though it's generally said that you need an acre per horse on good grazing. Goats are a special case, they'll eat anything.
You could also just measure the place in [Cow's Grass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement)
>
> In Ireland, before the 19th Century, a "cow's grass" was a measurement used by farmers to indicate the size of their fields. A cow's grass was equal to the amount of land that could produce enough grass to support a cow.
>
>
>
Now of course diet is a key factor in this. It's not about biomass per unit area, it's about useful biomass per unit area.
>
> If you are adding goats to cattle, you can add 1-2 goats per head of cattle. Goats will eat the weeds cattle dislike, thus improving the grazing for the cattle. [[source]](http://livestocktrail.illinois.edu/sheepnet/paperDisplay.cfm?ContentID=9808)
>
>
>
] |
[Question]
[
Although a question about [how large a living thing could be](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/1360/how-big-could-a-living-thing-be) has been asked and answered, would a being such as Mogo from DC's Green Lantern series be possible?
* Mogo is the size of Earth roughly
* can regenerate
* can breathe
* can gather energy from the star he orbits through via the flora on the surface
*Whether or not such a being could communicate or have some form of high intelligence is not as important as if one could even exist, but knowing would be nice.*
[Answer]
I think it would either need to be hollow, or grow in a tree-like fashion with living surface, and gradually compressing dead interior.
In case of solid interior, some serious heating would be involved, so this would need to be dealt with by the surface layer. It would probably have some kind of heat transportation tubes, which would lead to surface cooling structures, basically same way Earth animals need blood circulation for core temperature control. Perhaps it would be orbiting a gas giant with lots of methane and other organic chemicals in the atmosphere, and eating that. As long as it keep growing, it would get quite a lot of energy from the compression of the interior and possible chemical reactions happening with that, and perhaps some interesting details could be added about that. The big problem with this model is the mass. How would the organism get enough mass to grow that big? Another problem would be how it moves? There's no realistic method of moving a planet-sized body in controlled fashion with current physics, so the creature would need some kind of "organ" for reactionless movement (anti-gravity, warp drive, hyperspace jumps...). Anti-gravity could perhaps help make the interior alive too, if you really want that.
If it's enough for you that it just *looks* like a planet, then hollow interior seems easier to make plausible. It would need much less mass, and it could be filled with pressurised gas, possible even different gasses separated by thin membranes. Then it could also be light enough to use chemical propulsion to get around, presumably using the separated gasses in it's interior. So it would probably harvest gas from suitable gas giants, then use solar (or possibly planetary electromagnetic) energy to create chemical fuels from it, in addition to growing of course. Also the interior would create much more interesting environment, than the hot interior of the solid version above.
If you want a phase where it moves freely in a solar system, then it could first grow from a gas giant, perhaps migrate to another one, until it reaches full size, and then it stops growing and moves to orbit the star, living off its radiation, and probably proceeds to breed, if it isn't a one-of-a-kind creature. Here it should probably really be hollow one, becuase even if gas giants are big, they have only so much mass... Unless you make them capable of interstellar travel, in which case the warp or hyper space movement would probably be plausible.
---
A question about movement was raised in a comment. I think this is related to how the living planet came to be.
* If the planet was grown/built (not sure if there is a distinction at the required level of technology) by something, who brought the material for it, then it could have come to be without being able to move.
* If it grew on an ordinary, originally dead planet, and just somehow managed to grow into the planet all the way to the core. To make this plausible, you probably would want an old planet with interesting chemical composition, and perhaps have the creature grow down as the planet cools, perhaps helping the planet cool faster with "blood flow". But I am not sure if this is a "living planet", or just "a very big creature living in a planet", in case the distinction is important to you.
* Otherwise, if the planet grew by itself, I think it would need to move in order to be able to get the mass to grow in a controlled fashion. I think it would be very hard to make a normal planet formation directly produce a living organism, as it is so violent, with so much heat released.
* As an exotic alternative, I could see how the planet would launch drones of some kind, which would seek out for example gas giant atmosphere, grow there, then return to the planet and bring new mass to it. But getting this growth method kick-started naturally is a problem, I think.
If you manage to solve the the problem of how the planet came into being and grew (or just wave it away as complete mystery, but is that "World Building" any more?) without being able to move, then it existing without ability to move would not be much of a problem.
[Answer]
Sci-fi already invented such planet [Solaris](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_%28novel%29). Planet mostly covered by thinking ocean, as single organism.
How this might happen? Easy.
Life appears in ocean, as usual, and cooperates. Instead of many small organisms, there is one big one. One living brain.
Maybe life was created only at single place, single instance, and all living cells recognize they are identical clones so they cooperate with "themselves".
There would be no oxygen in atmosphere (because when cyanobacteria started photosynthesis, oxygen killed competing organisms) but living ocean can capture energy from the sun (by photosynthesis) and use it directly. Could create huge magnetic fields which may have effect on solar wind. Could invent cool stuff. Move its solar system using space-time warp, etc. It is **really** huge brain, as you can see.
Even could reproduce by warping close to compatible planet and spew big enough chunk of itself into its ocean.
It **starts** as Type I on <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale>
Not sure how much deeper I should dig.
We should only hope that it is NOT a reality somewhere in galaxies because it would obviously be able to colonize many planets. Also it is substantially less dependent on terra-forming, because:
* does not need oxygen
* is very patient, has unlimited lifespan to learn, practically unlimited memory to remember
* for it, it is easy to modify suitable planet by adding iron to core and water to surface by bombarding a planet with comets/asteroids (and wait until it cools)
* after such terraforming, it needs just split part of the ocean and deposit it to the new planet. We have a clone!
So it can climb up on Kardashev scale if it decided it is fun thing to do.
Would make a terrible enemy.
In the book, "living ocean" was able to read and influence electromagnetic patterns in human brains, read feeling, dreams and memories, and create objects and persons encoded in brain, which were **exactly** as you remembered/dreaded. Extremely hard to fight.
Full disclosure: I never seen new movie Solaris (2002 remake - "Love in outer space"), because I was told to go to screening of original movie instead, which is rather good.
[Answer]
**TL;DR: Yes, it's possible**
**Summary:** Yes such a planet is possible. The main part that is required is plant-like extensions that perform photosynthesis. But otherwise it works, without gravity an organism can grow to a large enough size to hold an atmosphere.
So first we need to get a list of what life requires in a planet:
## Energy Source
All planets with life need to have some sort of energy source. The most common one is a star, but probably there are other options. The energy source needs to be capable of bringing the planet up to the proper temperatures for liquid water (see below).
## Liquid water
This one is quoted a lot because it's rare. It's also integral to almost all life on Earth. For a planet to have liquid water, it has to have a certain range of temperatures (namely somewhere between 0 and 100 C) on a significant portion of the planet. The range a planet must be from its star to have liquid water is called the Habitable Zone. So for a planet must be consistently within the Habitable Zone for it to be inhabited (makes sense, no). There also needs to be water on the planet in the first place.
## Mass
A planet generally needs a certain mass to sustain life. There are two main reasons for this. First, a larger mass more easily holds an atmosphere, which is necessary for earth-life. Second, a small planet generally doesn't have much geological activity. Small planets have a small diameter, and they lose most of the extra energy obtained from formation very quickly. This loss of energy results in a lack of geological activity. Though, there can be other options to produce this geological activity. For example Jupiter's moon Io has lots of geological activity because of the energy it produces orbiting Jupiter.
Another side effect of having a larger mass, is that most larger mass planets have an iron core. This iron core allows the planets to produce a magnetic field, which protects the planet from stellar wind and cosmic radiation. Mass isn't the only thing that makes a magnetic field, but it does effect the process.
## Orbit and Rotation
For a planet to support life it has to have a "reasonable" orbit. If the planet swings too far out from its star, the its temperature will drop to far to support life. If the planet swings too close, all life would be killed by heat. Even the planet changing the length of its orbit but still staying in the habitable zone could be dangerous for life, unless the change was slow or predictable. Life can adapt, but only adapt so fast.
Rotation also plays a big effect. Rotation controls night and day cycles, and needs to be balanced in order to prevent the planet from heating up/cooling down too fast. The planet also needs to rotate on a tilted axis. First, this produces seasons, causing biological diversity. But a tilted axis also spreads weather around, helping to regulate the temperature of the planet.
## Other Factors
Other factors in what in a planet needs to be habitable include the right elements on the planet, finding these elements in the right places, and those elements being released at the right time. The most common elements in life are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. These are also some of the most common elements on Earth, and this helps make life possible.
It is also important to remember that organisms can live in strange environments. Organisms can flourish in places without oxygen, under high pressures, and in volcanic bits of earth in the poles. And that's just on Earth.
For a full description on the factors of a habitable planet, see the [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_habitability#Mass) article.
# Now for How the Organism Works
First, I'll address what the organism needs to be a habitable "body."
1. Energy Source: That's easy, the planet-organism would be orbiting a star.
2. Liquid Water: Likely these planet-organisms would be imparted with a large amount of water at birth. Their parents would likely harvest it from nearby planets with liquid water on them. The planet-organism probably would have a means of propulsion, so it could keep itself in the habitable zone
3. Mass: These things can grow to any size you want them too, their is no constraint of gravity. As for how the planet-organism could stand its own gravity, it would either be need to pretty low density, or have very strong supports (see Final Notes section). [This question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/1359/how-do-i-prevent-my-turtle-from-collapsing-under-its-own-gravity) does have some information, but not a lot. A magnetic field is harder, but who's to say the organism couldn't have a magnetic in it's body (see Homeostasis)?
4. Orbit and Rotation: The organism could easily control its own orbit and rotation if it has the ability to move (some means of propulsion).
5. Finally the organism would likely be born with the right amount of chemicals for supporting life. Adult organisms would gain these chemicals by eating asteroids or eating them off existing planets.
I haven't focused a lot on how the organism fit a habitable planet because you can make anything you want. The problem is fitting a habitable planet and fitting the constraints of life. So on to how such an organism could live under the constraints of life.
## Homeostasis
All organisms need to maintain a stable internal environment. Such a large organism would need a lot of power to keep itself heated and going. Fortunately, it would be orbiting a star, some of the ultimate source of energy. The plants on it would provide much of its energy, and possibly some energy would be absorbed directly through the skin. The also needs to be insulation to keep it warm. The way this organism would do that is to have an atmosphere. Similar to how earth maintains livable temperatures, this planet-organism would use gases to keep it and its surface warm. The poles would be cold, but likely the organism would have extra insulation there (insulation under the skin, like fat, not extra atmosphere).
The biggest problem with maintaining homeostasis is the organism having a magnetic field. One option would be having the organism have a large generator in it's center, producing a magnetic field. Such a generator would consist of two magnetic somehow revolving around each other. This revolving could be caused by the rotation of the planet. Another option is having the organism have an iron core. This is less likely, because the iron core needs to be liquid, and very hot, and the organism also has to obtain large amounts of iron. The final possibility for a magnetic field replacement is that the organism has some ability to repel solar winds, outside of a magnetic field. This method would be some sort of special organ, or possible a special element in the atmosphere. But by far the best option would be for the organism to have a similar ability to the electric eel. This organism would be able to control electricity and have it move around and around it its body, forming an electro-magnetic field. [This answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/2771/81) has a few more details.
## Organization
Living organisms need to be organized into cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems. This isn't hard to imagine even in a massive organism like this one. There would just be a lot more of everything.
## Metabolism
This organism would likely live off of itself. Animals living on its surface would produce the necessary gases in the atmosphere for it to metabolize. As the question states, the actual energy would come from "plant-like" substances that are actually part of the creature itself. But these plants could perform photosynthesis.
One problem is how the planet could obtain materials besides the common nitrogen, oxygen, carbon-dioxide, and hydrogen. Likely this organism would be engineered in such a way that it needs minimal amounts of other elements. But it's main source of minerals would likely be asteroids, comets and other wayward cosmic bodies. When these objects come into the planets line of orbit, it ingests them and uses their minerals. Another option is that there is another space organism that exists in symbiosis with the planet organism. This organism needs the atmosphere of the planet organism to metabolize. But it doesn't have life on it, hence it can leave the habitable zone for relatively short periods of time. During this time it can consume bits of planets and asteroids, bringing back materials such as water and minerals. Anything the symbiotic organism doesn't need, is ejected onto the planet organism via waste. Then the planet-organism can absorb the minerals through the plants on the surface.
## Growth, Adaption, and Response to Stimuli
All organisms need to be able to grow and develop, adapt to the environment, and respond to stimuli. I'm not going to spend much time on these, because these can be configured however you want them to be. But in brief:
The organism would be born small. It would grow and develop over time, likely relying on the parent for basic material and atmosphere (see Reproduction). The planet-organism would be able to adapt to its environment. Along with responding to stimuli, this would mean things like moving its position to stay in the habitable zone, changing how it behaves depending on what organisms are on it, and other various things. These three features could easily be handled within the parameters of such an organism.
## Reproduction
Reproduction may be the hardest thing about these organisms to make realistic. First, I want to talk about sexual reproduction. The major problem with sexual reproduction is that it requires two of the organisms. These organisms would generally be a danger to each other because they would throw each other out of orbit. To be orbiting the same star as another organism would require more energy because they organism would need to adjust it's obit at each pass. If these organisms did reproduce sexually, I'm guessing they would stick together in pairs, orbiting the same star (though not necessarily next to each other). Likely the actual transfer of gametes would occur outside of the organisms bodies (i.e. in a tube in space), because they are two big to get really close.
Another possibility is asexual reproduction. If this is the case, the organism would immediately start with a zygote, which would start growing inside a womb-like area of the organism. At a certain point, the baby would leave its parent and exit in to space. At this time it would be very small. It would likely live off of its parent while it grew. Possibly it would be able to leave the habitable zone for short times to harvest minerals and water from nearby planets and asteroids.
When the baby had grown to a large enough size, it would separate from its parents, taking some of their organisms with it. See below for more info.
## Final Notes
When these organisms left a star, their plant like extensions would be come useless so would be killed. They would die on the planet. But the organism needs animals to produce carbon-dioxide so it can photosynthesize. So likely it would have some special place to harbor animals while it passed through space. This place would produce glucose and oxygen for the animals to survive until they could be released to the surface.
A baby organism would receive animals from its parents. Likely the organism would lay on the surface of its parent, with the special cavity shown above open. When many organisms wandered into the place, which would be a good place to live, then the cavity would close and the baby would be on its way.
When the organism traveled through space, it would hibernate, using as little energy as possible, because it needs to store energy to be able to grow planets once it reaches a suitable star. As it travels through space, it may be that the planet-organism hits asteroids and comets. This would be stuck to the organism's surface, and could be absorbed when it pulls out of hibernation. So baby organism (when fully grown), could get some minerals and water this way.
The plant like structures of the organism *would* produce fruit, though not for reproduction. This fruit would solely sustain animals on the planet's surface. As I said before, the animals are necessary to produce carbon-dioxide for photosynthesis. This is another symbiotic relationship.
As for anatomy, much of the organs and things would be in the center of the planet. The surface would be a rocky, dead "skin." Possible in the center, where gravity is highest, there could be some sort of "furnace" for extra energy, but I think this unlikely.
For the organism to support itself, it is going to need very strong "bones." It might need to have a dead or hollow center, possible filled with iron (to help generate a magnetic field). The bones would be frequent and very large, all cells would attach to the bones, to provide support. The bones could also serve as a circulation system, getting smaller as they go deeper into tissue. If the circulation system was providing significant support for the entire organism, maybe it could better support it self. Of course there would need to be someway for the materials to leave the "blood" (or phloem), so the bones would have to be very porus.
[Answer]
Let's say you have a planet pretty similar to Earth. It resembles Earth at around the time life is thought to have begun - except that it's a bit less hostile to life. The atmosphere is mainly carbon dioxide and nitrogen, the oceans have plenty of water, and the tectonic plates are relatively stable. No life has developed yet. All in all, a good place to be.
Now take a seed - never mind how it gets here; you can invoke [panspermia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia) if you want - and put it in the middle of a small meadow near a river. The sky opens up, and rain falls, and as the seed, engulfed in the dirt, receives that water, it begins to open up and grow. It slowly stretches out tendrils toward the river, until it has a permanent source of water. It has carbon dioxide in the air, plenty of sunlight, and some organic nutrients and minerals in the soil. And so it grows.
Our little friend resembles an [aspen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen). It slowly grows into a small tree, drinking in nutrients. Eventually, it does something aspen sometimes do: it grows a [clonal colony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonal_colony). What appears to be a grove of trees forms, although, contrary to what it might seem like, it is simply one organism (like the [Pando](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)) grove). Its root system connects all the trees, and they are genetically identical.
Imagine the colony spreads. It couldn't spread too far north or south, because plants are really only fit for a single biome, and adaptations in a single tree would mean that tree has become a different creature.. But it can spread across the globe, eventually becoming part of an unfinished ring. If the continents of the planet are all connected in just the right way, it could actually fully encircle the planet. This world is now dominated by this organism. Thus, you have an incomplete version of Mogo.
There are some obvious limitations (I already mentioned that it would have a limited range). One is that the plant would have to deal with the fact that the atmosphere of the planet would be becoming increasingly "polluted" with oxygen, which would leave less carbon dioxide for it to feast on. Perhaps we can avoid that hurdle by imagining it has another energy-generating mechanism that takes in oxygen and lets out carbon dioxide. Unlikely, but possible.
Would this plant "be" the planet? I doubt it; there is still far too much material on the planet that it could never assimilated. But it would still be pretty darn large, and would, from the perspective of any extraterrestrial visitors, *be* the planet.
[Answer]
One of my favorite examples of this was from [Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri).
In it, humans land on a planet where the primary form of flora was something called Xenofungus. It was bright red/pink, and it grew in huge fields of these little tubular sprouts. Most notably, it had a defense mechanism like an electric eel: it could generate electrical shocks against anyone who touched it.
Over the course of the game, you eventually begin to discover that the xenofungal blooms across the surface of the planet are beginning to form a neural network: patches of xenofungus would generate electrical impulses, which would travel along the branches toward other blooms, and so on, mimicking the functions of neurons in the human brain.
By the end of the game (if you've decided to go this route, it is a strategy game after all so the storyline is kind of optional), the xenofungus blooms reach a critical mass and the entire planet achieves consciousness, like a single giant brain spread across the surface of a world.
The planetary consciousness couldn't move the planet, the way Mogo can, but it could grow and heal from wounds, "breathe" in the sense of regulating the atmosphere, and the xenofungus drew energy from the sun to power their growth. It would exist only toward the surface, not deep into the core, but it would be a single planet-spanning organism rather than a planet-spanning colony of individual organisms.
[Answer]
As several people responded in comments, the Earth is already considered to be a living organism as a whole by the [Gaia Theory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis) and related thinking, such as [transpersonal psychology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpersonal_psychology), and evidence that both [plants](https://books.google.com/books?id=D5rFa6QG0kcC&lpg=PP1&dq=the%20secret%20life%20of%20plants&pg=PT34#v=onepage&q=the%20secret%20life%20of%20plants&f=false) and [animals](https://books.google.com/books?id=EfwViUTgmi4C&lpg=PP1&dq=dogs%20who%20know%20when%20their%20owners%20are%20coming%20home&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=dogs%20who%20know%20when%20their%20owners%20are%20coming%20home&f=false) have long-distance telepathic connections.
The Earth regenerates, breathes, and gathers energy from the stars. Whether you consider humans intelligent representatives attempting to communicate with others, or a dangerous cancer threatening the life of its host, is up for debate.
] |
[Question]
[
What I've found out is that Ammonia has (in the relevant temperature/pressure regime) cubic crystal structure. But what would that mean for ammonia snowflakes? Would they have fourfold symmetry? But then, you can also find threefold symmetries in a cube (just look at it from the corner), and cutting a cube in the right way you even get a hexagon.
Also, I don't know what causes water snowflakes to be planar rather than three-dimensional structures. That mechanism might well be special to water, so maybe ammonia snowflakes wouldn't be planar at all?
Or maybe ammonia wouldn't form snowflakes, but only solid crystals? That would mean that on an ammonia world, it would hail, but never snow.
So does anyone know what ammonia snowflakes would look like, or if they could exist at all?
[Answer]
Expanding on [Twelfth](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/288/twelfth)'s answer:
It is still possible to see snowflake-like behaviour from ammonia in the right conditions.
In low/zero gravity situations, ammonia crystals would float down in a similar way to how water snowflakes fall down on Earth.
On the ISS [when there was an ammonia leak](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/10050786/Spacewalk-to-fix-ammonia-leak-at-International-Space-Station.html), the astronauts described the ammonia crystals as "snowflakes".
Those "snowflakes" would probably not look any more impressive than carbon dioxide "snowflakes":
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n9gVk.jpg)
>
>
> Source:
> <http://www.exo.net/~pauld/Mars/4snowflakes/martiansnowflakes.html>
>
>
>
Not very impressive snowflakes, huh?
Now, if we were talking about ammonia based substances rather than pure ammonia, ammonium chloride makes pretty nice snowflake-like crystals:
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eBtQy.jpg)
>
>
> Source: [Wikipedia: Ammonium Chloride](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_chloride)
>
>
>
They're not as nice looking or uniform as water snowflakes, but it's something.
[Answer]
Gonna give a shot at the answer, though this might make a better comment...my university chem is a bit out of date.
The answer is I don't believe it's possible...one of the unique aspects of water is its ability to expand when freezing creating a less dense ice. This expanding while freezing is a key component to the snowflake structure you see. Additionally, the expansion of this snowflake adds to its surface to mass ratio, allowing it to 'float' seamlessly down to the surface.
NH3 (ammonia) forms into its crystalline state by seperating into alternating layers of NH4+ and NH2−...it would form by contracting creating small crystalline strcutures (could be a hexagonal structure given the way NH3 bonds). The result would be tiny pieces of salt-like crystals falling to the ground as ammonia hail (ice shards?) as opposed to what we would recognize as snow.
[Answer]
I cannot pretend to give an authoritative answer, but the nature of snowflake formation should be kept in mind. The canonical snowflake shape (approximate hexagonal symmetry, flat plate, branching) is actually produced in only a small portion of the possible temperature/relative humidity phase space.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gxapb.jpg)
Without a very detailed analysis, and probably a great deal of experimentation, it's simply not at all clear how ammonia snowflakes would form.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm trying to work out what the sky looks like on an Earth-like moon, in particular the length of day and apparent size of the other celestial bodies: the **gas giant's size**, the gas giant's **other moon's size**, and the relative **size of the star**). I'm kind of stuck on the numbers here. Maths is my weak point, so I stole Artifexian's formulas and tried a simulation on Universe Sandbox a little while ago, but it wouldn't tell me the length of day on the moons. I was left having to use my brain, but all I got was an internal blue screen.
Can anyone help me?
I'm gonna give all my numbers down below, but here's the setting and the result I want:
**it's a system with two tidally-locked Earth-like moons orbiting a massive Gas Giant**.
* How short can **Moon A's orbit** around its Gas Giant be? I.e., how short can its days be? I'm ideally aiming for 28 hours, but up to a week would be okay-ish (both sound extremely fast to me though. Jupiter's moons can go that fast, but they don't look very hospitable to me).
* How can I have people from Moon A sometimes **see Moon B** from close enough that you can see its cities lit at night? Is it even possible?
* How big do the **gas giant and the star** it orbits around look?
---
## Detailed info:
So this gas giant (8.3 Jovian masses) orbits a K-type star of 0.8 solar masses.
*(Though a friend told me that it'd be easier if the gas giant orbited a star hotter than the Sun, maybe a class F of 1.4 solar masses I don't really care either way. I've put in the numbers for both)*.
At least two of these moons are habitable.
Moon A is **tidally locked** and fairly **close to 1 Earth mass**. I don't really care for the mass or situation of Moon B as long as it's habitable. Both are on inclined planes, just because it's more believable.
Now, I'd also like our gas giant **AND** Moon B to be visible to the naked eye from Moon A's sky. The gas giant should appear to be at least the size of Earth's moon, and Moon B's surface should be visible too, because I'd like for people on Moon A to see the cities lit at night on Moon B.
Due to the tidal locking, the gas giant would have its different phases during the day and appear full during the night.
*(Maybe relevant?)
Both moons would have been terraformed to be habitable for humans, though Moon A already had somewhat primitive but intelligent forms of life (most of which were killed during the terraformation process).*
---
## The numbers:
**If K-type Star** (all numbers are relative to our Sun unless indicated otherwise)
* Star mass = 0.8 Sun masses
* Diameter = 0.8477
* Temperature = 0.8934 = 5156.7 Kelvin
* Lifetime = 1.75
* Habitability = 1.7155 AU
* Goldilock zone = between 95% and 137% of 1.7155, so between 0.68 and 0.7 AU = between 10 474 and 541 429 km
**If F-type Star**
* Star mass = 1.4 Sun masses
* Star luminosity = 3.8416
* Diameter = 1.28
* Temperature = 1.185
* Lifetime = 0.43
* Habitability = 1.96
* Goldilock zone = between 95% and 137% of 1.96, so between 1.862 and 2.6852 AU
---
**Gas Giant**
* Gas Giant mass: 8.3 Jovian masses
* Orbit: 0.68 AU from K-type star or 2.1 AU from F-type star? (I just went through the forum and learnt that tidal locking helps heat a moon, but I don't know how to account for that in the numbers)
* Length of orbit: No idea. Sandbox Sim won't tell me, and whenever I accelerate time in the simulation it sends my planets flying off into deep space...
* Velocity: 48.4 km/s (according to my simulation)
---
**Moon A**
* Mass: 0.8 Earth mass
* Orbit around Gas Giant: 23.8 hours in my simulation (which sounds AWEFULLY fast! Is that even possible?)
* Velocity: 45.1 km/s
* Semimajor axis: 58 007 km (periapsis 24000; apoapsis 92000)
* Eccentricity: 0.59
(Inclination 77.44°; perihelion 178°; node 156°; mean 138°)
---
**Moon B**
* Moon B mass: 1.4 Earth mass
* Orbit around Gas Giant: 2.40 days in my simulation.
* Velocity: 60.5 km/s
* Semimajor axis: 1.05M km
* Eccentricity: 0.061
(Inclination 0.40°; perihelion 305°; node 174°; mean 177°)
---
How many of these numbers seem off? I could send the Sandbox file if it helps, though I woudn't be surprised if the sim's rubbish too.
Many, many thanks!
And sorry for the terribly messy post. (No wonder I kept sending my moons flying in Sandbox Simulator: I can't even keep my sentences in orbit.)
[Answer]
You list a semimajor axis of 58007 km. This almost certainly won't work, as semimajor axis is measured from the center of the body, and this gas giant will have a radius comparable to Jupiter. **So Moon A will be *inside the planet.***
However, 580,000 km is the right semimajor axis for the given orbital period (23.8 hours) and the given masses (8.3 Jupiter masses and 0.8 Earth masses). So assuming that, you're going to be roughly 7 or 8 planetary radii away from the planet - so it will look **absolutely huge** in the sky. (Earth is about 220 Moon radii from the Moon, and about 220 Sun radii from the Sun, which is why they look about the same size from Earth.) There's nothing like this in human experience - even the Earth as seen from the Moon by the Apollo astronauts doesn't compare, it was only about 4x the apparent diameter (16x the apparent area) as the Moon is seen from Earth.
**Since Moon A is tidally locked, the gas giant will always be visible on one side**, and would be incredibly bright -- there would be darkness only when the Sun passed behind the gas giant. If the orbits were arranged properly (the moon orbit around the gas giant was 'face-on' as seen from the Sun) this would (unless I've made a mistake) never happen, and inhabitants of the 'gas-giant-wards' side would never experience true night.
**As for Moon B, this will be roughly the same size in the sky as our Moon seen from Earth when they're distant, somewhat larger when they're close**. (The maximum distance between the two moons will be around 2 million km, when they're at apoapsis on opposite sides; that's about 5x the distance to our Moon, and 1.4 Earth masses implies a radius slightly larger than Earth [or maybe somewhat more, if the composition of Moon B has less metal than Earth, like Mars or our Moon] so at least 4x our Moon's.
**As for the star,** I'm a bit lost here. A K-type star with 0.8 solar masses will have significantly less luminosity than the Sun, but you give a habitable zone farther out than the Sun's. It ought to be much closer -- stars' luminosity increases non-linearly with mass. Tau Ceti (G8.5) and 107 Piscium (K1) have about 80% solar mass but about 50% solar luminosity. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/107_Piscium>
Your F-type star has a lifespan short enough to be an issue for evolving native sapients [maybe - after all we have only one example] but for terraforming it shouldn't matter.
[Answer]
If you're ever looking for some inspiration for how to describe this from the perspective of a person on this moon I would highly recommend [Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer_in_the_Sky). It describes a colonist on Ganymede after it was terraformed. Heinlein was notorious for doing his homework when he wrote his books, so I wouldn't be surprised if his description of relative sizes is accurate for Ganymede.
It's also worth noting that even though your star puts out about 50% of the light as our sun, it wouldn't look any dimmer than daylight on earth. A sunny day on earth is about 111,000 lux, while a well-lit room is only about 1,000 lux. When the human eye gets more light than it can handle, it just shuts out the rest. So even if your moon gets significantly less than half the sunlight as earth, a bright sunny day will still look just as bright.
I know you were looking for a more math-based answer, but hopefully, this can help you put together a good picture of how everything would appear.
[Answer]
There is a tool that will allow you to see how sky would look and is called Space Engine. You correctly noticed that Goldilock would further away through tidal heating and reflected light from giant (and possibly radiation belt hitting it) however moon very close would very be much much hotter on close side and that would cause tidal winds and similar. Giant apparent brightness could be 20 times less than sun which might not seem like much but that would be 20.000 more than moon. Further moon would have much longer night day cycle and that would affect life in its own way.
] |
[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.
Many questions on this site hypothesize about two planets in close orbit of each other, each developing their own civilizations. How feasible is that?
Some 4.5 billion years ago [Theia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theia_(planet)), a planetary object of uncertain size, collided with the young Earth and ejected a significant quantity of the two bodies crusts into space, forming a new object, the moon (if you don't believe this theory, then assume it is true for this question). **Is it possible that the same collision, if it had happened at a different speed or impact angle, could have created two planets of approximately equal size orbiting the sun together?**
Constraints on the final system:
* Given that the combined mass of the Earth and the Moon is about $6\times10^{24}$ kg, each of the two objects should be about $3\times10^{24}$ kg
* The planets must orbit the sun as a single system, orbiting each other.
* The planets must stay in an orbit approximately the same distance from the sun as Earth is now.
* The planets must maintain the same characteristics that allowed life to arise on Earth: nitrogen atmosphere, plenty of water for oceans, active magnetic field and plate tectonics, etc.
[Answer]
**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.
Possible, yes. Likely? No.
I am going to present a short version of the science behind binary planets. For the whole thing you can refer to [this article from the California Institute of Technology](https://m.phys.org/news/2014-12-binary-terrestrial-planets.html). Some scientists there made some simulations and published a paper on it.
So, what you want is known as a **binary planet**. It is different from a system like Pluto-Charon (because Pluto is way more massive than Charon), but similar to [90 Antiope](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/90_Antiope).
The reason why I say it's unlikely is that for a binary planet system to evolve, a shock between to formerly solitary planets must go through a "kissing collision". They must "graze" or "scrape" each other in their impact. The tidal forces involved will cause large tides, which dissipate momentum and causes the system to become bound (i.e.: neither planet will reach the system's escape velocity).
This arrangement is not perfectly stable, and as the article mentions, it may only last a few billion years. The less ideal the collision is, the sooner the system will decouple or collapse. Needless to say this would be catastrophic to any life that has developed on the binary planet. It is possible that one of the resulting planets ends up falling on the star. It is also possible that one of them will be ejected from the star system. It is possible that the parts will collide again, which would merge them into a single planet. This would very likely melt the crust during the merger.
Regardless of whether you plan to give your binary planet denizens such a demise or not, here are the requirements for a binary planet to realistically form and stabilize around a star of spectral class G, such as our sun:
* Must stabilize its orbit around the parent star at least half an AU away from it;
* The surfaces of each part of the binary should stay one planetary radius apart from each other.
Also notice that the parts of the binary planet will necessarily be tidally locked.
So far I have only said what the article says. But from that we can infer some interesting properties of such a system.
For starters, it could reasonably be located withing the goldilocks zone around a G2V star. And since the arrangement can last for billions of years, with the original colliding planets having the same chemical makeup of proto-Earth and Theia, life as we know could develop on such a binary planet.
The orbital period of each around the barycenter would be quite short, in the order of hours. A geosynchronous orbit around Earth - that is, an orbit with a period of one day - requires a satellite to be six Earth radii above Earth's surface. Compare with the figure of a one planetary radius between the components of the binary (lower orbit = shorter period). This would cause daily eclipses (remember that the eclipsing body is way larger and closer to the eclipsed body than the Moon is to us). The region eclipsed on each component is always the same, due to tidal lock. It will get less sunlight everyday, effectively going through a permanent winter - which may be cumulative with the axial tilt related winter during parts of the year.
Just to be clear: insanely short orbital period + tidal lock = a sol that is much shorter than Earth's (I estimate 12-14 hours).
Gravity would be noticeably stronger on the side of each planet that is away from the other. Standing on the "outer" side of the binary, you get the whole pull from two planets. But in the eclipsing region, you get two strong pulls in opposite directions (though the planet you are standing on will have the larger pull). A similar tug-of-war exists between Earth and the Moon, but the Moon's pull is too little to be noticeable at all. Back to the binary, if some species ever makes it to the space age, they will find that at the barycenter the gravity pull is close to zero.
I don't know how to calculate the average gravity for each system component, but I do know that each one's mass is still around five martian masses. So I think average gravity would be much closer to Earth's than to Mars's.
If the binary has no moons, there will be no tides. If there is a moon orbiting the binary, it will have tides, though on a much smaller scale than those on Earth.
Finally, for a non-scientifical thing. It is my favorite part though. There is nothing to tell us how the beliefs of people from such a system would develop - but they have a nice setting to create awesome mythologies.
[Answer]
**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.
I don't think that anyone can answer this question without doing detailed modelling of protoplanetary collisions -- I'm not aware of any that have been done, but I would not be surprised to find out it has been.
Put aside for the moment the really hard question of whether a collision could result in two Earth-massed bodies in orbit around each other. (I'll come back to it.)
Would the system once formed be stable? Sure. There's nothing special about a true binary planet and as long as they were close enough to stay bound -- 250,000 miles would be just fine -- they'll be about as stable as the existing Earth-Moon system.
Would they be tide-locked? Probably. It depends on how close together they form and how fast they are rotating then. If they form relatively close and are not rotating super-fast, then there's a good chance that the tidal forces that drive them apart will drive them to tidal lock. As long as they are not really fast rotators, there's not so much angular momentum in the system they couldn't tide-lock. (But this is all basically physical intuition. We'd need to do modelling to say for sure.)
Could they be in the life zone. Sure. There's nothing special about that region and the large number of super-Earths we're seeing among the exoplanets tells us that there's likely to be sufficient mass in the habitable zone.
Geochemistry compatible with life? Again, as far as we can tell both of the resulting planets could be Earthlike. The Moon is rather non-Earthlike because it's small and lost all its volatiles, but if it were as massive as the Earth it would have held most of them. There's no guarantee that the twin planets would be just like Earth, but probably they'd be close enough.
The biggest issue is whether a planet with days that are 10-20 Earth-days long (due to tidal lock) would have weather/climate limiting life. My guess is not, because life is really good at evolving to fit any niche, and the oceans, anyway, would be fine.
But the elephant in the room is whether it's likely that more than a very, very rare collision would produce roughly equal-sized planets. My physical intuition says that it's possible, but not very likely, but this is something that really needs proper numerical modelling of collisions with tested codes.
[Answer]
As to how to achieve a stable 2-body system as a product of a collision between bodies A and B, the options are: 1 - propel enough mass to L1 or L2 to form the second planet. Luna formed at half this distance (although again has only 1.2% of Earth mass). To have pushed the material that made Luna twice as far (inverse square law) would have required 4x as much force. This is problematic since you would either need to double the mass of both objects (which is not the desired answer) or double the impact velocity.
My hot take on the collision looks like this:
Earth's mean velocity: 30 km/s +/- 300 meters / second owing to the eccentricity of its orbit.
Theia's theoretical velocity: must be similar to Earth's 30 km/s. Mars' speed is 24 km/s and Venus' is 35 km/s. If Theia's speed was off by 5-10 km/s from Earth it wouldn't be co-orbital. But its velocity at impact was likely not its mean velocity.
Earth's current orbit has an eccentricty of .0167086 and an inclination of 7 degrees to Sol's equator. This must be the product of the bodies orbits merging. Theoretically let's say Theia had a higher eccentricity (0.25) and Earth had a lower one (0.05 or less). At various points along the eccentric orbit the velocity changes significantly. Here's some conjectural scenarios:
worst:
Earth: 29.8 km/s
Theia: 30.6 km/s
relative speed of impact: 800 m/s
Force = mass \* acceleration (Newton's 2nd)
each body is subject to 800 \* 3x10^24 or 2,400 Septillion Newton-meters of force.
The equivalent of [573 quadrillion](http://convert-to.com/conversion/energy/convert-n-m-to-tn.html) tons of TNT
best:
Earth: 30.2 km/s
Theia: 30.3 km/s
relative speed at impact: 100 m/s or less
each body is subject to 100 \* 3\*10^24 or 300 Septillion Newtons-meters of force.
The equivalent of 71 quadrillion tons of TNT
[Another thread](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/8951/how-much-tnt-do-you-need-to-blow-up-the-moon) established a method to estimate how many tons of TNT or any other energy equivalent would be required to destroy the moon. To overcome the gravitational binding energy of a body with a mass of 3x10^24 kg you would need [6.006456e+33 Joules](https://www.fxsolver.com/solve/) or 1.43 septillion tons of TNT. We can see both cases have significantly more energy than what it would take to liquify both planets. The impact velocity was probably much less (or I certainly may have misplaced a few zeroes in the conversions) but it still serves to illustrate the gross forces at work.
A simpler solution is to wonder what would have happened if bodies A and B never collide in the first place, with Theia maintaining a stable position at Earth's L4 or L5 Trojan.
[Answer]
A co-orbital body could theoretically remain in a stable position in Earth's plane if it were either in the L4 or L5 [Lagrange point](https://www.space.com/30302-lagrange-points.html), which are 60 degrees prograde and retrograde to Earth's position within its orbital plane around Sol. In one year Earth travels approximately [940 MKM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_orbit), so L4 and L5 would each be about 156MKM distant. This is a natural phenomena observed often in the Jupiter system. Earth even has a trojan in the L5 Lagrange position, TK7. One cavaet to this mechanic seems to be that the trojan object must have a mass ratio 1/20th or so that of its co-orbital object, and if primordial Earth and Theia had roughly equal mass then I don't believe they would be able to stay in stable trojan orbits, at least not indefinitely.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/akrCf.gif)
Objects occupying the L1 and L2 Lagrange points (each about 1 million KM away from Earth which would be closer to the situation to the Earth-Luna system (Luna's mean distance is [385,000 km](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon)). However the mass ratio of Luna to Earth works out like this:
Luna: 7.342 x 10^22 kg
Earth: 5.972 x 10^24 kg
Luna's mass ratio to Earth: ~ 1.2 : 100
Whereas one of the assumptions here is that we have two objects of mass 3 x 10^24 kg, the ratio is 1:1. So short answer: if it's possible then the co-orbital body must be inhabiting either its sister's L4 or L5 point and has very few perturbing forces. From that distance the sister planet would be visible with the naked eye but it might be mistaken for a star.
* my math might be off, if you spot an error please let me know cheers
] |
[Question]
[
I'm developing a game set in a colossal landmass at the center of a vortex, with water walls dozens of kilometers high. The continent is somewhat circular, and no civilization has yet developed seafaring technology that can survive the vortex itself.
During the game, different civilizations go to war, and one of them develops a plan to take by surprise the capital of another by riding the vortex to get "behind" the defending forces.
Is there a design that could help a ship survive fairly reliably the extremely strong but otherwise fairly regular currents? Keep in mind that the water is spiraling *up*, not down.
I have a few ideas about how to solve the "water direction" problem (ballast, or a ship hull that forces the ship to go down, so that the upward thrust of the water is balanced), but otherwise I really am...*out of my depth*!
**EDIT: a few more informations, based on the comments.**
1. The vortex is an annulus (a ring), but I can't think of any way in which the inhabitants could test wheter or not this is true.
2. The continent is a disc, it's flat.
3. The total landmass is about 100 million square kilometers, 50 million less than earth's own landmass. It's pretty much a smaller pangea.
4. The vortex needs an incredible amount of energy to be sustained, and the movement of the water walls create very, very strong winds near the coast. This prevented pretty much any kind of development in seafaring technology, because it's considered madness to "challenge" the vortex. It's why the idea of exploiting its motion to attack another city is crazy enough that it might work. But it needs a ship with some form of ballast (be it physical or simply a design peculiarity that makes the ship tend to go down instead of following the current, that spirals up), and a design that accounts for the immense amount of energy in the elements surrounding the ship.
Basically, the ship needs to be strong enough not to be torn apart by wind & water.
[Answer]
I assume you're talking something like this:
[![underwater vortex]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HtRgu.jpg)
[Original Source](http://www.dancingwithwater.com/wp-content/uploads/vortex.jpg)
except it's upside down and the air is water and the water is air?
Consider surfing, for example. On a large wave, you are riding down a hill of water, the surface of which is moving (relative to you and the wave) up. Assuming you could control how you are pulled by the upward force, I imagine that you would be able to ride the vortex with the circular flow, since you can keep yourself from being pulled up. Of course, if it's getting steeper the closer you go to it, it doesn't matter what special features you have to keep from being pulled up. If you're not super light, eventually the upward force of the water and the slope of the inverted vortex will cancel each other out. The only special thing that would matter is to keep from tipping over.
Since I assume the circular pull of the vortex would be very strong, there's actually not any real reason why it wouldn't be a common, energy-saving tactic to simply sail with the vortex. It wouldn't be something special or odd - it'd be expected. Chances are, there'd be minestrips laid and defenses set up on the side of the vortex where the enemy would be anticipated to enter, so where the vortex is pushing water towards you.
On that note, what would be surprising and unanticipated would to go around the vortex the other way: against the flow.To do that, you'd want to be as unaffected by the circular flow as possible, so you'd want to rise high out of the water. Today, the fastest ships are those which are basically flying above the water, held up by aircraft-like "wings" on struts under the ship.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qwwhd.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BG6Gy.jpg)
[Original Source](http://www.marineinsight.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/hydroptere-sailboat.jpg)
Given that you'd be going against the flow of the water, it'd be easy to get enough waterspeed to lift up out of the air. Stick a large fan or a sail (if the winds aren't going with the water) on the ship, and you'd be well able to navigate the rim of the vortex backwards.
Alternately, you could place a sort of sail underwater, using the water as the driving force instead of wind, and tacking against the vortex as you would into a headwind.
Also alternately, you could again use a hydroplaning ship with a crosswind to blow yourself up onto the center of the vortex and then surf down, turn back up and repeat. You may not actually make any headway, however, depending on just how strong the vortex is.
] |
[Question]
[
I've been using this helpful diagram a lot for worldbuilding.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Solar_system_escape_velocity_vs_surface_temperature.svg/800px-Solar_system_escape_velocity_vs_surface_temperature.svg.png)
Now I came to think about the fact that helium is more massive than hydrogen, thus a scenario where hydrogen escapes, but helium is retained is conceivable and suggested by the diagram. Since this line of helium retention but hydrogen escape lies between the ice-giants and terrestrial planets, super-Earths come to mind as plausible candidates for such atmospheres. After all, a super-Earth might be a mini-ice-giant or a huge, terrestrial planet. **Thus I designed the two following scenarios and would like you to critique them concerning their plausibility. If you have any additional thoughts about these worlds I would love to hear them as well.** [This question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/9755/58321) and [this answer espacially](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/9770/58321) already provided some interesting information about the conditions on a planet with a helium atmosphere.
# Wet
As a low-mass-ice-giant/mini-Neptune/thick-envelope-super-earth (ca. 8.5 Me) Wet formed outside the frost-line and migrated inwards where it got hot enough for its hydrogen envelope to escape (ca. 230 K). According to my back of the envelope calculations, a 95%+ helium envelope of about 0.2 Me should be retained. This setup sounds quite similar to Sol's ice-giants, so a similar internal structure should be expected; a stereopalagic ocean-world with an HO2, CH4, and NH3 ocean, which solidifies deep down into exotic ices.
# Dry
Dry is a rocky super-Earth which formed inside the frost limit with a substantial iron core (ca. 2 Me, ca. 1 Re). Like Earth, it accumulated a primordial hydrogen and helium envelope, yet unlike Earth it only lost the hydrogen and a small fraction of the helium as its parent-star ignited. I assume that the plausible pressure range of such a planet might go up to 1000 atm of helium (I'm pulling this out of a hat, what would be a plausible figure?), yet Dry is a moderate chase since the 400 K hot planet lost a significant fraction of the helium during a major impact. Thus the atmosphere of Dry contains 5 atm He and 1.6 atm N2. It seems surprisingly earthlike apart from the helium.
**Again, are these scenarios of helium atmospheres plausible or are there issues I missed?**
EDIT1: It has been pointed out that the existence of a primordial hydrogen-helium atmosphere on earth is unproven. DRY is possibly impossible.
[Answer]
Digging in the mare magnum of Internet I have stumbled upon [helium planets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium_planet)
>
> A helium planet is a planet with a helium-dominated atmosphere. This contrasts with ordinary gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn, whose atmospheres consist primarily of hydrogen, with helium as a secondary component only. Helium planets might form in a variety of ways. Gliese 436 b is a possible helium planet.
>
>
> Helium planets are expected to be distinguishable from regular hydrogen-dominated planets by strong evidence of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Due to hydrogen depletion, the expected methane in the atmosphere cannot form because there is no hydrogen for the carbon to combine with, and hence carbon combines with oxygen instead, forming CO and CO2.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UFXWl.jpg)
A possible helium planet can be [Gliese 436 b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_436_b)
>
> the planet's surface temperature is estimated from measurements taken as it passes behind the star to be 712 K (439 °C; 822 °F). This temperature is significantly higher than would be expected if the planet were only heated by radiation from its star, which was prior to this measurement, estimated at 520 K. Whatever energy tidal effects deliver to the planet, it does not affect its temperature significantly. A greenhouse effect could raise the temperature to much higher degrees than the predicted 520–620 K.
>
>
> However, when the radius became better known, ice alone was not enough to account for it. An outer layer of hydrogen and helium up to ten percent in mass would be needed on top of the ice to account for the observed planetary radius. This obviates the need for an ice core. Alternatively, the planet may be a super-earth.
>
>
>
Wrapping up, if the helium planet forms by losing hydrogen, the wet scenario is less plausible: there would too few hydrogen to form large amounts of water.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question asks for hard science.** All answers to this question should be backed up by equations, empirical evidence, scientific papers, other citations, etc. Answers that do not satisfy this requirement might be removed. See [the tag description](/tags/hard-science/info) for more information.
A targeted [hard-science](/questions/tagged/hard-science "show questions tagged 'hard-science'") spin-off from [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/57114/barycentric-influence-on-plate-tectonics):
In a tidally-locked planet that rotates about a barycentric point that’s located outside of its own sphere, what would the coriolis forces be like? What would the circulation patterns look like, how similar or different might they be from those of Earth’s?
This needs to consider not only the direction of the centrifugal force, but those of the moving fluids (air, water weather patterns *and* mantle convection) as they move away from the sub-barycenter point to the half way great circle, and then converge again as they approach the antipode.
NOTE:
The coordinate systems refers to the sub-barycenter point as being one pole, and its antipode is the point opposite the sub-barycenter; the planet doesn’t have a rotation axis.
Something like winds and weather patterns driven by coriolis forces will expand over the surface of the planet until they reach the half-way mark where they will have expanded to their maximum size. This is also the half-way mark of a great circle (the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere). Thereafter they will converge once more on their approach to the other, opposite pole, the antipode.
[Answer]
This is not a *complete* answer, but is some more accurate descriptions of the rotation-inducing forces.
To a first approximation, the angular momentum of a unit of air (or water) near the surface of the planet can be visualized by a [croquet ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet) carved out of a piece of straight-grained wood: the central axis of the log is aligned with the rotation axis of the system.
If you carve a sphere out of the center of the log and then stain it, the grain will show contour lines representing points on the surface that are equal distances from the line of the rotation axis. You can carefully count rings starting from the center to label them, too.
In this (normal planet) case, the lines will follow the planet’s lattitude. Due to symmetry, every circle around a position of constant lattitude will have the same angular momentum. This causes air (or water) that changes lattitude to be deflected.
Now consider carving a ball out of one half of a log, representing the case where the rotation axis is outside of the sphere. Looking at a cross section through the equator you *also* see the sphere from above if you imagine the lines on where you know the surface is.
## todo illustration here
With a little imagination you can picture the resulting ball from another angle: the contour lines are *very* different.
First, they go in the opposite direction. You can see concentric loops around the antipode point and around the epibarycenter (baryepicenter?) point.
What this doesn’t show is that the angular momentum is not always parallel to the sphere’s surface, which is a *considerably different* effect.
Consider a contour line near the half-way point, and follow it around. At the north, the angular momentum is pointing parallel to the ground like we are used to. Likewise it is the same at the south. But at the spinward edge the spin vector is pointing straight up out of the ground, and at the antispinward edge it is pointing *into* the ground.
So, air (or water) transported to a different location will not simply be deflected east or west as on Earth, but **up** or **down**! In general, the deflection will be a complex vector combining a direction parallel to the contour line along the ground and a rising/falling component.
[Answer]
I would think that the only thing that really matters is the orbital separation between the two components of the binary. That will set the orbital period of the binary-planet system. Since the planets are each tidally locked, their spin periods are the same as their orbital period. My understanding is that the Coriolis forcing on a planet's atmosphere is governed mainly by the spin rate. Fast spinning planets like Jupiter have a lot of convective (Hadley) cells between the equator and poles and so have a banded structure. Slow-spinning planets have fewer Hadley cells. Very slow-spinning planets would only have one. Having fewer Hadley cells should (I think) homogenize the temperature across the planet because the poles and equator would be in closer thermal contact.
I would expect the following correlation:
Distant binary orbit -> long orbital period -> slow-spinning planets -> more uniform latitudinal temperature distribution across planet
Another thing to consider is that the binary planet is (I presume) orbiting a star, which means that the length of each planet's day is also the same as its spin period. And the energy deposited by the star is surely much much larger than the energy deposited by the other planet (by tides I would expect). So, I think the biggest factor of the other planet is simply in determining the spin rate. Tides must also play a role to some degree but that is likely to be on longer timescales, e.g. by making the planets move apart from each other. And if the planets themselves orbit relatively close to the star then star-planet-planet tidal effects would make this even more complicated.
[Answer]
**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.
Forgive me for this kinda poor answer, but it's a start...
Assuming our Earth system, but with a mini-Earth (here called Lua) for a moon...
The Coriolis force on weather would be greatly weakened. Like mentioned in [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/57114/barycentric-influence-on-plate-tectonics), The tidal lock would skew the Earth and Lua into a more egg like shape. This relative 'mountain' bulge would help dampen the winds, making the weather a bit more stable.
Of course heat distribution would also be a key driving force. So do we speed up Lua or slow Earth or both when this tidal lock is formed? I'm going to assume speed up Lua and compensate as needed for simplicity. Although, since this Lua is bigger, it's [affect on the weather](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120328-solar-eclipses-winds-weather-sun-earth-space-science/) will be amplified. Yet always occurring on the same half of the planet means that the side locked to the other will experience colder temperatures and less wind. This area should become its own arctic at the equator.
This cold spot will actually mix with the air that regularly gets it's full days worth of sunlight, and create weather patterns similar to a planet tidally locked with a star (but much calmer and cooler). ([wind patterns](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/4850/how-would-winds-behave-on-a-tidally-locked-planet))
Weather however is complicated and hard to predict in normal cases. This is more of a guideline of points to consider, and an estimated guess on the result.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/86914/edit).
Closed 6 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/86914/edit)
So, I have a major problem with one of my fantasy worlds that I can't seem to figure out. I recently added a race to one of my worlds called the Athar, who are a race of intelligent humanoids made of stone. The problem is that I can't seem to figure out how to justify why they haven't conquered the world.
If they are made of stone, and as a result don't need to eat or drink anything, don't get tired or need to sleep, and are lacking in vital organs to target, it seems like they would make the perfect warriors.
They live on a continent alongside humans, but are not the dominant race on the continent. How can I justify them not conquering the rest of the continent and killing off all the humans, taking in to consideration the fact that they would be naturally superior warriors to humans in every way due to their physiology?
It should be noted that:
* The world has access to roughly medieval technology.
* Magic is a thing, and it can be very powerful, but only in the hands of the Gods. Human magic is weaker than the magic of the Gods, and not all humans have access to it.
* The Athar were the dominant force before humans came to the continent from across the sea. Humans came to the continent after a cataclysmic event occured on their home continent.
So, taking all of the above into account, how can I justify the Athar not taking over the world?
[Answer]
The Athar are creatures of living stone. This makes effectively indestructible and, possibly, immortal (this last point is left for the OP to decide conclusively). Therefore, it is highly improbable there would be any creatures, animal or humanoid, living on their continent who could harm them. This suggests they have been living in peace for millennia. The one exception could be conflict within the Athar community itself.
The Athar would have no experience or knowledge of fighting other humanoids. Normal humans would be no threat to them. Perhaps they only fight in self-defence. While this is laudable, it does make them vulnerable to organized aggression by the influx of humans who have had to flee their devastated home continent.
There is a parallel situation with the European settlement of Australia. The indigenous Australians didn't feel threatened by European settlers, because their initial numbers were small. The Aborigines had the advantage of bush craft, local knowledge, and had superior numbers. By the mid-nineteenth century when the Aborigines realized there was a threat, it was too late especially with the influx during the Gold Rushes. The Europeans now had the superior numbers plus they had acquired bush craft and local knowledge. Also, firearms had improved considerably. Diseases and alcohol had also had their toll on the Aboriginal population.
This parallel situation suggests that if the first settlement of the Athar continent was slow and progressive, the Athar wouldn't feel threatened. Later there was a sudden influx of humans to overrun the Athar lands. The hitherto peaceful Athar might lack the ability or even the determination to fight against the humans. If the humans leave the Athar alone, the Athar in turn might let humans get on with their business unmolested.
One other possibility is that the numbers of the Athar have always been small. This will mean a mass human migration to their continent would soon outnumber them.
Since this is a world where magic exists perhaps the humans have magical weapons to use against the Athar. For examples, jewels imbued with a magical power to turn living stone into ordinary stone. Once the magic gems are taken away the Athar become creatures of living stone again. However, while they are lifeless and helpless their stone bodies ca be destroyed. This suggestion may be inappropriate for your world. It might suggest useful ideas.
In summary, the Athar might not become the dominant race because they have never needed to become warriors. Even when humans are dominant, unless attacked because they can defend themselves, they will leave humans alone.
[Answer]
If they don't need to eat, drink or sleep what motivation do they have? Most of our technology was created to help achieve one of the three. It sounds like they should have basically no technology, no curiosity, no drive for exploration. Since none of these give them an evolutionary benefit, unlike humans who need to seek out new resources and thus are greatly aided by all three.
Your creatures may be powerful but they are also stagnant, with little ability to adapt or change. So they are great warriors and absolute crap at everything else. I doubt they would even use tools.
[Answer]
Simple, they just ***reproduce slowly***.
They reproduce by passing down their spirit to their offspring, so this might work as 1:1 reproduction, thus does not increase their number, or more than one offspring, but combined with incredibly long life cycle - 1000 years to 2000 years.
You can even make them have practically infinite lifespan, causing only the bored elders that will participate in reproduction ritual.
This further complicated with how they mature - they must gain magic to animate minerals within (not food necessary to maintain their body, but similar to nutrients to *make* their body), as well as the minerals to acquire from the earth.
***tl;dr*** Their reproduction cycle is very complicated and difficult, so there can only exists a fixed number or very few of them.
---
In addition, they just don't need "anything", and has grow wiser than this earth inhabitants. With long lifespan, they only merely wish to observe things. They are a peaceful species, and does not see the need to conquer.
With this, you can make them Ancients or Elders of the World, the Wise One, which sages and pilgrims want to chat with at least once in their lifetime. For them, watching the civilization rise and fall is like we watching sandcastle is built and eroded by the waves.
[Answer]
Athar are made of stone, and stone is hard, you are right. But stone is also heavy and can be attacked by acids.
Your Athar can very well be extremely slow creatures, very afraid of warm vinegar or any other acid (I am assuming with medieval technology acid rains are not a thing, though that would be a limiting factor for them) used by the humans to keep them away.
Actually humans may even actively hunt them, because hard stone is hard stone, you always need it for your house and your building (something linke a bear fur in front of your fireplace...)
Moreover, being so heavy they never mastered the art of sailing, for both being not able to make a proper ship and being scared to death of sinking into open waters, not for the drowning risk, as they don't breathe, but for the highly likelyhood of remaining trapped in the muddy bottom a few hundreds or thousands meters below the surface with no means of orientation. So crossing the sea to take over the world is a no go.
[Answer]
What you are looking to do is create a weakness for a species. You see all of the benefits of stone, but you haven't written in any of the downsides.
A limited level of sensitivity would be very effective. Stone doesn't feel. It would be hard to do things like tie complicated knots without the astonishing sensitivity we have in our fingertips.
Or you can go with John's solution from the comments, referring to the trolls of Discworld, where Terry Pratchett gave them a weakness based on stone being a poor medium for computation (i.e. rocks for brains).
Or your stone creatures can move much slower than the organic humans. Stone does work on geological scale.
That's just three options. There literally isn't a limit. Have fun brainstorming! Come up with something clever and unique!
[Answer]
They live in a different time scale.
(I've read a story based on this idea, unfortunately, I don't remember neither name of the story nor the name of the author)
The time it takes for an Athar to take a step is enough time to build a house for a human. From the human's perspective, the Athar appear to be large statues that very slowly change their position and shape over time. The Athar likely do not even perceive the humans or if they do are unlikely to consider them to be of consequence.
[Answer]
I am uncertain about your point of not needing to eat/sleep/rest. I would find the race more logical, if they needed some kind of energy for their actions. They might, for instance, be able to store heat as energy. Making them more active on warm summer days, but almost immobile during winter.
Another point is, that given their weight, it would be easy for the humans to defend against your race. Build fortresses with moats, only passable via "instable" bridges, and you can live a secure live in there.
[Answer]
## Humans have advantages over the rock people
* **Speed:** humans are much faster and more agile than the rock people, allowing them to escape in small skirmishes and outmaneuver them in large battles, all the while constantly harassing any rock-people army.
* **Intelligence** humans' primary advantage over animals is intelligence and the ability to create and use tools. Using long poles, nets, traps or other mechanisms the rock people aren't capable of defeating any clever and cooperating group of humans. The current state of affairs is ensured by regular training of human youth in anti-rock fighting techniques.
* **History and politics** at the time of the human invasion of the rock lands, humans were much more technologically and militarily advanced and were met with only individual and localised resistance. When the rock people finally unified and began to resist on what remained of their land (the infertile and barren mountain regions), it was no longer worthwhile for the human army to pursue them. The current status quo is maintained due to mutually lucrative trade (rock people making excellent miners, while humans are excellent craftsmen) and a political alliance forged for instance when time came to protect the common continent from further external invaders.
* **Mutually nonconflicting interests** since they don't need to eat or sleep or build housing, and are virtually indestructable, the sparse rock population never came into mass direct conflict with "colonising" humans, as the rock people had no need to protect grazing land or stop deforestation and the humans saw no benefit in fighting rock people for their caves and sculptures. A few bad incidents lead to scared humans stupidly antagonising their local rock population and being slaughtered, but thankfully the human authorities were quick to broker a peace. The status quo is upheld through a mutual agreements where the humans take care of the mud, crops and animals, while the rock people take care of the important things like mountains, boulders and cave systems, with exchange of learning and technology being a benefit to both sides.
[Answer]
>
> How can I justify them not conquering the rest of the continent and killing off all the humans, taking in to consideration the fact that they would be naturally superior warriors to humans in every way due to their physiology?
>
>
>
**Possibility #1: Nothing to fight over**
Why would they want to conquer the rest of the continent anyway? They don't need land for food, they don't need water, they don't need houses to sleep in, etc.
It's like asking why humans haven't yet waged war against earthworms, a species we outclass in terms of combat effectiveness. We have nothing to gain by fighting them.
As for why nobody has forged an alliance with the Athar and then conquered everybody, you'd still be facing a fundamental issue: what do you pay them? Do Athar even care about gold, silver, or gemstones?
**Possibility #2: They actually need humans for some reason**
For all we know, the Athar actually rely on humans.
Maybe the Athar live better in an atmosphere with more magical energy, and humans create that atmosphere.
Maybe the Athar value the dexterity of humans and their capacity to work fine details.
Maybe the Athar find humans to be intellectually stimulating and fun to be around.
Of course, some of those reasons could result in the Athar trying to enslave humans, but once again... why enslave them when they those things naturally, anyways?
"Guess what, GROC? If you give humans some of the flimsy yellow metal, they'll make you cool stuff." "Oh wow, I was just going to throw it away. Thanks for the tip!" (probably some rock dudes, a long time ago)
**Possibility #3: Culture of peace**
I don't know about you, but most of the rocks I know are quite peaceful creatures. I've never been attacked by a rock, and I've met thousands.
**Possibility #4: Humans are weaker but better at war**
Humans have been killing things bigger and stronger than themselves for millenia. What makes the Athar so special that we'll never figure out how to beat them?
**Possibility #5: Combination of some/all of the above**
[Answer]
So the Athar were the dominant species before the squishy humans arrived. That suggests humans have some sort of advantage over them.
Perhaps the Athar are primitive. Can they work stone? If not, then their weapons technology will be clubs and fire-hardened wooden spears (unless they haven't discovered fire).
Maybe they're magically constrained to a particular region. They need a high level of background magic to function (you need a lot of mana to animate stone) and that only exists in a particular place.
[Answer]
As others have suggested, there is a problem with the stone humanoids. They are too powerful, and they seem to have no needs. This suggests they are probably not very social, which means they tend to be found alone. Even if they are powerful and fast, they'd still be vulnerable to attacks by large groups of people. Also, because of their power, they don't need to be so smart. If that's the case, they are essentially trolls. Trolls who don't need to eat, would just lie around all day waiting for the sun to disappear.
Another option is that the stone people, being as intelligent and invulnerable, have no need for further conquest. Therefore, they dedicate their lives to philosophical pursuits and crafts. Early when people settled on the continent, they made clear that humans can do whatever they wanted except for attacking stone people and polluting their sacred grounds. The punishment for those would be wiping out, Ghenghis Khan style, all the offending villages.
[Answer]
Just get a bit nearer to reality and you'll got an answer.
Stone is **hard** but **fragile**. You can't cut stone with a sword, but blunt weapons are likely to be very effective.
No need to eat - so how do they gain energy? Maybe from the Sun? Then they have a limited amount of energy they can gain. Humans can eat protein and fat rich meat to gain extra energy, stone people can't.
Are they really so strong? Strength doesn't come from the endurance of the material you're build from, but from the engine that's behind. Maybe they are just tough and durable, but just strong enough to carry their weight and not much more?
They are probably not very fast, as well.
Make them perfect mountain people. Resistant to cold, able to climb rough rocks, not needing oxygen to breathe. Make them weak on lowlands - slow, fragile. This would explain why stone people rule the mountains, but have nothing to search in lowlands.
[Answer]
1. Humans are a major, possibly existential, threat to the Athar at medieval levels of technology they can easily kill far more of the stone men than vice versa. This is based on what I feel is a well founded assumption that a race that needs no resources at all and lives forever hasn't developed much in the way of technology of any kind let alone weapons. While they may pick up the technological habits of humans they won't actually need anything that that technology can give them until they're already at war by which time they couldn't easily access it.
2. *Anyone* who can out breed these guys will probably be a major threat to them at any reasonably even tech footing because they can replace loses faster than the Athar and as long lives tend to go with slow breeding rates that's probably everyone the Athar meet.
3. They're individually basically immortal and don't need food, sleep, etc... as such they have no reason to fight anyone over anything between themselves and are probably the single most laid back race you're ever going to meet. Unless directly physically threatened they have no reason to be confrontational or domineering they let humans run the show because They Don't Care.
In summary the very things that make them excellent warriors also give them no inclination whatsoever to fight in the first place. It also probably leaves them at a marked technological disadvantage since all human technology is based on or aimed at deriving things like food or shelter from our environment that the Athar simply don't need.
[Answer]
## Old Culture vs. New Culture / Indigenous Species vs. Invasive Species
There are plenty of examples of an old, inflexible species being swept away by another species that it has not encountered or learned to deal with.
Humans vs. Australian megafauna, rats vs. ground dwelling birds, Spanish vs. Mayans. British vs. Chinese.
One group comes in with new ways of doing things, and the old group doesn't have time to adapt. The Mayans could have certainly fought of Cortez if they had adopted siege tactics. If the Chinese had weaponised gunpowder, they could have arguably defeated the British during the Opium Wars.
I don't think it needs much explaining beyond the idea that the humans were faster, more agile, more adaptable, and brought new ideas and technology with them.
[Answer]
**They are the dominant race. They just don't assert the dominance.**
Here is an analogy for you. Humans have had the ability to go down into the depths of the ocean for many years. While we're down there, do we go on a killing spree to take over? No, we're just there to explore. We are the dominant species. We could kill everything down there, but what good would it do? We'd exterminate several useful species.
**How does this relate to stone men?**
Well, it is quite simple. They need not breathe, and they are essentially 'immortal' and are very strong. Why would they have to live on the surface of a continent? Perhaps they actually live in the oceans and deep underground. After all, lava might not be able to kill them either so maybe they choose to live by lava springs? Regardless of that, my point here is that the surface of the land is to stone beings what the surface of the ocean is to sharks and fish. Let's assume ocean fish were intelligent. Aside from when humans go on a killing spree, why would fish attack ships? Fish don't attack them now, so there is obviously no territorial or survival aspect to fighting over the surface of a 3D volume.
Now of course there arises the issue of why they don't become aggressive conquerors. Well there are a few reasons this might occur.
1. They don't know of continents.
2. They do know of other continents and live in them but seriously don't care about surface dwellers.
Now, we can say that stone men can move to other continents. All they have to do is tunnel beneath the ocean. It isn't that hard. They just have to know of their existence. I've already explained why they wouldn't attack countries they discover. After all, fish don't attack boats for no reason, nor do they declare war on pelicans. If there's a conflict the fish can easily just swim down deeper. Same with stone men.
With this in mind, let us assume the stone men were aware of the cataclysm but unaffected. Well, this is completely comparable to the issue of refugees and human countries. Now if we presume that this is the stone mens' solely owned continent they have a few options on how to react to what are likely defenseless refugees. There might be a few who could kill a stone man but we'll assume that with decent strategy they could wipe out the humans.
1. Reject the humans at the border. Countries don't declare war on immigrant refugees.
2. Make them citizens of the country subject to the same (applicable) laws as stone men. If they pay taxes to the stone government and aren't thieves why would the stone men care? Literally, the only argument against this is racism and it is unlikely that any race would be that unified in racism. Even then, the issues here are likely to be more in the realm of serial killer stone men, discrimination, and general avoidance of each other. After all, the racism could go both ways with groups in both races falling either way.
3. Complete ignorance. Stone men only use the surface for things like venting pressure underground and cooling/warming regions or collecting water for various crafts. In other words, the surface is only useful for scientific resources. They don't eat and they don't need heating or anything. Wood is probably useless as it is so flimsy. The irony here is that trade with the humans would show it is more useful to humans than stone men. In the end, there is no reason for the stone men to even interact with the humans. Note however that this isn't due to reasons of superiority or wisdom. The reason they ignore each other **is because they live in fundamentally different environments**.
Imagine how many houses and cities you can build within a continent with tunnels and caverns. Now imagine how many cities you can built on the surface of a continent. I would imagine that the surface homes are probably for wealthy stone men. After all, to them it is a limited space with amazing access to wildlife, sunlight, and coastal views. The humans are literally living in "luxury housing". So if this is the first meeting of stone men and humans, the interaction will probably go as follows (printed on stone tablets of course):
"BREAKING NEWS: Luxury housing being shut down due to flesh men influx. In other news, president Stoneface is passing a new gold regulation bill."
"Wow Charles, did you read the stone news? Those flesh men are really sticking it to those rich guys. I was sick of them acting all high and mighty up there."
In other words, the humans are literally taking property from rich stone men and using it for refugees. What society wouldn't find that ironic and laugh it off? All you'd have to do is show that the rich stone men get a lot of flak for for political actions. After all, who is going to rush to the aid of dictators or jerks complaining about what is essentially a "pest problem"?
For that matter in an ironic twist the surface then becomes the "poor housing" and all the stone men are even happier because rich folk are so bent out of shape about humans that they practically gave it away to people who could never afford.
---
**Closing Remarks**
I know this answer was quite chaotic. It is kind of a train-of-thought and I think I suggested a lot of things worth thinking about here. Ultimately, this is an issue of understanding the politics, racial queues, exploration level, economy, and societal attitudes of the stone men.
And as a final nail-in-the-coffin for the stone men let me just point out the biggest thing that allowed Europe (essentially an island in comparison) to conquer North America:
DISEASE
They're from a foreign land and stone life exists. Why can there not be stone diseases? Humans developed an immunity or maybe they are carriers (stone diseases can only steal nutrients and people just take it as food need disorders and deficiencies). Whatever the case, diseases mutate and grow rapidly. It is their nature and why they are deadly. A foreign land separated for possibly millennia filled with beings immune to stone diseases? It wouldn't surprise me if they bring with them the stone equivalent of the bubonic plague. Hard to fight off a human scourge when you're entire civilization is collapsing from plague after plague. Just saying.
If we presume humans are incompatible with such diseases you can also say that stone life in general exists and was domesticated by humans, whereas stone men didn't do to philosophical differences such as whatever prompted Native Americans to not domesticate wildlife (such as the non-existence of horses and large cattle on the continent). Those types of human-animal interactions enables a higher frequency of mutations in diseases. Hence, the result is "hyper-diseases" which essentially wipe out races that didn't have such interactions. It is literally the most important factor the Europeans had. Otherwise, the Native Americans would've been able to wage a much stronger effort at evicting the Europeans. Who knows? Maybe they would've convinced the various companies building colonies to give up and just trade with them?
I can definitely say the stone men wouldn't domesticate human animals. Simply put, they would be worthless to stone men. They cannot eat the meat and they cannot use them for materials. To them, bone as a tool is like using dried leaves. So they wouldn't have a corresponding defense towards humans.
---
This answer presumes no assumptions about the procreation of the stone men or lifespan. Instead, this focuses upon stone men that live and die within the same general rate as humans. If they live many years, we can expect wisdom to have a larger impact in decisions (which means a likelihood of *more* sympathy for humans and more support to just "leave them alone in peace").
[Answer]
You've got a more core problem - you haven't given the Athar anything to do. You've taken away all their individual needs (food, water, sleep, shelter, security), so what is it that an Athar *does* with their time? What motivates them? What do they want?
By removing all these selective pressures, you've set the Athar up to be very different from humans - they have no physiological needs and no predators in their native habitat, so they're unlikely to have any kind of society to stay alive. They never needed intelligence to be at the top of their food chain, so i'd imagine they're rather simple. They probably never needed to be strong, either, since they're indestructible and do not need to hunt, so they might even be slow and weak.
These are just my interpretations of what you're saying - i might be leaning towards too scientific an interpretation of your world. But in order to understand why your Athar would or wouldn't do something, it's worth looking into how they got to where they are, and what drives them.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm thinking of a couple main ways, but they seem pretty unreliable for complete sterilization. I'm imaging a pretty reclusive hermit civilization around their solar system. They see intelligent life in a neighboring system, and they want to kill it.
Assuming realistic tech for a [Kardashev 2ish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) civilization (i.e no tossing black holes), what would the most efficient and relatively quick (under a century) way of sterilizing the planet?
I initially thought bio-weapons, but they are unlikely to work on alien biology. Tossing a dwarf planet or asteroid might also be an option, but that requires a ridiculous amount of energy to accelerate it, and it would take too much time. I've also thought about lasers and nukes, and neither of them seem to work.
Tech level of the opposing system is sub-K1, about what humanity would be in 100 years.
[Answer]
Just accelerate a few 'ships' up to a significant portion of light speed and ram the planet with them.
The effect of just one moderately small vessel will be much the same as the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.
A dozen of them?
Each timed to impact just as all the 'dust' from the previous one causing a nuclear style winter is thinking of settling back out of the atmosphere?
That'll do the job.
[Answer]
## [Nicoll-Dyson beam](https://kardashev.fandom.com/wiki/Nicoll-Dyson_beam)
Use your Dyson swarm for a phased array laser. This is a light speed weapon, so it's the quickest way possible to hit a target.
[Answer]
# Use the planet's star
As a type 2 civilization you may be able to affect solar flares and coronal mass ejections to reach the planet. In terms of efficiency, this method will probably be the easiest way, and over your 100 year period you could just put enough raw heat on the planet to liquify the rock on the surface which will likely do the job you want.
[Answer]
**Freeze it**
Assuming propulsion allows physical access to the neighboring system, and the enemy is limited to a single planet.
Unfold a solar shade at the L1 point between the planet and Sun to put the planet in permanent shadow. Any burgeoning intelligent civilization (and most life) will be extinguished well within the century deadline.
[Answer]
**Give Them a Helping Hand**
If they are pre-industrial, give them a leg up to industrial along the nastiest path possible with mutagens galore. Just don't tell them about medicine or even much along the lines of biology or environmental remediation.
If they are industrial or later, drop a few bombs that start the big war or split up their society into antagonistic factions. Give each side "help" in war technology, particularly nuclear, biological and chemical.
If there's no civilization, just dump mutagens targeting viruses in gigaton lots and let them do the job for you. Rinse and repeat every few hundred years.
Just never ever land there again once things get "warm".
[Answer]
# Pyrrhic Victory!
Assuming a Kardashev 2 civilization can harness the energy of their star, the fastest way to sterilize the nearby system is to trigger their own star to go supernova. For as much fun as blowing up a star is, it doesn't have to be a foolish move. If suicide isn't attractive, they could migrate out in ships shielded from the blast. For fun, you could even have riding the wave of a supernova be a very flashy way of them accelerating their ships up to a significant fraction of the speed of light. A civilization of this level need not feel tied down to any star or system.
This would have the added benefit that a sufficiently xenophobic species would wipe out all other potential life in the entire region. In fact, this may be integral to how they assure no other intelligent life is hanging around to bother them - travel, find life, blow it up, repeat. The neighborhood has gone to hell, so let's blow it all up and leave!
The blast wave and radiation would do a pretty thorough job of sterilizing any nearby system. Assuming the supernova can be triggered quickly, I can't think of any way faster to assure total destruction of another system.
[Answer]
# Grey Goo
Just spread some samples around their world and watch it work. Since the speed at which the goo multiplies rises exponential with the amount of Goo available, under a century seems very plausible. Bonus points for them seeing their inevitable doom coming while becoming increasingly unable to stop it.
Kind of dangerous for your civilization too, but that isn't the point. It is very energy efficient and nearly undetectable in the early stages. Just use some form of particle dispersal device (read dirty bomb) to spread it around their atmosphere, and watch them go.
[Answer]
### Kill it with fire from the Heavens.
A K2 civilization can harness the power of a star. Beam energy into the planet until the atmosphere reaches the Nitrogen-Oxygen ignition temperature, then keep the beam on to keep the chain reaction going.
It is not self-sustaining ([ref](https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00329010.pdf)) so you need to keep beaming thermal energy (IR light) into the planet.
Basically microwave them into extinction from afar.
[Answer]
# KISS: Hydrogen bombs
Let's rule a few things out. If you have a K2, then you have the full power of the local star at your disposal, but not the power of multiple stars. Even if you focused the entire output of your star at the neighboring system, it would diffuse too much over the light years to do more than provide a beacon.
This means you have to send a ship to their system. Just sending a guided missile would work to deliver a payload, but you'd probably want to send someone to do a little analysis and figure out where the population was concentrated.
From there you have many options. Fifty or so hydrogen bombs should do the trick pretty readily, and it's a fraction of the power required to get you to the other system "quickly." You could also drop rocks on them from the nearest asteroid belt, or small moons from a local gas giant.
Realistically, the energy to change their orbits to something that intersected the planet would be greater than the energy released by the hydrogen bombs in most cases.
Higher tech aliens could engineer viruses that would target specific lifeforms, like all primates, but it wouldn't be nearly as quick.
You could have them use their K2 tech to build a giant mirror and raise the global temperature, wiping out their ecology, but you could drop the hydrogen bombs and wait for the radiation to decay in the time it would take climate change to kill them.
If your race has nanotech like gray goo, then you're beyond the horizon of speculation.
[Answer]
## Ammonifying bacteria
True sterilization under a hard-science tag will probably require some high energy solution, there are many answers.. but when the goal is to kill off the enemy population and any other higher lifeforms in a few years, there's ways you could derange the biosphere of a planet like e.g. Earth. Destroy plant life and the entire bottom of the food chain:
[Ammonification](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=ammonification) is the conversion of organic nitrogen to ammonia and ammonium ions.
A K2-civilization can genetically engineer an ammonifying bacteria or fungus that will spread very fast and in huge quantities, consuming all plant life it encounters, converting it to harmful ammonia gas. The world would be deprived of oxigen and warm up quickly, as a result of CO2 not being absorbed anymore.
[Answer]
# Ultra-long gamma-ray burst
When a stellar object falls into a black hole, it propels relativistic jets from its poles, in the form of a lot of ionized matter and gamma-rays. Like, a *lot*. Just pick any active black hole within 10,000 ly, rotate it so one of its poles points towards the target, and push a star into it.
This isn't necessarily the fastest method, but it will definitely sterilize a planet. When the beam hits the planet, the number gamma-rays that reach the surface depends on the atmosphere but would probably be minimal. Instead, the surface will be bathed in extreme ultraviolet radiation for hours or days, killing anything that can see the sky. Meanwhile, the gamma-rays will cause all kind of bad reactions in the atmosphere. The ozone layer will be annihilated, the clouds will turn to acid rain, and the entire planet will be plunged into a very long cosmic winter by nitrogen oxide smog. So, anything underground will freeze to death, and the ocean will become uninhabitable from the drop in pH. Without ozone, the planet will be permanently barren.
**EDIT:** Based on the discussion in the comments, this probably isn't possible for your civilization's current scale.
[Answer]
It would probably not be the quickest way, but a very fun one:
Find a rogue planet or use a planet of the solar system of the planet you want to sterilize.
Change its orbit so it slingshots the target planet out of its solar system.
Without a sun all life on the planet is doomed. An intelligent species could utilize the powersources it has left and probably survive longer than 100 years, but it wouldn't really get them anywhere.
No sun, no other planets and no asteroid belts means they are restricted to the resource they have on their freezing planet. So even with advanced tech, I doubt that they would find a way to travel to any nearby star.
[Answer]
# Let their star do the job
When the world started to use CFC's in spray cans we quickly found out a bad effect. The gas would come in contact with our ozone and change it into other gasses. This is bad, as the ozone layer protects us against harmful UV light. If we would've continued we would kill our ecosystems and drastically reduce our longevity even if we had the food. Taken to the extreme the UV can sterilise anything the star can shine upon.
There is an incredibly large chance that the intelligent species will have some protection against the dangerous radiation of the sun. From the satellites we currently have in orbit (like James Webb) you can gather information about the composition of the other planet. A Kardashev 2 civilization should definitely be able to analyse a weak point. When this is found they can make chemicals (or biology!) that will neutralise the radiation defences of the target planet. Make the weed killer(s) and send them on their way.
When it'll arrive it is spread the stuff around the planet and the star will do the rest. Harmful rays will beat down on the planet, scouring it clean. The radiation can also damage many other things. It isn't impossible to survive this if you live on the planet. If the technology is advanced enough they might survive longer, but even then there are many reasons for the survivors to perish.
[Answer]
Could very well use a combination of destroying the Ozone layer and intense heat, perhaps from focused lasers over time. If the Ozone layer is destroyed, the job will be done on it's own but perhaps you'd want something quicker than that, like using some sort of highly powerful laser that can be parked in orbit and sweep over the planet several times. You want to keep the planet itself intact.
[Answer]
## Give Them A Computer Virus
Send them an advanced computer Virus, and since your level 2ish civilization, why not slap on a self-perfecting AI? (*note: the virus needs to be compatible with the civilizations computers, so prior knowledge is needed*)Then send it over to them and let it cause mayhem.
There are many possibilities, why not make it get the nuclear launch codes and kill the planet with nukes? or shut down power across the planet, maybe cause nuclear reactors around the planet to fail and cause hundreds, if not thousands, or Chernobyl's all at once. Have it screw with the GPS, cripple global, national, and maybe even local communications, screw up the data sent by artificial satellites, have it leak government secrets or turn off the internet. Send satellites careening into the atmosphere and burning up. Have it release dangerous viruses from laboratories, or make dams fail, Like I said, endless possibilities for destruction.
Or what if they were a multiplanetary civilization? the virus can kill all the inhabitants on bases located on other planets by shutting off vital systems, like shutting off the oxygen supply, or water filtering. It can cut off communications to the main planet, it could strand colonists on uninhabitable planets, or blow up moon bases, so many options.
Or why not think bigger? If they were Dyson swarm civilization, you could cripple the entire civilization in one fell swoop by sending the orbitals in all directions, dismantling the entire swarm. Or what if this civilization consists of uploaded consciousnesses living in a virtual reality world in a Matrioshka brain, giving the virus to them could mean instant game over just by corrupting the entire thing or even shutting it off entirely.
The are endless possibilities with a Virus, And as an added bonus, the virus is more destructive the more advance the targeted civilization is. and compared to the other answers, this is relatively very simple, No Lasers or giant structures or impacts needed.
**edit:** as it was pointed out, it would be near-impossible to deploy this virus without prior knowledge of the other civilizations computers, so that part was removed. The virus would still work, but needs to be coded to already be compatible with their computers.
[Answer]
Dennis E. Taylor did this in style in book 3 of his [Bobiverse Series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_E._Taylor)
-------- SPOILER WARNING --------
accelerate 2 stellar bodies into an orbit that will collide w/ the target systems star at stellar north/south at the same time. Then kick back and watch the fireworks.
[Answer]
Strangelets would be the quickest way to destroy the planet. From Wikipedia:
"If the strange matter hypothesis is correct, and if a stable negatively-charged strangelet with a surface tension larger than the aforementioned critical value exists, then a larger strangelet would be more stable than a smaller one. One speculation that has resulted from the idea is that a strangelet coming into contact with a lump of ordinary matter could convert the ordinary matter to strange matter.[16][17]"
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelet>
Stranglets are real science, though they haven't been produced or even detected yet. The effect of stranglets interacting with normal matter would be akin to an anti-matter chain reaction; as though anti-matter would produce more anti-matter as it annihilated. The conversion of normal matter to strange matter would take place at close enough to the speed of light, but, since stranglets are unstable, the reaction ends when the matter becomes too dispersed; i.e. you run out of planet. The planet is gone, but the universe remains, as it were.
A tiny amount of strange matter, a quick flash of light and your problem is solved.
[Answer]
You don't need to throw one of your asteroids at them; use one of theirs. [Most solar systems will have asteroids](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer-20081027.html), so I'm assuming the target system does.
If you have a Dyson swarm capable of delivering [targeted interstellar bursts](https://kardashev.fandom.com/wiki/Nicoll-Dyson_beam), you should use it to ablate their local asteroids or comets, altering their orbits such that they will intersect the planet. You then get a [dinosaur-killing extinction event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event). You probably want to go for some of the asteroids/comets with eccentric orbits that pass near the planet already rather than one of the ones in a belt.
This method required advanced computational ability, but I assume that's trivial for a K2 civilization. It's much more power efficient than trying to boil their oceans/atmosphere with your Dyson laser, which you presumably need for other things like accelerating spacecraft and doing astro-engineering.
] |
[Question]
[
In the post-apocalyptic realm, trees are near extinct and metal/plastic is hard to come by and better used to repair things or make weapons. Other materials, like leather, bone, or wool, are still relatively common
What sort of materials could be used to make barrels in this scenario? The barrels are made to hold both liquid and solid products. The barrels should be traditional barrels with a bulge if such could be done without wood
[Answer]
# Giant Clay Pots!
You can try to reinforce these with wood or reeds, but rely on the clay to actually form the watertight seals. The downsides include increased risk of breakage and greater weight.
# Giant Tanned Bladders!
It is possible to [sew leather together to form watertight containers](https://youtu.be/gHVBLTY5iJU). Bison, cow, and other large animals can get you up to scale pretty quickly. It would be difficult to transport and carry, but even a wicker basket could help contain it and provide much needed hand-holds.
I should note I say "bladders," but this is more of a quirk of English not distinguishing between bags for holding liquids and the organ. You could take leather skins and make a "bladder" out of it, no urinary system involved!
Tanning is also important in this application. It gives a bit of durability to the structure and helps with waterproofing. Best of all, you only need urine to transform a skin to a bit of leather. It's been a historically stinky but useful process.
[Answer]
## Pottery
Worked fine for thousands of years.
Many clays will give acceptable performance even if unfired. Most will be better fired, of course. Terra cotta needs only a little heat to go hard and (mostly) waterproof.
For liquids, you could branch out and try amphorae.
Exotic options include glass or porcelain/high fired ceramics.
Beyond that, it's leather, straw and tar (Moses style), or carving out rock (using the metal you lack).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/P7x1Y.png)
[Answer]
**Amphorae**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N73wQ.jpg)
Ancient people loved big jugs. They are great for holding wine and grain and water. They made the big jugs from clay gathered from the riverbed and baked in a kiln.
Plus they are better for displaying saucy art than a boring old wooden barrel with metal hoops. They even have curved sides like you want!
Some of these jugs were big enough to live in. See my main man Diogynes:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/lcJPK.png)
*Get out of my light, Alexander you twat!*
Whoops that's a wooden tub.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l42ia.jpg)
Perfect.
[Answer]
Woven baskets. With a tight double-weave, you can make a basket that will hold water. Several Native American tribes made these for carrying water. A double-woven basket looks almost like one basket inside another basket. To get them water-tight requires a very tight weave. Some will be made with reeds from plants frequently (and conveniently!) located adjacent to wetlands.
>
> Wicker is the oldest furniture making method known to history, dating
> as far back as 5,000 years ago. It was first documented in ancient
> Egypt using pliable plant material, but in modern times it is made
> from any pliable, easily woven material.
>
>
>
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicker).
The sort of wicker that you are most likely familiar with is an open weave.
For long-term storage of water (or other liquids), especially where your culture is stationary, I would strongly recommend pottery. While wicker is an ancient technology, archeological evidence of pottery extends to at least 25,000 BC.
Samples of water-tight woven baskets:
The first 2 are from what is now Washington state:
1. For [carrying water](https://arminda.whitman.edu/islandora/basket-water-tight). Note that there are 4 handles - a large "bag" of water is very heavy! One cubic foot of water weighs 62 pounds.
2. For [boiling water](https://plateauportal.libraries.wsu.edu/digital-heritage/water-basket) (fill about 3/4 with water, then place heated rocks inside).
3. From the [Four Corners](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Corners) region, smaller [water "bottles"](https://americanindian.si.edu/exhibitions/infinityofnations/california-greatbasin/182189.html).
4. A [Cherokee water-tight basket](https://www.wcu.edu/library/digitalcollections/cherokeetraditions/ArtsAndCrafts/pattern-index/pattern_flowingwater3.html) from what is now Oklahoma.
This person shows some of the skills you would need to learn to make your own double-woven basket. There are 4 YouTube videos: [1](https://youtu.be/zBkUa0_tY1c) (making a tool you need), [2](https://youtu.be/j3VyR2t9ra0) (making cordage to wrap your wicker - or make replacement shoelaces - but that's a different video in this series), [3](https://youtu.be/KrZ28q_hbDM) (part 1 of making the basket), and [4](https://youtu.be/S7nV48BXkFo) (part 2 of making the basket). In these videos, he uses [yucca](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca). In others he uses [cattails](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typha) (also called "reed" or "bulrush").
[Answer]
Just to add onto the other very good answers already here, water skins are already often made from leather, so scaling them up and making a barrel supported by a bone chassis with leather on the inside and outside sounds like a good-enough analogue for a barrel. The bones would likely have to be joined and kept together with something like clay or some other adhesive to maintain integrity. For things that aren't liquid, baskets weaved from reeds and other materials are also a perfectly good container as well.
[Answer]
# Gourd bottles, flasks and containers.
Gourds, which are related to pumpkins, have long been used as containers. They grow in many shapes and sizes.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZKdqv.jpg)
These plants were domesticated in the America's and have since then spread around the world as a plant that can be dried to create a containers, for example this wine bottle above from China. A gourd can either be dried over the winter or purposely dried in an oven or in the sun. Then the inside of the plant is cleaned and water proofed for example with bee's wax.
[Answer]
## Giant Bamboo
You won't get the bulge, but geengineered bamboo could well be part of the cause of your apocalypse. It's already an invasive species and a genetically modified/engineered variant might spread uncontrollably wiping out the majority of other flora on the planet.
[Answer]
Concrete.
Concrete has been around since at least Roman times and probably before. Roman era concrete was actually very good by even modern standards. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete>
you could I think conceivably create a clay form to pour into, or even use clay bricks mortared together with concrete and lined with concrete.
Concrete barrels are currently used to age wine as one example.
It would be a complex solution and probably over-engineered but as far as the scenario goes, I think it would be conceivable given concrete's ancient origins.
[Answer]
**Entire preserved animals.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/V9z61m.jpg)
<https://www.pinterest.com/pin/783063453946791043/>
This zebra is actually full of beer. Its body cavity provides the barrel-like staves, interior to its waterproof hide. Tap is not shown. Other preserved animals are made into barrels of various sizes to contain dry goods, dwarves and hobbits, fish for shooting, fun monkeys and other objects typically contained in barrels.
[Answer]
**Ice** can be used if the surrounding temperature is appropriate and the material stored is still liquid at that temperature.
Some liquids like salt water would destroy the ice bottle over time, but maybe not all and it may still work for the short enough time with thicker walls.
[Answer]
Plastic was hard to come by until your survivors realized that there are many cubic miles of garbage dumps waiting to be harvested. Because "[Memories are fragile — garbage lasts forever](http://www.dorkypark.org/)". Many plastics are thermoplasts and are easily formable at temperatures much easier achieved than the ones for smelting ores or forming metals.
Settlements started to grow next to the largest dumps, and trade in valuables scavenged from the dumps spanned entire continents, as it did with spices, gold, amber and jewelry.
[Answer]
why not vessels made from stone?
we have stone vessels that would last many years. the problem with these stone is it is difficult to move and build but would be still useable.
] |
[Question]
[
I want to have a government pass a permit law without the public knowledge overnight. The story is set in the United Kingdom, where half the population are cat people. The recently elected government are extremely racist towards cat people, and want to make their lives as difficult as possible. I currently have a scene where a law is passed overnight or secretly that prevents the cat people from going outside without a permit. The idea of having this done overnight is that as many people as possible will be caught outside without a permit, so they are given a criminal record and fined or imprisoned depending on if they can pay the £100 spot fine. This way the government could reap massive amounts of money from people caught outside by police forces without a permit, simply because they didn't know.
I have been looking at the UK law making process, and I can't see anything anywhere that explicitly states that the population will be made aware of a law that is being created. However, I am worried that the situation may come across as implausible, unless laws have been passed quietly in the past. So, is it possible that the permit law could be pushed through without any public knowledge, and if so how?
---
# Edit based on comments (from comment)
I decided to have it that humans elect the government for one election cycle and cat people for the other so that I can bypass having to explain lack of opposition (handwavium ;) ) Also, if someone does get a permit, then they can still work obviously. A lot of these things I hadn't considered, looking back, so I will probably need to change percentages
[Answer]
The trick is not to pass the law itself. Instead, you pass a law creating a Street Safety Office, which shall issue **regulations** (that have the force of law) concerning people's comings and goings. Then you only appoint non-cat people to the SSO.
Bonus points for **hiding** the creation of the SSO in a big Street Safety Act that includes crossing guards outside schools, red-light cameras, what have you.
[Answer]
You actually have a few options, each with their own prerequisites.
1. Stuff the anti-cat people legislation into something else that no one will pay attention to.
This happens all the time in government. Random, totally unrelated content gets shoved into a piece of legislation.
In this case you need some sort of large and or boring piece of legislation. You also need to ensure that if people do read it they don't share it. Time sensitivity helps, maybe a budget resolution that comes up at the last minute.
2. Secret legislation. This would require a rather drastic change in the nature of western democracy. But if the cat people are immigrants/refugees and they don't have rights the government could create rules in secret for *security* reasons.
As mentioned this would just be some good old fashioned racism, though you could conceivably come up with a scenario where the cat people are actually a threat.
3. Executive decree. This is easy. Give the prime minister/president more power. They write it up, sign it, and BAM you've got yourself a problem.
### Notes:
* All of these would require a change in the nature of UK politics and culture. People today simply would not accept something like this, nor would elected officials think they could get away with it if they wanted to...
* The system will have to get more government strong arm-y...that's poorly worded but you get the point. Maybe British law evolves and officials are elected for life.
* The cat people can't have any (or at least very little) power. If half the population are cat people and the democracy is representative, then you will have cat people in the parliament. This just won't work.
* Restricting communications. Getting away with bad stuff often requires keeping people in the dark as long as possible.
[Answer]
Well, it depends a little if you want it *completely* unknown, or only *mostly* unknown.
Because it's certainly the case that some events become a ["good day to bury bad news"](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/byers/page/0,11320,630499,00.html).
Specifically - if something sufficiently news-hogging is going on, then the media doesn't pay much attention to the 'normal' going on in Parliament. Just recently we have a mild example in the US presidential elections:
[6 Stories you may have missed](http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/stories-missed-election-161109012613433.html)
[And closer to home](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-news-stories-buried-us-election-donald-trump-missed-might-brexit-tram-terrorism-section-7-detain-a7410666.html)
In particular a change in the law which may be relevant to your scenario:
>
> Government rejects calls to introduce ‘need for suspicion’ before detaining people under Terrorism Act
>
>
>
[Answer]
One thing no one else has mentioned yet... do it 'by accident'.
Two real life examples:
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/oops-did-texas-ban-marriage/>
>
> "This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."
>
>
> One thing that is "identical…to marriage," of course, is marriage
>
>
>
<http://www.starobserver.com.au/news/international-news-news/ireland-almost-accidentally-bans-heterosexual-marriage/133877>
>
> However, the Irish language definition is worded differently and, translated back into English, states: “A couple may, whether they are men or women, make a contract of marriage in accordance with law.”
>
>
> According to the Irish Times the use of the plural for “men” and “women” could be interpreted as meaning only same-sex couples could marry.
>
>
>
Then you would just need a friendly person in the Judicial branch to interpret the laws as you secretly intended them to be.
If you can come up with a clever enough wording for this, you can even get the cat people to vote for their own discrimination.
[Answer]
At a first glance, any such law would be an injustice. How can people be expected a law that they do not know about? But there are several ways how a fictional government might get around that.
### The law is published, the administrative procedures are classified.
As a hypothetical, imagine that a government wants to ban designer drugs. So they pass a law that designer drugs are banned, and that those drugs are any substance which is "sufficiently similar" to a substance in an administrative publication. And then they pass "official guidance" to cops or prosecutors how they should interpret similarity, and this guidance gets classified.
### The law itself is classified.
Hold some sort of "closed session" of the parliament. The agenda might read something like "briefing on the ongoing negotiations with whoever." In the session, the parliament passes the law and also passes a law to make the secrecy legal. This works best if there is no written constitution which spells out how laws must be published.
### Secret case law.
In a tradition where courts can effectively create law, designate a special court that can meet in secret. Call it terrorism, espionage, whatever. Then decide that anybody who is cleared to know about the precedent is free to apply it, but the victim may not be told.
[Answer]
One option that I didn't see listed was to alter or enforce a 'blue book' law. Something that has been on the books, but was never taken seriously enough to be enforced or removed. Laws like this are almost never used by police. You could say that at some point in the past, this law was written, but hasn't been taken seriously.
All your government needs to do is instruct the police force to start enforcing this law. Alternately, they could rework, or add onto the existing law in a subtle way that would go unnoticed until the day that it takes effect.
[Answer]
Amend existing pet registration laws using a [Statutory Instrument](http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/elections/2015/10/what-statutory-instrument-and-why-has-it-put-government-course-defeat), which the government was recently criticised for using on benefits changes.
>
> It all comes down to a legislative manoeuvre called a “statutory instrument” – effectively a device that allows the government to move legislation through parliament more quickly than passing a new Act. If, for example, the government wanted to amend a law on cellphones to include, say, tablet computers – it might opt to do so with a statutory instrument, avoiding the months of legislative back-and-forth that a new Act would entail.
>
>
> The government has chosen, rather than a full-blooded Bill, to amend
> aspects of previous legislation on tax credits. This made the passage
> through the Commons easier and quicker – avoiding more scrutiny and
> perhaps helping to avoid further outbreaks of nerves on the part of
> Conservative backbenchers.
>
>
>
[Answer]
# Unconstitutional at all levels, and a non-credible premise
First I must object to your premise. You have a racist parliament ([parliament passes laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Parliament_in_the_United_Kingdom); the cabinet cannot pass laws because that would be entirely unconstitutional) that are so for no particular reason... they are bastards **just because**.
You have to invent a reason for this because readers will not accept that elected members of parliament are complete racist bastards "just 'cause".
Also you have to figure out a reason why the afflicted part of the population are putting up with this and do not bring this up in international courts and organisations, because your readers will not accept that such a large percentage of the population will just take being discriminated against like this without making a fuss.
Second, the law itself is grossly unconstitutional since the UK constitution explicitly states that [**every person is equal before the law**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom#Rule_of_law). So unless you have managed to make it so that the catpeople are not persons (good luck on trying to pass **that** without making the international community condemn the UK for it) then any such law as that you propose is forbidden and invalid.
Third, it is not just unconstitutional but a goss violation of ~~human~~ personal rights, and basic jurisprudence, to have a law that is passed in secret, that is kept secret to those it applies to, and that you use just to harass people. In fact this very thing invalidates any attempt at applying the law because if a person has not been made aware of a law you cannot force them to be subject of it. You have not **[promulgated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promulgation#United_Kingdom_and_other_Commonwealth_realms)** the law and as such it is invalid.
Also the procedure for creating and passing [acts of parliament](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_of_Parliament#United_Kingdom) requires a number of **readings**. So you are out of luck in trying to keep this secret. It has to come on record or you will not even get to voting about it.
In summary: Laws passed by the non-legislative part of the govenment, secret acts of parliament, un-promulgated laws, unwarranted discrimination against groups of people... these are all **evil things**. And so the very reason we have constitutions, division of power, checks and balances — all of which you have learned about in social science class — is to prevent this exact type of scenario, and precisely those evil things.
So unless you have tossed out basic ~~human~~ personal rights; abolished the UK constitution; have the human part of the population be bastards for no reason at all; have the catpeople part of the population be door mats for no reason at all; have the international community sit apathetic on their behinds while people are being persecuted... then you will have a very hard time making your scenario credible.
[Answer]
Realistically, the idea of a law being passed in secret and then immediately enforced would never stand up in court in an even and fair society - lawyers would have an absolute field-day.
So with that in mind, the only way that this could work is in a totalitarian police state - in which case the government can basically just do what they want anyway. Tell the police to round up the cat-people and take their stuff, and then just proclaim that a law exists.
[Answer]
This just doesn't make sense, at any level. There's a much easier way to get the oppression, simply by having the government create the law without secrecy, and then fail to provide ways to purchase permits.
However, making money from it with £100 spot fines won't work. The cost of collecting and processing all those small fines will vastly exceed the money taken, and arresting and imprisoning cat-people who don't have £100 on them will cost far, far more.
You need to be more subtle and ingenious in creating your oppression. Read up on Nazi tactics: Richard J Evans' *The Third Reich in Power, 1933 - 1939: How the Nazis Won Over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation* should have everything you need.
[Answer]
You don't have to make the new law secret, if the racist government and parliament has enough backing by the population.
The cat people have to come from somewhere and maybe they are not given human and citizen rights. In this case, they would be threated as animals with near to no rights. Animals cannot buy or own anything, cannot vote and even their lives are way behind any (economical) needs of humans.
Create a legend of cat people doing bad things to explain why the humans dont like them (of cause does not have to be true).
This world would feel very racist and suppressing and can lead to a fascist terror regime. You could have the main protagonist characters be cat people who are driven to defend themselfes and later all cat people.
Some humans who are helping the cats would help to make this more realistic.
[Answer]
The easiest option would just be to control any means the population might have to learn about the law. I.e. go the China route and just heavily censor the press to prevent the news reaching people. Such a thing might even be possible in freer countries like the UK or US, if you dress it up as a matter of "national security" and give the law allowing censorship a pleasing name, similar to what the Patriot Act did with surveillance.
There are also acts the government can take which are similar to laws, but don't necessarily need to be publicized. Again using the US as an example because I'm unfamiliar with UK law, our president is able to issue "Executive Orders". These orders have the full force of law behind them and don't require any deliberation from congress before the fact (although congress can overturn them later). The president could issue an Order extremely quickly, possibly before word reaches the general populace.
One possibility is to treat this as a matter of jurisdiction. Parliament is a very publicized organization. Everyone pays attention to what Parliament does, and it would be hard to keep a law like that quiet. But what about at the local level? Individual cities often have more leeway on how their legal processes work, and the press/population rarely cares as much. It might be very easy for them to pass the curfew law without much attention. On top of that, the local government will have a much easier time communicating and working with the local police to keep the law secret before it's enforced.
[Answer]
It's happened in the past, and can happen again.
Years ago the Dutch government passed a new law literally overnight that was introduced around dinner time one day and came into effect around breakfast the next.
Now, that was merely a budget bill allowing the purchase of some military equipment before treaty obligations would kick in and cause serious penalties. But if can indeed happen.
And as most people don't read the official government channels for publication of new laws, and most newspapers and other news outlets will be hours behind in publishing things, most people won't know the law is passed until probably the evening news.
Of course a major problem is organising your enforcement effort very rapidly in between passing the law and enforcement coming into effect a few hours later.
[Answer]
I don't remember enough details to be able to look it up, but I remember hearing about how one of the chief civil rights laws in the United States was proposed by a senator who was actually opposed to civil rights - he only added the civil rights bit to another bill to keep that bill from passing. Surprise, surprise: it passed, and now we have civil rights.
Something like this might be an option: you have a parliament member that doesn't care about cat people, or maybe even favors them, but he doesn't like another bill - given your desire for secrecy, maybe some kind of terrorism or surveillance bill - so he adds language to it to keep it from passing at the last minute, and everyone is taken by surprise when it passes anyway. It's up to you how many people supported it for the original reason and how many supported it for this reason.
] |
[Question]
[
We all know about [Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards): while non-magical fighters get better at hitting things with swords, magic-users learn how blow stuff up, kill enemies outright, warp reality itself, etc.
So in a high-magic setting, why are wars still fought with non-magical troops? A single mage can easily be worth multiple non-magic soldiers, and would be more flexible to boot. A skilled mage could likely take on hundreds of enemy troops. And that's not even getting into things a mage could do that's not directly related to killing enemy troops: healing allies, bringing fallen allies back to life, even assassinating enemy commanders from miles away. The can even act as anti-air/anti-naval.
In a setting where mages are so much more effective than traditional troops, why does any army bother with anything other than mages?
I've thought about a few potential reasons, but they all come with problems:
* Magical Deterrence: Using real-life nuclear weapons as an example, a nation can't deploy mages without the enemy retaliating with their own. In my opinion, this analogy doesn't quite work, since the reverse also holds true with magic: the best counter to the enemy's mage is your own mage, so you should deploy your own mages to reduce the effectiveness of enemy mages.
* Anti-Magic Pact: Again, using nuclear weapons as an example, the nations of this world all agree to not deploy mages in conflict against each other. If only two nations are involved in the pact, this basically boils down to the first example. More than that, and it doesn't matter unless more than of the involved nations are actually involved in the conflict. (If nations A, B, and C all have a non-magic pact with each other, and A and B are at war, C has no reason to retaliate against either of them for using magic.)
* Cannon Fodder Army: An army is just *so large* that enemy mages can't handle them all. This has one fatal flaw to me: if you have that many troops, there's no reason not to deploy them *and* any mages you may have.
I realize that this is highly dependent on exactly how powerful magic is in this setting; a mage that can re-write all of reality with a thought can pretty much win any conflict single-handedly, regardless of the circumstances. So I'll give a vague upper-limit on magic: the most powerful a mage can get in this setting is what I'll call a "local-area reality warper". A sufficiently skilled/powerful mage affect a finite area around him/her in (almost) any way he/she wants, but one way or another, the area will eventually return to its pre-magic condition (the *results* of the magic, though, may stay).
[Answer]
Why do you need classic infantry armies at all? Well, why do WE need infantry still today? Because if you want to conquer, occupy, and hold territory, you need boots on the ground, grunts, legionnaires, no matter how destructive the weapons at your disposal are.
Mages alone can't occupy and hold cities, villages, and territory in general, just as we cannot do so with only bombs, artillery, and missiles.
Furthermore, as said before, magic is very powerful and destructive, but so are bombs, artillery, and missiles.
The military doctrine of your world has done with regard to mages what we have done in our world with regard to the above: it adapted accordingly.
People in your world don't send big infantry formations into battle anymore; rather, they have shifted to decentralized troop deployment just as we did after World War I as a reaction to the ridiculously destructive power of the new weaponry being deployed.
It is going to be quite difficult to deploy your mages when, instead of a big enemy army in one place, there are countless smaller independently operating units attacking all over the place.
Equip each of those small units with even a single mage, and you basically force your enemy to divert his magical resources accordingly, since you can't divert a bigger infantry force to deal with it just to be blown away by the enemy mage.
Ignoring the smaller units doesn't work either, since a single mage, according to your descriptions, is able to inflict significant damage to whatever... supply lines, food production, settlements, you name it, whereas a concentrated force of mages just blows up something at one place more spectacularly.
So what you got, according to my theory, are small units of infantry accompanied or even commanded by a mage. When those units encounter an enemy mage, the mages battle it out themselves: your mage loses, your infantry retreats; enemy mage loses, your infantry advances and conquers stuff. Further advantage: once your infantry has occupied an enemy village/city, the enemy can't just blast it with their mages anymore.
[Answer]
## A few suggestions:
This question is similar but not identical to the one posed [here](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/184528/artifacts-not-being-used-for-war)
**Fairness:** Mages are deeply disbalancing, and regular humans don't stand a chance against them. Similarly, nations don't want to exist at the whim of teams of ultra-powered beings. Many a kingdom has been overthrown by a rebellious army, and mages magnify this risk a hundred-fold. Mages are simply deemed disruptive and unfair. In much the same way that crossbows were banned in wars between Christian armies, magic is seen as unseemly in war. Maybe the source of magic is morally questionable. How can the gods intervene to choose the rightful winner when infernal forces clearly rule the battlefield? Further, magic isn't egalitarian. Ironically, you might have commoners insisting that wars be fought with soldiers for employment reasons. Maybe magic has displaced thousands of workers, and keeping them employed as guards and garrisons is the only way to stave off rebellion and famine.
**Arrogance**: Mages view themselves as outside society. They really are so powerful that they only measure themselves against each other. There might BE wars between mages, but they are usually so individualistic that these battles resemble duels rather than wars. The things mage fight about don't matter to regular people and governments.
**Peculiarities of Magic:** Perhaps when two mages fight, the rules of conflict are very different. For example, many minor mages may be unable to defeat a single wizard slightly more powerful than any individual. As such, powerful mages are essentially invincible and stay outside of petty politics. Minor mages are weak compared to the big boys and not nearly as useful.
**Cost:** Those powerful mages may be extremely expensive to produce. Conversely, anti-magic arrows might be dirt cheap (literally - perhaps flint is antimagical). Any army employing mages as warriors finds cheap snipers deployed everywhere, waiting for a lucky shot. While your economy depends on mages to keep it running, the hazards of losing one mean you keep them in support roles - healing, teleporting supplies, etc.
**Side effects:** I'm stealing this one from another answer I gave to a different question. Perhaps there are psychic costs associated with killing. The spirits of the dead stalk those who killed them. Normal humans don't even perceive these spirits, and they eventually depart. Not so, the mage. They've opened themselves up to a larger world, and that larger world is ready to bite back.
[Answer]
I feel this is entirely context-dependent.
But here are a bunch of reasons why:
## Mages are powerful, so they don't take orders from schmucks
The mages are so powerful that they can do what they want. So, you don't simply drag a mage and throw him into the army. The first time a drill instructor insults him the drill instructor gets incinerated.
Similarly you can't command them. They are powerful and don't take kindly to be ordered around.
They also have little incentive to join in the first place.
**Context** because you can argue making measures against that but still. Unless you chain them all the time and only use them at the moment of battle, they will snap at you.
Also, the chain them up option is hard because how can you figure out how to stop their magic without magical help? And even if you do it then you have a lot of angry people with superpowers who are just waiting to rise against you.
The French revolution or Bolshevik revolution ain't got nothing on that of a revolt of mages.
## Rarity, especially of battlemages
This is more interesting than most. But think of it this way. The number of geniuses in history is always much much lower in proportion to even intelligent people.
So, in that world mages are rarer than normal people. But battlemages are even **more** rare. This means that while you can relay on a single battlemage, maybe the other nations of the world can't.
Also, in many worlds, magic seems to be diverse and not limited to a single field. Which only adds to my point. For example, you can have mages be very powerful, but the ratio of the battlemages to wizards is the same ratio of wizards to normal people.
If you compare this to say full-plated knights, then you can get a better understanding. Nobody just went around with 50000 full-plated knights. Sure they are almost a superpower but that destroys *the dreaded budget*.
Yes, knights and men at arms are different from mages but I want to give an example of something close but not exact.
## Magic is pure.
**Context** right off the bat.
But if certain settings have magic come from a hellish dimension why can't we have it come from a purity dimension?
Magic here is all about building and healing and restoring... etc.
There might be severe penalties for doing anything else or trying to find a loophole.
Maybe angels or the magic itself. Maybe corruption takes hold of those who try to twist magic.
I mean, you can cultivate growing by prearranging the woods of a tree so they grow and prosper only first punctuating the bodies of an opposing army.
You can heal people by increasing their bodily functions: say the heart -- making it pump several hundred times faster to also kill them.
So, loopholes can be made. But maybe the system is watched over by something or it is half-sentient itself.
The result is the same: you can't use magic to hurt people.
## Cost
It could be that mages require ridiculously high wages, so hiring an entire army is cheaper and gets the same result. Or, magic itself requires some rare metal or liquid or crystal or stone or whatever else happens in the world.
Again, **context**.
## Magic is uncertain or dangerous
Again context-dependent. Maybe the world in question has powerful magic that comes at the cost of a demon pact or hell portal or mages exploding... etc.
This setting is not undone and most of the time magic is still practiced but it would actually give generals pause. You honestly don't want your mage to fall to demons mid-battle and open a portal to hell from which a bunch of demons spawn to destroy your army. If you can control that magic then you throw it at the enemy. But that is a one time use thing. And, again, **context**.
This is pretty much the story of 95% of weapons programs and how they do before they are born.
Weapon X is promising such improvement on the rifle of the army that the army is interested. After a round of testing, weapon X is thrown into the trash because it is unreliable. Soldiers hate anything unreliable and prefer any reduction of anything except reliability.
## Fear of gaining power
The praetorian guards literally auctioned the imperial throne of Rome at some point.
That tells you all that you need to know about that.
Also from Rome: after the Marian reforms the army, usually more than one legion, started to have a very strong bond to the general. Cue the civil wars and we have the armies deciding who is the next emperor by simply backing them up and marching on Rome.
So, the people of your world may have figured out that it is a **bad** idea to even recruit mages.
You have 10000 soldiers who are fighting. A mages steps out of his tent and rains fire on the enemy; he also heals the wounded soldiers. He inspires them and might even destroy an entire fortified city with a snap.
How long 'til that guy rises to be a warlord?
**History tells us that, even without magic, this is always the case and a big risk.** With magic it is amplified a billion times. People follow charismatic leaders to death all the time in real life. So, **context**.
---
I'm pretty sure I can go on and on. So. Again. Context.
[Answer]
**Mages are essentially a fantasy take on special forces, which similarly can't win wars alone.**
Like special operations forces, mages are much more effective than the average soldier, and develop a mostly true reputation as being disproportionally effective. While mages actually are capable of the feats of unrealistic versions of the elite commando, the same problem of realistic special operations unit still applies because mages can still be overwhelmed by larger groups of soldiers even if it takes more of them than with real special operations soldiers.
Given that mages would also likely be killed given their threat, while regular soldiers might just be captured, the casualty problem also applies in addition to the training one. If you use an elite squad of mages and things go badly, they will likely be killed in action rather than captured if they are unable to escape. This means that every time you use mages in combat you are taking a greater risk of losing them.
This can then be reworded to ask: if special forces soldiers are so much better than regular ones, why do armies still have regular soldiers?
Wars are not won by elite individuals. What makes an army win wars is that it is about the average effectiveness for any given encounter being higher than the opposition. Mostly this means that your soldiers are on average better than the other side, or that you just have a lot more of them. One of the major problems with special operations units is that they tend to take the best average soldiers and put them all in elite units that are only used for specialized missions.
While special forces types look cool in movies, and their exploits can contribute to the larger effort, they are certainly not capable of winning a war on their own because small groups of soldiers are easily overwhelmed once they loose the element of stealth regardless of how elite they are and how much better the average member of the group shoots. Given the higher risk nature of special operations, such units often generally take higher casualties than conventional soldiers for a given mission, which then means they have to be rotated out of action while the regular soldiers are stuck on the front lines.
Field Marshal William Slim was a British general in WW2, notable in that his soldiers actually respected him as a soldier's general who led from the front without taking credit for his soldier's accomplishments. The following is a quotation:
>
> Armies do not win wars by means of a few bodies of super-soldiers but
> by the average quality of their standard units. Anything, whatever
> short cuts to victory it may promise, which thus weakens the army
> spirit, is dangerous. Commanders who have used these special forces
> have found, as we did in Burma, that they have another grave
> disadvantage- they can be employed actively for only restricted
> periods. Then they demand to be taken out of the battle to recuperate,
> while normal formations are expected to have no such limitations to
> their employment. In Burma, the time spent in action with the enemy by
> special forces was only a fraction of that endured by the normal
> divisions, and it must be remembered that risk is danger multiplied by
> time.
>
>
>
For a somewhat amusing comment, he also had the following to say, even if it doesn't apply to mages as they legitimately have superpowers:
>
> This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of
> Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat
> with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a
> tree.
>
>
>
[Answer]
**Anti magic**
Magic can do a lot of things. One of the things is neutralising other magic. Mages can create great bubbles with artefacts to prevent magic from happening. This is great to neutralise the enemies magic. Mages obviously don't want to be somewhere where their magic is nullified, so they generally stand aside from these wars after the anti magic.
Why would they give anti magic in the first place? They can easily turn their own creations on and off, so being the owner is a great advantage. Secondly a smith makes weapons that can be used against him. He does is purely out of economic gain. Because regardless how powerful you are, you still need friends, family and not a whole nation to despise you. They take roles and work in society and economic advantages are often not looked down upon.
[Answer]
**Mages eat bread. Cthullhu eats mages**
Whenever really powerful - as in comparable to artillery in energy output - magic is cast, there's a small but real chance for an elder beeing to show up and eat the mage (usually, only the stomach of the beeing manifests on the material plane, right around the unhappy mage). This beeing then - magically - makes the mage immortal and starts to digest them. How do we know? Often, mages send telepathic messages that impress their anguish on their loved ones and close friends - or lieges whom they swore fealty to. The messages presumably stop when the recipients throw themselves of a cliff or go entirely mad from the constant pain and anguish.
This means:
* Mages take care to never be the one who casts the most powerful stuff
* Mages don't really practice or try out their most powerful spells
* Mages tend to loose friends as they get more powerful, because everyone knows it can be really bad luck to be a close friend of a mage
* Mages are really superstitious about what influences the choices of the elder beeing - peer long enough into randomness, a pattern emerges
* Mage duels work with trying to trick the other mage to cast "big" spells, expect *illusions* of fireballs in the hope of provoking real ice shields and the like
* Combined arms with mages is difficult: Your mage can probably break the formation of piemen with his gust of storm spell, allowing the light infantry to close, but will the mage still be there for the followup?
You can fine-tune the selection process to shapethe magic in your setting - maybe it's not only energy expenditure but also *political effect* that attracts attention: If *this* fireball stops the charge of the night templar, thus changing the course of a battle and the fate of a kingdom: Elder beeing sees this from their throne at the end of time and steps in right after the casting, **gulp**. *That* fireball incinerates two guards, the ultimate effect is that the mage and their friends grab the treasure chest they where guarding and spend it in the next alehouse - no problem. This could lead to the paradoxical effect that the mages with the least foresight live the longest.
You can fine tune the effect that certain spells, that won't get into the way of heroic knightly battles can be cast rather safely, und only restrict magic-as-artillery uses.
[Answer]
## Magic energy is locally limited.
When someone uses magic, they use up magic energy from the surrounding. The energy does regenerate over time. But when you have a lot of magic users in the same place using magic, then they will quickly run out and make it impossible to use magic in that area for a while.
That means that mages can be very powerful in small skirmishes, but powerless in large-scale battles. They share the local pool of magic energy with all friendly and enemy mages. So when you would have 1000 mages vs. 1000 mages on a battlefield trying to throw fireballs at each other, they would immediately burn through all magic energy on the battlefield and then be unable to do anything except whacking each other with their staffs.
So it would be a far better strategy for large-scale battles to only have a small number of mages in your army who use the little magic you have available on the battlefield strategically while the bulk of the fighting is done by muggle soldiers using mundane weapons and armor.
[Answer]
## Most powerful mages don't care about war
When you have that much power, you're probably as motivated to fight or rule those weak nomages as the average person is to stomp on some ants or own an ant farm. Not even to mention following their orders (unless of course you're only making them *think* they're in charge, but that's still kind of boring).
Much like humans with nature, the more kind mages see nomages as weak and needing to be protected (from other mages usually, but also sometimes from natural disasters or themselves).
Most mages keep to themselves or mostly associate with other mages. Those that do integrate into regular society do so because they just want to live a (mostly) "normal" life and thus don't get involved in wars.
## The Council of Mages disallows mages from fighting in wars
There are the occasional bad apples that seek to rule or destroy everything, and that (along with some other reasons) is why The Council of Mages was started.
Powerful magic can be sensed by other mages from far away, and there are Council sects, agents and loyalists scattered all across the world to check for, report and/or deal with mages casting less powerful but still destructive magic. Every mage knows they'll be before The Council to face consequences in a few days at most if they start killing people left and right or casting mass protection spells to help one side in a war.
[Answer]
**Mages will not do what you want them to do.**
It might be a constitutional requirement. Mages are dependable only in their complete undependability. They simply will not do as they are told!
You might occasionally have a mage do something that benefits you, but then next thing will piss you off, and then next thing might be very destructive, and then the fourth thing utterly baffling. They are agents of Chaos, these mages. Their presence is bad for the army in many ways, morale being one of the least of them.
[Answer]
A few ideas:
### Oath of no evil
Mages are extremely powerful, but just as importantly, that power is invisible to a common person. A mage could kill someone just by stopping their heart, or set a house on fire, or cause crops to spoil.
If a mage was stay in a village, likely they would start getting blamed for every random problem that happened. This has happened plenty of times in history without magic being real, imagine how much more this would occur if magic was way more in your face.
Assuming mages aren't near-godly, they could be killed by a mob, so they obviously need a way to convince villagers that they aren't evil. One approach (used in the wheel of time) is for mages to take an oath that prevents them from doing certain evil actions. Even better if this is magically enforced. The distrust would likely still exist (as people would squirm around the rules) but not to the point where mages would need to fear for their life everywhere they go.
This oath could contain a clause against using magic as a weapon (except maybe self defense), which would prevent them from being used as soldiers or guards.
### Better uses
You mention that there's other tasks that contribute to a war that mages would be useful for, such as healing or special operations (assassination, spying etc). Perhaps these tasks are so useful that you wouldn't risk a mage on the front lines where a stray arrow could kill them.
Among those you mentioned, don't forget about more mundane stuff like teleporting food or wounded.
### Mages + Troops > Mages
Mages could very well take part in a battle, and even perhaps be the deciding factor, but that doesn't make troops completely useless. If two mages are locked in a magical battle, a soldier with a crossbow can turn that battle pretty quickly. Even if a mage can stop crossbow bolts, that's still going to split their focus and waste their mana.
In most settings mages are a small percentage of the population, which means they'd also be a small percentage of the soldiers in your army, since you aren't turning away any person signing up for the army.
### Hurry up and wait
If you talk to any soldier they'll be very familiar with the concept of "hurry up and wait". A soldier will move quickly to a location, but then stay there guarding or patrolling for days or weeks. A soldiers presence is valuable in and of itself, as well as performing certain menial tasks like searching civilians passing through a checkpoint.
A mage is probably not something you'd want to waste on those tasks. Assuming mages mana works like energy (ie restores with time), any time a mage is on guard duty and isn't attacked, they wasted mana. They do of course provie a larger threat, but you can hide or fake that threat (a regular soldier in mage's robes) to provide most of that benefit without having to actually waste the mage.
Those tasks of course still need to be done, which means you need regular troops to perform them. Depending on how different magic warfare is to regular warfare, these menial tasks and guarding would take up a significant portion of the troops.
### Range
Your mages are constrained to a certain distance. Potentially that distance is less than the distance a bowman can fire a shot. So a platoon of mages could very well lose a battle to a platoon of archers. Likewise it probably takes time to cast spells, which means a cavalry charge could reach the mages before it gets destroyed. Even if their range is longer than an archers, and they could single handedly stop a cavalry charge, you might be able to include mages among those platoons that provide shields or protection until the rest of the platoon gets in range.
A world with magic being used in wars would very quickly develop anti-mage units, which means you'd want a mix of forces (just like with cavalry, or archers or artillery).
### Training
Crossbows (and later guns) replaced bows among armies not necessarily for their superiority, but for their ease of use. A well trained longbowman has a better range and accuracy than a crossbowman, but you can shove a crossbow into the hands of a new recruit and they'll be able to use it far more effectively than they would a bow.
Likewise magic would require study and training in order to use it effectively. Most countries can't afford to keep very large standing armies, and so rely on recruits during wartime. Since non-magic recruits are trained faster, the first few waves of recruits would be all non-magic, with high numbers of mages only really coming into play in extended wars.
Even in extended wars, you have to feed and house the troops during training. If a spearman can be trained in 2 weeks and a mage takes a year, then a barracks can churn out 26x as many spearmen as it can mages.
Even experienced mages would need to be taught battle spells. Games focus most mage's abilities on these, but in a peacetime world of magic most mages wouldn't bother learning how to cast a fireball, since you won't use that in normal life.
[Answer]
# Practical Reasons
## Rarity
Effective employment of magic requires either unparalleled understanding of certain topics, natural talent in spellcasting, or both. Either way, any of your mages worth their salt have been gifted with abilities from birth much greater than their peers. This is doubly so in a world without formal education as in many / most fantasy settings, save for perhaps a few "Mages' Colleges" which only have enough space to accept those with talent anyway. If you would like magic to be more prevalent in your world, it can be. Mages don't have to be a rarity altogether, only mages exceptional enough to warrant the question.
## Risk
Tying in to rarity, any mages that you *do* have access to, while powerful, are not immune to assassination. One will nary have had a moment to process what happened before the crossbow bolt from the treeline punctures his heart, the assassin's blade makes its way across his neck in his sleep, or the poison in his wine works its way into his system. These dangers can be *mitigated* with countermeasures, but not negated entirely. One must balance the contribution a mage would bring to an ongoing engagement with the risk of that mage being lost, the number of mages available, and the necessity of that mage for future engagements.
## Cost
Tying in to rarity, any mage, knowing how indispensable his skills are in battle, prices his services accordingly. This is doubly true when we consider the risk that he'll be putting himself in, being the enemy's primary target on any battlefield.
## Scale
The aforementioned cost could be deemed unnecessary on smaller scales; for the conquest of a tiny principality or other feeble and impoverished nation. Conversely, the rarity of mages means that while they will certainly be employed at larger scales, likely so will tens or even hundreds of thousands of dull infantry, either matching or surpassing their contribution.
## Availability
Continuing off of scale and rarity, any war sufficiently large enough to warrant mages will likely be fought with battles erupting in numerous locations, if not contemporaneously, then without enough time to have your mages present everywhere along the front. It's all well and good to have an almighty spellcaster (or team thereof) who decimates invading armies, but not if while focusing on one part of the enemy force, a dozen others have advanced into your territory and ransacked your towns and villages.
## Occupation
I'm assuming any of your invading countries would still need to station a force to police what holdings have been conquered. Assigning an all-powerful battlemage to such a task would be wasteful; especially with cost, risk, and rarity being considered.
# Technical / Societal / Cultural Reasons
## Magical restrictions
It doesn't seem like your mages are so feeble as to suffer from any of the following, but regardless, consider if perhaps magic can only be practiced along Ley-lines or other spiritually significant areas. Maybe it requires some form of ritual beforehand, etc.
## Treaties and pacts
Seems like you're already against the idea of deterrence, but doesn't hurt to mention the following:
>
> the best counter to the enemy's mage is your own mage, so you should deploy your own mages to reduce the effectiveness of enemy mages.
>
>
>
I believe that the nuclear analogy *does* hold. I would assume that both sides would be bound by a treaty prohibiting the wartime employment of mages. If either side violates the treaty, then that would certainly make mages fair game; but then again, the same can be said for nuclear weapons.
## Magic is peaceful
Suppose mages have an equivalent of the Hippocratic oath or otherwise similarly hold the idea of practising magic to harm others as a grave taboo. Certainly, even if you could muster up the coin necessary to lubricate their morals, that would put your nation in the spotlight as "the nation which would break taboo".
# Real-world analogue
Perhaps consider the Bronze age chariot. A magnificent platform that allowed archers to pick the enemy off while retaining mobility. However, chariots were expensive due to training of the crew and horses as well as their construction. Furthermore, a chariot that got too close, or hung around too long could be swamped by sheer numbers of enemy infantry. As such, you generally want your chariots *and* infantry to act as support, as well as overwhelm *enemy* chariots. Infantry support is still practised today.
[Answer]
**Anti-Magic is far easier to cast**
Meaning that an okay mage can deny a good mage doing anything. This makes offensive mages very hard to use, because in order to deny your tier 15 mage destroying the entire army in a second, you only need to send a tier 12 mage to focus on stopping him.
*That would still leave magic to be very valuable for guerilla strikes or for support roles in your army* (logistics, healing, communication, everything OUTSIDE battle), but the battlefields themselves would be completely free of fireballs and the like
[Answer]
Two possibilities, one of which has been mentioned multiple times.
First, as mentioned in other responses, say your magical system makes disruption of a magical effect much easier than creating that effect. This would, so long as an enemy force has mages, mean your mages' primary role isn't offensive, it's defensive. You can't go on the attack because it will likely be negated, and attacking means that power and that mage isn't available to be used defensively. So a typical battle would involve mages sort of hovering around, tentatively probing at the enemy's defences to see if something can get through while rebuffing enemy attempts to do the same. So the actual fighting would be carried out mostly on a mundane level, trying to get an advantage so that the enemy mages have to switch from overall defence to more localized action, which then means your mages have more freedom of action.
Once one side has the magical advantage, things would tend to quickly escalate as one side starts losing defensive capability, and the battle would likely end quickly.
In essence, mages sort of act like cavalry. The primary role of cavalry was to deal with other cavalry while infantry fought. If the enemy horse could be driven off, then your cavalry is there and as soon as there's an opening, they can hit it and break the enemy formation.
Second possibility: when you use magic, *everyone* knows about it. Someone using magic causes a mystical flare that's easily detected, which utterly blows operational security out of the water. It's one thing if you're setting up a setpiece battle or moving an army, which is trivial to follow even by mundane means, but if you're trying to quietly do anything by sneaking, any spells cast by a mage will let everyone know where they are.
[Answer]
**Cannon Fodder**
A mage is only good for so many spells before he tires and when he tires, a peasant with a pitchfork can defeat him.
At the end of the day, there are a lot more peasants than wizards.
Battles become a war of attrition where each side tries to wear the other side's wizards out while losing as few troops as possible and when they're exhausted, you can charge the enemy without the fear of magical defences and hopefully your wizards can still assist in the attack.
[Answer]
## Limits on magicians' combat effectiveness
If you use fairly common tropes of wizards, there are many inherent limitations on the power of wizards. Maybe they have a limited amount of "energy" (manna, ley lines, material components, etc.). Maybe they can only cast powerful combative spells X times per day, or whatever. Maybe the wizards have to sleep a full, uninterrupted, 8 hours to regain their powers at the end of their work shift...
The specifics aren't that important. The key is that your mage can only perform magic a few times before they're sapped and have to stop fighting. So now what? Infantry and other unit types must be there to defend the wizards. And your wizards probably have to be spread into multiple shifts so that there's never a window during which you have no magical protections, so they're spread too thin to win the war single-handedly.
## Training times and costs
You can train infantry in a few weeks and they're combat-ready. Given a few battles, the survivors are going to be highly effective at their trade. Most tropes about magicians are that they don't start out supremely powerful. They have to study for years to master the most basic spells.
How much does it cost to train your wizards relative to your infantry? Or how many more infantry can you afford to field vs. wizards? Is it tens of infantry per wizard? Hundreds? At extremely high power ratings, the conversion might even be thousands of infantry.
## Wages
You have to pay your wizards more than you pay infantry, because 1 they can cast powerful magic against their leaders and you do not want that and 2 because you just spent years training them to be powerful, so obviously they deserve better pay than those lowly infantry. I mean, you try telling a wizard capable of casting Fireball that she's only worth the same pay scale as an infantry private. Just. Um. Don't tell her to her face. For your sake. *Please pay your wizards.* Again, how many infantry can you afford to field relative to your wizards?
## Defenses
Wizards are typically portrayed as physically frail relative to fighters/warriors. Your infantry spends hours each day working on their physical fitness and combat muscle memory while your wizards focus on learning and mental acumen and magic. This means your wizards aren't going to be as effective at long marches. They're not going to be effective at defending themselves from enemy infantry, should those soldiers get through any magical defenses.
So you may end up having to detail support troops (infantry) to provide defense and aid to the wizards. I mean, you're paying them to cast spells, not march, build forts, cook food, etc.
Meanwhile, roughly 50% of your wizards are tasked with defending themselves and your infantry from their wizards and their infantry. So you've just spread them even thinner.
## Overwhelming force
Yeah, your wizard can cast fireball 3 or 4 times in a day, maybe. But your infantry can swing a sword or stab with a spear or fire an arrow ALL DAY LONG. Sure, they need water breaks and food if possible. But yeah, once your wizard runs out of spells for the day, send in a wave of infantry and suddenly your wizard is running as fast as his robes will allow.
Wizards are like cannons. They're great, but they aren't enough to win by themselves.
[Answer]
Personally I really liked Raymond E. Feist's in-universe explanation of why the magicians in Midkemia tend to hang back and watch and throw a tiny bit of support here or there instead of being a major part of the fight (unless they have a well-developed plan).
In order to use direct magic effectively, they need to be out where they can see what's going on, which means the other side's mages will see them and know they're up to something.
So the first side casts a spell, and the other side casts a counter spell, so then the first side casts a counter-counter spell, and the other side casts a counter-counter-counter spell...
And about this time the guys with pointy metal things on long sticks show up and hack all the mages to bits without either set of wizards really having accomplished anything...
Of course, in that setting magic is common, but not ubiquitous. Any competent Duke probably has a magician of some stripe on staff, and any decent army probably has two or three pieces of enchanted gear, but it's not sold out of vending machines on every street corner.
Up the magic level another step and your wars will be fought by mundane soldiers using enchanted equipment and you won't see mages on the battlefield much for the same reason that you don't see electronics engineers leading the charge in our world (usually). They're more useful behind the lines building the cool stuff that you can have the grunts carry and operate. Do expect to see a lot of magic stuff at this level though. Especially anything that will survive the death of its wielder and so can be re-used.
[Answer]
Have you ever played Skyrim? If you have, you may be able to guess my answer to your question.
**Arrows**
Yup, that’s it. If your mages have human reaction times then all it takes is one good archer with a long bow hiding in the woods and you have a bunch of dead magic boys (or girls or what have you). Arrows are very fast, nearly silent, and when fired from a long bow they have a lot of range and power. True, a mage may be able to wipe out a small nation in an afternoon, but he can’t defend against something he doesn’t even know is there.
**Modern Equivalent**
Snipers. It doesn’t matter how many soldiers and weapons you are surrounded by, if a sniper can see you, you’re basically already dead. Because, there is no defense against a sniper other than not being found in the first place.
Your mages will be really tough to deal with in direct combat, so ambushes and assassination will be a lot more commonplace. Any time a wizard pokes his head out of a window in his wizard tower he’ll find himself riddled with arrows and crossbow bolts shortly afterward. Wizards will be HVTs (high value targets) and if they can’t be bought, bribed, coerced, convinced, blackmailed, or threatened to change sides (and any smart leader will try all of those things first) then they will be number one on every hit list for every soldier, mercenary, and bounty hunter alive. Huge rewards will be offered for the wizard’s severed head, and maybe enough gold or land could turn an ally into an assassin.
**Summary**
Unless the wizards have superhuman reflexes and/or superhuman toughness, they will be just as vulnerable to death as anyone else, especially death from the shadows. As a side note, if enemy mages know where your mage sleeps, couldn’t they use their magic to send something like a 2 ton boulder flying toward his bedroom at a very appreciable speed from a significant distance away? If things like that are possible, then the only mages who will live long enough to make a significant contribution to the war effort will be the ones who know how to be very subtle. Let them dress like soldier, fight like soldiers, and use their magic to give subtle but very powerful boosts to everyone fighting alongside them.
[Answer]
# Stabilizing reality is easier than disrupting it
If it took far more effort to distort reality than to merely prevent such distortions, active use of mages would be relatively useless. Let's assume a useful degree of distortion - like materializing a fireball - required 5 times as much power than preventing that distortion, using mages would only be useful against armies of 1/5 the size. Since most battles would be fought between roughly equal armies, mages would only assigned as protection from enemy magic.
Stable magical artifacts might be just as hard to suppress as a fireball would be, since in that case reality "got used" to the change, but active magic would fizzle out against the anti-magic fields of the enemy mages unless you had a significant magical power advantage. In addition, trying to actively distort reality would make all other mages in the vicinity aware of the casters position, potentially getting them ambushed by a "classical" strike team (elite units, heavy infantry, cavalry or artifact-enhanced soldiers). Occasionally, one army might bring a disproportionate amount of mages, who could focus their power to enhance the effectiveness of their troops or - in extreme cases, or when some of the stabilizing enemy mages had been killed - rain fire on the enemy army, but most of the time the investment in mages would be just enough to make it uneconomical for the enemy to use mages offensively. Using a disproportionate amount of mages in one army would mean not leaving enough mages to safely defend your other armies, so if your enemy knew of this move, he could potentially overwhelm the defense of several of your armies.
All this turns the assignment of mages into quite a complex mind game, where active magic is rarely seen on the battlefield, but where its potential still influences the flow of battle. Do you hide your mages within your troops and risk them getting hit by a random arrow/stone? Do you hide them in fortified positions that protect, but also alert the enemy army of their position? Do you put mages in the ranks of your servants and put decoys in the mage towers (or whatever fortifications are practical)?
## still want some battle magic?
If the ability to influence the world falls off rapidly with increasing distance, somewhat powerful mages might still defend themselves or use magic offensively at close range, but dampening mage hidden between enemy soldiers could very suddenly make him very vulnerable to physical attacks. If detecting the source of a spell is relatively hard, the most common use of magic would be supporting single soldiers from some relatively small distance, while trying not to expose your battlemage to the inevitable counterattack against whoever is close to such an enhanced soldier.
If mages are sufficiently rare, or if at short range distorting magic became more powerful than equivalent stabilizing magic, you'd still get occasional mage duels, and battle mages would still make potent fighters. But they couldn't slaughter entire armies as long as they had *some* level of magical protection, and overcoming an enemy with troops supported by relatively weak magic would be far cheaper than trying to overwhelm the defenders magically.
Interestingly, in such a case mages would dominate small-scale engagements (where a single mage could annihilate other, potentially unprotected forces, or duel with with single enemy mages without significant physical threat posed by the few 100s of soldiers) while being severely restricted in their effective range in large-scale engagements with multiple mages on each side - the long-range dampening effects would add up, so individual disruptive magic would be useful at increasingly narrow ranges. Clumping together your own mages would make them more effective, but also make your defense more vulnerable - a trade-off only to consider when you are quite desperate.
# Math?!
If you want some idea how this *might* work (you don't necessarily need this, but it might help you imagine useful "laws of magic"), this is how I'd model it (this assumes offensive magic is stronger at close range, but its effectiveness falls off more quickly (to a quarter with doubled distance) than that of counter magic (falls to half at double the distance)):
Offensive magic is quite a bit stronger than dampening magic, so mages can have nice flashy duels at shortish ranges (imagine each unit of distance is ~5-50m, depending how you want such things to work out). Assuming u=10m, single mages would duel with active spells (countering Fireball with Iceshield, or Mirrorwall) until about 50m of distance, from where on disrupting a spell would take less effort than casting it (assuming equally skilled mages). At 10m, you'd have to be 5 times as powerful to simply dampen enemy magic away to nothing!
However, if multiple mages are present, the effective range is much lower: since dampening is easy to coordinate (and perhaps used less mana/energy/crystals/whatever, if any, resource casting spells consumes), with only 3 mages per side, uncoordinated spellcasting is only power effective at a range of ~17m.
If you are far away from the enemy mages, you might conjure a fireball, but the enemy mages would also be less dampened by you and could easily project a defense (or even dampen the fireball away in the time it took to reach them).
A group of mages coordinating their powers would have an extended range, but with a sufficient number of dampeners even than would grow more difficult, since the offensive mages can only clump together so far without interfering with one another, leading to inefficiency.
Under the assumption that fireball bombardment is harder to dispel than dueling magic (eg. if fireballs already in flight are harder to dampen than those in the process being conjured), we get another interesting side effect concerning how sieges would work: each side would try to position their *active* mages relatively far away from the enemy - a tower in the middle of the city, or a somewhat distant hill/siege fortification - and sling projectiles, hurl stones, etc.
They could materialize these effects in their vicinity, forcing defensive mages to project active defenses, making mages effectively "artillery" and "energy shields" in large sieges.
If spells-in-flight *could* be dampened efficiently (and targeting troops isn't made easier by some other mechanism), mages would become largely useless in the biggest battles - against 100 enemy dampening mages, any individual caster would only be effective at 0.5m!
One should still needs to consider how mages could affect things *between* themselves and enemy mages. But a large group of dampeners could still dampen away firebolts quite efficiently.
Note: this uses a model applying the formulas as *effectiveness on object at distance x*, while the first graph treated the formulas as *effectiveness in ranged combat at range x*, which is a different mathematical model.
At 200m separation between (equally powerful) caster and dampener, spells would be effective for up to ~75m before dampening was too effective. At only 50m separation, anything up to 30m away could be affected.
If there are just 10 enemy mages within 500m, effective magic would be limited to a radius of at most 48m.
**I think I will give this some more thought, and try to come up with a single self-consistent model of magical strength matching your preferences** (the latter one breaks down when describing a mage trying to affect objects near an enemy mage within arcane combat range). **Do you have any further specific desiderata my "science of magic" should fulfill?**
*Note: I specifically chose a 1/x² strength scaling, since that allows for practically open-ended power ("reality warping") in a sufficiently small area if undisturbed, and still falls off sufficiently quickly to prevent trivial assassinations of the commander next warcamp, even without magic defense.*
[Answer]
Many of the above ideas are good, but I had one I didn't see so I'll mention it:
**Group Enchantment/Army Buffs**
In your world add some very powerful spells that enchant an army into super soldiers or at least defend them from magic. There's a lot of different ways you could add this to your world.
Perhaps a lone mage could vaporize an army charging at him, but if there's a mage leading the charge, deflecting spells sent at him and the army, pretty soon the lone mage is face to face with an enemy mage and surround by swordsmen.
Perhaps mages can maintain a large shield over their army from behind, like the Gungan shields Star Wars that protect from magic, and thus take the role of artillery and fortifications.
Perhaps they enchant the armor and weapons of the troops to be magic resistant and magic shield piercing, and take something of an armorer and quartermaster role. An army might resist magical bombardment if they form shield walls like the Roman testudo with enchanted shields. Maybe they can enchant arrows to seek magic/mages to give archers a fighting chance against mages and force the mages to hide behind an army.
[Answer]
## Magic has a cost to the wielder
It's a trope, but one with a believable relationship to the "[don't take orders from schmucks](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/191511/54187)" answer above. Especially if there's a predictable lifespan reduction to using magic (as opposed to a 0.05% chance of a Djinn [spontaneously eating your soul](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/191530/54187)), it's hard to talk mages into waging offensive wars. Anything you offer to reward them for using more magic leaves them less time to enjoy it.
For offensive incentive, you're left with Religious Death Cult; mages who live fast and die young; or threats of "Do this or we'll kill your family." That last one would make mages unlikely to self-identify. And if one territory attacked another, their opponent would have less trouble recruiting, since mages might be more willing to knowingly spend themselves protecting their homeland than invading someone else's.
So every once in a while, you get a mage who is willing to live a little shorter (or more likely a lot shorter) for the cause, but they wear out, and you need bodies to back them up.
[Answer]
## Even moderately powerful mages are self-sufficient
Once a mage gets sufficiently powerful, they gain the ability to supply all of their own food, water, shelter, and protection with little effort. This effect their psychology immensely, causing them to not feel a drive for most wordly things. Their only materialistic fear is losing their magic, since then they would not be able to be self-sufficient.
This means that the mage does not *need* to join the military to support themselves, nor any other particular thing the government wants them to do. The government trying to force the issue is liable to end badly. That's not to say that mages won't join the military; it is just not necessary. Mages in particular almost never swear loyalty to a government. The only oath is "I stay as long as its convenient". This, combined with the other answers, making mages unreliable for large scale use in combat.
[Answer]
Apart from, or maybe combined with, wizards or magic being a relatively scarce resource, there's the point that the other side also has wizards and they tend to cancel each other out.
In the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, there exists the notion that wiards are "magic against magic", and the regular troops are "steel against steel". In other words, regular troops and wizards work together but since both sides have wizards, part or all of their time is spent countering the other side's wizards' magic. Meanwhile, the troops both protect the wizards from mundane attacks, as fight the actual battles, leaving it to the wizards to protect them from magical attacks.
Granted, this setting might not stricly be considered High Magic, but the principle probably still stands.
Powerful good wizard Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander explains this in more detail in one of the books, with examples of how the other side's wizards would construct a spell, then his side had to counter that, and then they constructed their own spell, which the other side spent time (and blood) to counter, etc.
---
In case you are interested and want to read the Sword of truth series, I'd like to note that while it can be an entertaining fantasy series, especially in its later books it espouses a philosophy based on (Ayn Rand style) Objectivism, which is ... contested on moral and ethical grounds, to say the least.
[Answer]
## Risk versus Benefit
Mages have more value at home than they do at war. A powerful mage is of no use to you if they are dead. It is far too risky to put your mages on the battlefield when you could be using them to see the future, turn lead into gold, feed and entertain the masses, etc...
[Answer]
Make magic have a physical cost for mages. Just how like how bodybuilders aren't flexible, or how watchmakers usually do not have much brute strength, magic users have a similar tradeoff. Perhaps, the psionic ability of mages leaves them physically weak (it uses so much energy that they basically gain no muscle mass even if they eat like a sumo wrestler, and will be easily overwhelmed at close ranges), or severely increases a chance of some serious disease the more you tap into your magic ability (for example, magic users would have a high chance of experiencing a stroke or heart attack if they overexert their magical abilities, or the high energy use makes them extremely exhausted, thus weakening their immune system and making them sick with a serious disease).
With these side effects, mages would either not want to become too powerful (and basically become a non-magic user because their magic has little useful power), or become extremely powerful but physically frail. Obviously, the average magic adept would not want the unfortunate fate of being confined to a wheelchair or hospital bed by becoming more magically powerful, so each nation has a few extremely powerful mages that are rarely used (lest they die from the magic use) but many magic users that can probably use it around the house but are not powerful enough to really function as mages (they can use their limited magic to pick things up from high shelves but they would be better off with a sword and shield in battle).
[Answer]
**Fear of escalation**
For the same reason, we have nuclear bombs but don't use them actively in war. We fear a escalation which will pretty much destroy everything.
Same is in your world. The fear of more and more destructive spells leads to an instinctive agreement of not using mages in war (maybe only for healing)
[Answer]
Other than the obvious ones already mentioned, like needing people to occupy territories, and cost-benefit analysis, I have a few different ideas, mostly taken from literature.
**Adaptation**
Since there are mages, armies obviously would have made preparations against mages. Perhaps armies have armors that make it significantly harder for magic to affect the user. Perhaps there are counter-magic charms. Perhaps armies can deploy large scale formations/arrays (concept taken from Chinese Xianxia/Wuxia stories) which can resist magic. Or maybe they simply have anti-artillery magical shields. Technology could also play a role.
**Mage-killers**
Specialized troops which specializes in killing mages. Maybe they are assassins. Maybe they are snipers. Maybe they have tools which are meant to counter magic.
**Karmic Hindrance/Separation of Mages/Mortals**
This is another idea taken from Chinese Xianxia stories. Often, these stories have immortals (mages) who can wipe out a whole country by themselves. Why aren't they involved in mortal wars? Well, mainly 2 reasons.
The first is that there is a separation between mortals and immortals, often enforced by the heavens (gods, or magic itself, in this case). Mages aren't supposed to affect the mortal worlds overly. Or perhaps being around other mortals are detrimental to having magic.
The second is the idea of Karma (the Chinese kind, not the Indian kind). If you do good, you gain Karmic Virtue, which can be used to strengthen oneself, figure out the mystery of the universe, or made into artifacts. If you murder a few thousand people who are helpless in front of you, you get Karmic Hindrance, which can have severe negative effects on you, like limiting your magic, or outright killing you, or subjecting you to Hell. Also, having Karmic Hindrance encourages other people to kill you, because they'd get Karmic Virtue for doing so.
Karmic Virtue basically is a type of currency, while Hindrance is a type of debt. Mages use these as currencies. Obviously, mages wouldn't want to gain a lot of magical debt to gain mortal money.
[Answer]
Because mages are artillery. If your mage fires at a regiment, then an opposing mage now knows where he is and during the "reload" the opposing mage can annihilate him/her.
Additionally, these mages don't have radar, UAV's, satellite surveillance or radio's. While they might have some magical means of communication and protection they are still vulnerable. Imagine a small group of skirmishers avoiding detection and taking out your mage(s) or disrupting their casting by threatening their position.
High magic also means that magic items will be available. Protections against magic, crossbows that fire a magic bolt with much higher accuracy or killing power, powerful items that make an entire regiment immune to being tired, mirror images of themselves to absorb enemy magic attacks, a wand that allows you to cast a few fireballs at the mage who just tried to destroy the regiment next to you and more. The mages can also protect soldiers from opposing magical attacks. Imagine your devastating spell against a regiment being cancelled, interrupted or blocked by a shield. Now you've revealed yourself and failed at your attack!
To recap:
* soldiers are used as distractions for magical attacks and a way to pinpoint enemy mages.
* soldiers are used to hide the location of your own mages.
* soldiers are used to hunt down mages.
* soldiers are equipped with their own magic for defense and offense.
* soldiers can be in more places at once. Just try and capture a city with a handful of mages when they are probably too rich and powerful to do any patrolling and aren't enough to do so effectively anyway.
[Answer]
### Unique Spell Components
Every spellcaster's magic is just as unique as they are and each one needs slightly different spell components (brown bat guano versus free-tail bat guano for fireball) or to have those components stored/prepared/handled in slightly different ways (this mage needs his silk balled up while this mage needs his silk strands combed straight). Imagine the logistical challenges that would face an army supplying spell components to 10,000 wizards each of whom needed their own unique variant of the component.
We do the same in armies in our own world. Interchangeable weapon parts are hugely important and the US navy is willing to accept the limitations imposed by a standardized launch tube to get the benefits of missile compatibility.
### Component Depletion/Access
Maybe it's relatively easy to get spell components in the relatively modest numbers that a few adventurers need for the occasional brawl and some studious academic wizards need for research but trying to procure them at scale becomes virtually impossible. Spells might require components be picked naturally in the wild and not farmed/planted. 10,000 casters casting spells as fast as they can might quickly denude a kingdom of components in a few days and as they become harder to find you need more men out looking for them.
Worse, what if each caster must gather their own components themselves. That might be trivial for a small party near nature but not at the front lines. You can't constantly have your mages tromping back and forth to the front to go pick their own herbs or pieces of dung or what have you.
### Variation and Coordination
Magic users are each unique making them virtually impossible to train or deploy at scale. Maybe what determines what spells/effects each caster can accomplish isn't as much a conscious choice but deep facts about who they are so you can't train up mages with a common arsenal of spells. Imagine the chaos unleashed if a 100 casters each cast totally different spell types at the same time. The Fire elemental one caster summons bumps into the Water elemental another summons. One caster tries to blind the opponents with blinding light while another uses magical fog/darkness.
Maybe gods in your world do use armies of spellcasters but they are the only ones who are able to remember and utilize 10,000 different individual skills effectively. Mere human strategists need an abstraction like a unit with known weaponry and capabilities to effectively plan and coordinate battles.
### Training Is Unscalable
Maybe magic isn't the sort of thing you can instruct people in (or have them practice at) in a regimented highly scalable fashion. Each individual wizard needs quiet contemplation with only a few colleagues to learn their arts or to improve them. This makes it impossible to keep them together in large numbers in barracks (why they always going off to isolated towers) so you've got to go gather them up before you can use them in battle and better hope your enemy doesn't show up in the meantime.
Not to mention all that alone time makes it difficult to ever find time to train them as a unit.
Personality Unsuitability
Also, spell casting might only attract a certain type of person of require that type of person to succeed at it. Consider the difficulties modern armies have recruiting and keeping computer hackers or scientists. Mass combat requires quick, unquestioning obedience and conformity while wizards (like hackers) are only any good because they question and respond in unusual ways. Or perhaps most wizards are very absent minded, or quarrelsome or have some other issue that keeps them from being good soldiers.
### Fatality Rate
Maybe it's particularly easy to target other magic users on a battlefield with certain spells or tactics and very hard to defend against. Thus, in each battle the magic users (not the grunts) wipe each other out pretty quickly taking decades of training with them as they go. If mages die in wars at some crazy high rate you'll find it virtually impossible to get volunteers and a bitter magic user who is compelled to be there is more trouble than they are worth (or they are simply too powerful to capture).
Maybe the magic user union stepped in and laid down the law to prevent drafting magic users against their will on pain of severe retaliation.
### Spacetime Magic Limits
Too much magic used in a small region produces catastrophic uncontrollable effects (kingdoms get turned into craters, gateways to horrific planes open releasing horrible fiends. Or maybe too much magic in one place is like hearing too loud of a sound for magicians and it (permanently or temporarily) removes their magical ability if they are too near too much simultaneous unharmonized magic.
### Cultural Norms
Using magic is like targeting officers back in the Napoleonic wars. It's considered dishonorable and anyone who does it gets blackballed in politics and can't find any allies.
Also, remember, that if your countries are ruled by kings wars will be as much if not more about personal glory and individual ego as efficient victory and looking bad is worse than winning with magic.
### Divine/Clerical Intervention
Maybe this is how things used to work and it was going to leave the world a smoking ruin so the gods or clerics stepped in to save things. Maybe it's a complete ban on spellcasters in wars or a more lax rule that doesn't let them be compelled. Or combine with magic overload and say the deities created some feedback effect if too much magic is used unharmonized.
If you want some war magic maybe the religious orders enforce some kind of limitation on how many war wizards can be licensed at any time.
] |
[Question]
[
On my fantasy planet, humanoid peoples are at war and ride different animals into battle, including wolves. People and their wolves are, for all intents and purposes, extremely similar to humans and earth wolves. Could this physically be possible? Can a wolf support a weight similar to a human's?
[Answer]
No. Wolves are not strong or large enough for a human to ride. If you increased it to the size of a horse, then you have something that could be rideable.
Plus, it would look super weird, if you were on a mount that was essentially the same height as most tables.
[Answer]
**As far as a reality-check goes, wolf-mounts are probably not happening.**
A fair few people have discussed physical size, diet and dangerousness being barriers to wolves being a successful mount, but there are key differences in the skeletal structure of predators (big cats especially, but wolves too) that make them unsuitable for riding.
It all comes down to how various animals use their spines. In horses (and all the ungulates I know of) the spine is a more or less rigid structure connecting the front and rear legs. The main locomotive power comes from the powerful leg muscles themselves. You can see this in the picture below (the key feature for the layman is the short stretch of spine between the end of the ribcage and the pelvis).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jcYPx.jpg)
This offers a strong, stable platform for load bearing.
However, most large predators use a flexible spine as part of their locomotion. They have comparatively long stretches of spine between their ribcage and pelvis, and use its movement and muscles to increase the length of their stride and the amount of power they can get behind it. You can see that in the skeletons of wolves and lions, and especially in cheetahs (the below picture illustrates what it does while running)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ynZEB.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3etn2.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/S0S3g.jpg)
This allows for very fast acceleration, and usually a higher top speed than an equivalent ungulate. The flexibility also comes in useful when grappling prey. However, it impacts their endurance, means their spines are comparatively weak to loads on their back, and also means that when running their spines are moving all over the place.
These features make them a very poor choice for mounts. A canid or felid of equivalent size to an ungulate will be able to bear less load, move for less time before becoming tired, and be far more uncomfortable and difficult to ride. Depending on the design of the saddle they may also be unable to run at their full pace due to restricting the movement of their spine making them slower.
It gets worse if you choose big cats as their fully-floating clavicle means that their forelimbs are even less suited for bearing load than canids.
All of this is probably surmountable by simply making your mounts bigger so the rider is proportionally less weight, but a bigger mount means more resources to support it and more danger to their handlers from what amounts to a colossal predator.
If you have control over their evolutionary history, you can change their skeletal structure to better support loads, but considering that we see long flexible spines convergently evolving among a large number of distantly related quadrupedal predators (examples below) you'd need to come up with a solid set of environmental pressures to select for a spine that can take strong vertical loads.
Unfortunately I don't know enough about the skeletal structure of bears to work out if they suffer from the same problems. Hyenas are an interesting case as well based on how they seem to run, but I need to look into them a little more. *Edit: I've done a little research and I think they might be a bit better, but I'm not sure if it's enough.*
**tl;dr**: canids and felids have fundamental adaptations to their spine that make them excellent predators but terrible mounts. There may be an opportunity with bears, but more research needs to be done before it's even plausible let alone feasible :)
Examples of convergent evolution of flexible spines among big mammalian quadrupedal predators:
* Big canids like wolves of all varieties
* Amphycyonid bear-dogs (extinct bear-like wolves)
* Hemicyonid dog-bears (extinct dog-like bears)
* Big felids from pantherines like Lions to felidae like cheetahs and extinct machairodont sabre-tooths
* Distantly-related feliforms like Nimravids and Barbourofelids
* Metatherian (marsupial) Sparassodonts and Thylacosmilids
* Metatherian Thylacoleonids
* Metatherian Thylacinids
It's the metatherian examples here that are the kicker. You could argue that flexible spines were an early adaptation by the carnivora order, explaining their presence among most of the known big predators. However, to have a whole separate class of mammalian big predators (and three separate families within it) come up with pretty much exactly the same adaptation suggests that it's a pretty good one for big predators to have.
Sorry if that's not what you were after! *Edit: but wait! We might be able to get this to work with a few stretches!*
**Problem 2: Diet**
Say we manage to find a quadrupedal predator that hasn't evolved to use their spine for locomotion. The next issue to solve is diet.
One of the main reasons for the choice livestock we have today is that they subsist on food that humans can't live on. Horses, cattle, sheep, donkeys, camels, llamas, water buffalo, yaks, oxen, rabbits and many others are largely grazing herbivores. They can survive on grasses and other plant matter that humans can't. Goats are browsers, but again they largely survive on plant matter that humans can't. Chickens, ducks and cats do eat some things that humans do, but can subsist on them in small enough quantities from wild sources that are usually not worth the effort for humans. Pigs are probably the closest to humans in diet, but primitive cultures seem to feed their domestic pigs on refuse so as to not compete with them.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TdNdL.jpg)
What this tactic allows cultures to do is maintain a larger population of both people and livestock on the same area of land than if the livestock were competing with humans for food resources.
Dogs do straddle this a little. They compete with humans for food resources, but presumably their benefits outweighed this cost to primitive humans. I don't know as much as I'd like about the history of dog domestication, but I assume it's largely because the services they provide to humans are unique among our suite of domesticated animals (assistance hunting, sentry duty etc.). Also, they are able to subsist on parts of an animal that humans find difficult to process (they have specific adaptations to teeth and jaw structure to allow them to crush bones to get to marrow). They are also much smaller than a typical human, so require fewer resources to maintain.
**Problem 3: Size**
There seem to be limits to the size of warm-blooded mammal land predators, especially hypercarnivores. This poses a problem for our predators, as horses are big. The range for rideable horses I've found is between 350-1000kg (the average for a light riding horse is about 450kg).
The largest extant mammalian land hypercarnivore is the polar bear. Some brown/kodiak bears in some environments are hypercarnivorous too. All three can reach over 1000kg in captivity (the record for a wild polar bear is also 1006kg). Typical size ranges are 350-700kg for polar bears, and 180-360kg for male brown/kodiak bears (up to 680kg on occasion).
Aside from the very specialised polar bear and the usually hypocarnivorous brown/kodiak bears the upper bound seems to be somewhere around 450kg. The biggest extant big cats are tigers (90-306kg) and lions (150-250kg). There are, however, a number of sizeable extinct mammalian land predators that approach the size required for riding.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OpDI2.png)
*The size of Smilodon populator on the left here is approaching the theoretical maximum size of mammalian land obligate carnivores (about 400-450kg)*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/D0HRz.jpg)
*Arctotherium was significantly bigger, and is a candidate for the largest mammal land predator. It weighed between 900 and 1700kg, but there is debate over its diet. Other short-faced bears were also very large (around 900kg).*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JmHFK.jpg)
*There is also another colossal predatory land mammal we know of. Andrewsarchus is a member of an extinct mammal clade called Mesonychids (carnivorous ungulates). It's only known from a skull so its size has to be inferred from comparing to other members of its family. It's estimated to be between 450kg and 1000kg (1000kg being plausible). It is thought to be an omnivore.*
Horses, however, are sizeable but far from the upper bound even of their living odd-toed ungulate family. White rhinos average about 2300kg, and can get up to 3600kg in the wild. If you want to see the real upper bound, check out paraceratherium:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/H6HqR.jpg)
*Paraceratherium is the largest known land mammal, and is estimated to weigh between 15000 and 20000kg! It's an appreciable fraction of a sauropod dinosaur!*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nGHvh.png)
What this all means is that while there have been a number of carnivores through the ages that have reached the size required to function as a feasible mount for people, the carnivores that do fall into that category are all towards the upper bounds of what we know is evolutionarily possible for a mammal in a recognisable environment. Meanwhile, to get a large herbivore to the size required to function as a mount for people is laughably easy.
For reference, the largest known wolf is the Dire Wolf weighing 50-110kg. The largest canid is Epicyon haydeni, weighing up to 170kg. There are also the closely-related bear-dogs which did get very large (Pseudocyon was 100-600kg).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gQYBH.jpg)
**So, how might we actually be able to make this work?**
First off, in order to have such a large predator they can't be obligate carnivores or hypercarnivores, both to maintain their size and to coexist with humans. It's also probably unwise for them to be mesocarnivores (30-70% meat consumption). So, what we want is a hypocarnivore (<30% meat consumption).
We already have an extant family of large hypocarnivores: bears (mostly). Grizzly bears are hypocarnivores and they're the second largest meat-eating land animal still living. The main problem with grizzlies (and black bears) is they eat pretty much exactly the same things that people do. Land animals large and small as well as fish and shellfish, roots, tubers, berries, grains, legumes and some insects.
So, what we'd need to do is modify their diet to something that humans have trouble digesting. I'd say that rough plant matter like grazers is unlikely given the digestive specialisation that would need to take place. It is possible (see pandas), but they have their own issues (primarily the need to eat such vast quantities that you'd only be able to ride them for a couple of hours a day).
As a potential solution I'd say what we want is a hypocarnivorous carrion eater. One that can digest meat that would make a human quite sick (much like dogs actually!), and that has similar bone-crushing adaptations to allow them to efficiently process parts of a carcass that are difficult for humans. Large obligate scavengers are pretty much non-existent, and if they subsist by hunting large game they'll compete with humans too much so the rest of their diet should come from vegetable matter. Bonus points if they can digest some toxins in a fictional widespread tubor that humans can't.
This may also help with the spinal issue. If the animal has spent a significant part of its evolutionary history not hunting (or diverged before the advent of locomotive spines), they might have the spinal structure you need. If they have been scavengers for long enough, they will likely have evolved to be able to traverse great distances which also helps with the endurance that mounts need.
In order for them to be domesticated in the first place, they will probably need to be social animals. They will also probably need to be smaller than humans initially so as to not pose too significant a threat when the process begins. This helps with the scavenger aspect as to subsist in that way and have enough of a population to be social they likely cannot be big (depending on the proportion of their diet that comes from carrion).
**Conclusion**
There are other variables to consider (such as problems breeding initially smaller animals to be bigger), but what we're probably looking for is a bone-crushing social hypo-scavenger that began as a much larger animal before evolving to a small enough size to allow for easy domestication (in order to attempt to preserve some of the adaptations that support large size), that also subsists on widespread high-energy food that humans can't digest. An adaptation towards having a lower body temperature than typical mammals (usually driven by a period of subsisting in a marginal ecological niche) would also help with size. They need to have evolved alongside another predator that monopolises big game hunting. This both provides them with the carrion they need to have evolved into their niche, and discourages them from big-game hunting themselves. In order to be bred to be mounts, this needs to happen in the absence of other animals that are more suitable.
This is a very specific set of circumstances, which may go some way to explain why it's never happened at any point in the real world, but it may just possibly happen if you really want carnivorous mounts in yours.
They'll be very, very little like real-world wolves unfortunately...
**Edit edit: Found something!**
Entelodonts were a family of omnivorous (but not hunting) large artiodactyls (cloven-hooved animals) thought to be somewhat related to hippos and cetaceans.
Their dentition shows hallmarks of feeding on tough plant material like bark or stripping leaves from plants in addition to other typical omnivore food (nuts, seeds, berries, invertebrates, small animals), and also bone-crushing similar to hyenas. This suggests that they were likely omnivores who ate a significant amount of carrion.
Large examples like Daedon reached around 450kg, which is definitely in the riding range, and they also seem to have a reasonable skeletal structure for load-bearing. It's also relatively well adapted for endurance.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EJT9h.jpg)
*Daedon*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EWs6Z.jpg)
*Artist's rendition of Archaeotherium, roughly 270kg.*
Don't look all that much like wolves, but if you can control your world's evolutionary history then adapting a canid-like species into a similar ecological niche might not be too tricky.
You'd probably come up with something pleasingly like the wargs from LoTR :)
[Answer]
A single wolf is not suitable for riding on. You can, however, use a pack of wolves, the same way as northern natives use dogs.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/D765l.png)
So I can imagine a chariot driven by a pack of wolves, why not?
[Answer]
It depends on your world-building to make it work, for the Earth it's not feasible.
---
**How it goes on planet Earth and Earth's wolfs.**
Most carry-animals work with weights around 10-30% of their body-mass. Cavalry regulations I know of were: below 20-25% body-mass be it war-horses or other pack-animals.
Modern record-worthy wolfs are 80-105 kg with half that for an average specimens.
Biggest ancient ones had an average body-mass at 60-80 kg with a limit at 110-120 kg.
Even if you are super generous with making them extra strong and sturdy and point out, that smaller animals have better strength and sturdiness to mass ratio. Best you can hope from your wolf is 40-50% body mass, under conditions, that modern laws would consider torture.
With a 40-50 kg limit for the rider and equipment mass... I won't comment on how someone with no regard for war-laws and humane values could make it work on Earth if he had packs of biggest extinct wolfs...
---
**To make it work we can do some world-building.**
* Adjust size and weight of your wolfs and humans, so that you are in 20-30% range. Liger-sized wolfs sure would make enemy cavalry have a few complains...
* As extra help you can play with your planet, for example, you can have an Earth-like world with 70% Earths gravity.
[Answer]
Unlikely. The largest wolves – the [extinct dire wolf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_wolf), or the modern [canis lupus occidentalis/Canadian timber wolf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_wolf) – are comparable in size to the average human, but weigh less than a human rider (*before* being loaded out with weapons and armour).
That said, if you were to enlarge your wolves and/or reduce the size and weight of your humans it wouldn't be difficult to justify the relationship.
[Answer]
As others pointed out, wolves won't be strong enough to run while carrying an armed adult. But even if they're larger and more than proportionately stronger than Earth wolves, there is another difficulty that four-legged mammal carnivores in general have bodies that are more flexible and curl almost to an arch and then straighten when running. On the other hand, bodies of herbivores like horses stay relatively flat even when galloping at full speed which makes them more suitable for riding. The wobbling up and down would it not only make it uncomfortable to ride, it would also be harder to control the animal using leashes.
Besides these, there are other points like the fact that they specifically require meat, which can be a problem when travelling in animal-less lands, and their higher aggression and curiosity (herbivores have a greater tendency to be wary while carnivores have a greater tendency to be curious and observant) can override their willingness to obey the commands of their riders.
Of course, since you mentioned that your world isn't Earth, larger wolves (or at least a particular breed of wolves) with a different body structure and behavioral traits wouldn't be out of place, if you're willing to do it.
[Answer]
**Multiple wolves**
It is possible to ride two horses at once. See this video of a Sikh warrior doing just that: <https://youtu.be/AAN4JV3kZZ8?t=3>
Here is someone riding three horses <https://youtu.be/NUmf_FS5NNE>
If a frame was made with a 'saddle' on each wolf to spread the load equally between them, I believe four wolves would be able to support one warrior.
Wolves are pack animals and would easily be domesticated after a number of generations to run together as a team just like huskies.
[Answer]
I see your puny wolf mounts, and I raise you Stalin's **moose-mounted cavalry**. E.g., <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3557085.stm>. You may want to breed intelligence into them to avoid repeating disasters (read article); also avoid close combat in dense forest given the antlers I suppose.
Why not wolves? As the other answers... But it seems any single plus (beyond 'coolness') is wasted.
*Pack tactics* is what makes wolves fearsome in groups, but for that they must listen to the top dog --- not each wolf listening to its rider (in the remote case they could carry it, like a small race of dwarves/gnomes); that's a herd not a pack! They constantly monitor/guess each other's speed, endurance and instincts when/where/how to attack; a rider messes that up with their steering as well as bulk. [Letting them work as a pack might work in stories, imagine special ops like assassinations at night; historically it was humans playing alpha dog and letting their dogs do the risky 'underdog' role of attacking first, e.g. the Molosser war dogs <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_in_warfare>).
Wolves might feasibly pass messages & small parcels back & forth, but *hypercarnivores and battlefront logistics don't mix*; "an army marches on its stomach" and all that. Better alternatives: terriers eat less and not all meat, and very hard targets for your enemy to hit hence better at passing messages across frontlines; plus off-duty they enjoy catching supply-stealing rats, a double savings in food for men and dogs. I'm sure terriers were used in WW1 frontlines for that, the previous link will cover that.
Hampering wolves with loads basically negates most of their practical skills beyond guarding (like speed, flexibility & agility in close combat; grabbing by the backpack neutralizes them in holds they'd otherwise wriggle out of --and counterattack-- instantly), and for guarding (edible!) geese are probably better. (The original roman Capitol Hill was guarded by geese.)
] |
[Question]
[
I'm building a world in a nation role-play community. I recently have begun to use ftl technologies (ftl information transfer and travel) while the majority of the community has had ftl technologies for dozens of millenia. My world does not employ the use of physical violence or employ weapons. The interstellar ships used are not built with weapons and weapons have not and will not be developed. I do wish to aid in potentially physically violent happenings and not become a target whenever my nation appears. In fact I would like almost the opposite to occur. **How does one impose a sense of intimidation without the use of physical violence or weapons?**
I would like the reaction to the appearance of one of my nations navies to elicit a feeling of dread or fear for whatever reason you, the answerer generates.
[Answer]
>
> I would like the reaction to the appearance of one of my nations navies to elicit a feeling of dread or fear
>
>
>
Some answers have suggested sanctions and other such "pacifistic" approaches. I don't like these approaches, but you can try them. Just remember that Germany was France's #1 trading partner before WWI.
My approach would be to be harmless but still being able to signal genuine, extreme danger. **Be a harbinger of doom**.
My first idea for how to do this is to have super-awesome, super-fast ftl drives that actually increase the speed of travel behind them, like some sort of cosmic drifting effect.
These drives require a ton of power, so you couldn't have weapons systems on your ship anyway if you want these drives.
Now, **when one of your ships arrives in an enemy system, that means that a mega-fleet of your military allies is showing up in T+15 minutes**.
Oh, they'll be afraid.
If Option#1 is too overtly violent for your tastes, then have Option #2. Develop really good sensors for the build-up of catastrophic events, and then go there right beforehand so you will be first to collect the rare materials that such events generate.
If **seeing one of your ships means that their entire solar system is about to get wiped out by a supernova**, then your ships will inspire dread.
[Answer]
Not all threats are for violence. Countries often threaten one another with sanctions without going to war. To intimidate another group you just need the threat of an action which is detrimental to them, not necessarily violent. Use your technological superiority to take their resources right out of their hands, consume a nearby plant with your mining, or even syphon hydrogen away from their local star. If you can preform such an action without the other side being able to stop you, they will fear you.
[Answer]
**Big Scary Ships**
If you can't make it, fake it.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HuVOz.png)
Enemies will leave you alone if they think you're a threat. Some animals make themselves appear larger and more threatening to scare off potential threats.
Alternative, threats don't need to be violent. The right allies or the threat of loss of trade or the threat of secrets being released can be just as powerful as the threat of violence.
[Answer]
**Trade, economy, political power, WiFi password or defensive system**
1) **Trade**. It does not only cover imposing simple embargo. It also covers informing all other powers, that they are fully free to choose whether they want to trade with you or with that rogue state, but regrettably have to pick one. (US did something like that with Cuba)
2) **Political power.** Being a nice, peaceful civilisation should bring plenty of friends. Even if not true "friends" that at least other powers are fine with them and may have some kind of defensive alliance system. Sure no guns...
* Just it's likely that the allies may also have a grudge against the offending rogue state and "accidentally" the benevolent power may provide them with war loans on highly favourable conditions.
* Being part of some defensive system. Just paying hefty membership fees. Any hostile action would trigger some superpowers.
3) **WiFi password**
* Does FTL require for effective use some kind of navigation system? Sorry, access denied.
* Does galactic trade require some banking system? Sorry, access denied. (In RL tried with Iran and SWIFT system)
* Does galactic use some kind of FTL data transfer? Sorry, access denied. It requires building the galactic infrastructure and then allow other parties to use it cheaply.
4) **Defensive systems**
* Having ultra fast or well shielded ships makes attacking them somewhat pointless. Just in case somewhat would scratch your ship paint, while the ship would be escaping to hyperspace.
* We're using high tech anti-matter drive. Yes, we know it's expensive. Yes, we know other civilisations considered it as good idea on paper, but a nightmare to maintain. We beg not to shoot to us, as failure of magnetic containment would cause a supernova size explosion that would kill both of us.
[Answer]
[Batesian mimicry.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batesian_mimicry)
>
> Batesian mimicry is a form of mimicry where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species directed at a predator of them both.
>
>
>
You have probably heard of the coral snake and the milk snake:
>
> ”Red on yellow kills a fellow. Red on black venom lack”
>
>
> Due to the many colors of the eastern [milk snake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_snake) (L. t. triangulum), it can resemble the coral snake, corn snake, fox snake, scarlet snake, and most importantly, the venomous snake genera Agkistrodon and Sistrurus.
>
>
>
Disguise like a well known dangerous group, like the milk snake does, resembling the coral snake, or some fly does showing yellow and black stripes typical of wasps.
Most of those spotting you would prefer to move away rather then checking if you are really a menace or not.
[Answer]
**1) You have a way to cut off entire systems from the rest of the universe**
Through pocket dimensions/FTL scrambling/Very big shields... It's completely pacifist but very scary.
**2) A sect of crazy murderous priests consider you are gods and will exterminate anyone that dares to attack you**
You don't like it at all but they wouldn't listen to your complaints.
**3) Once, one of the most powerful and dangerous fleet in the universe was anihilated when they got to your systems.**
Nobody really knows how it happened (accident, cosmic event, unknown entity passing by..?) but somehow everyone assume it was you and that your pacifism is a front.
[Answer]
### People fear what they don't understand
Your species - whether naturally or through the use of advanced technology - possesses a vast and unusual intelligence, or senses that no other civilization understands. Their motives and culture are so complex that they'll appear alien and incomprehensible to anyone who attempts to peek beneath the surface.
Even worse, they understand how alien they are to everyone and make good use of it. When they communicate with others, it is in short, yet precise statements that more often than not hint at a piece of information that they should not reasonably be able to know.
Negotiating with your nation, while occasionally worthwhile, feels like playing 4D chess against a notorious cheater. Whatever move you try to make, they *somehow* have a piece in place to counter it, but you could have sworn it wasn't there a minute ago. In the end, they may or may not let you win, but it's always on their terms.
### Information is power
It is said that if you break a contract with these strangers, very soon a swarm of amorphous dark vessels will silently appear above your planet or habitat. Comm systems will randomly break down and if they work, people will complain about weird, barely audible background noises. Instruments will show impossible readings, data will get corrupted, it's like your entire network was slowly corroding. After a while, they disappear without a warning, leaving nothing but afterimages and the realization that your latest and greatest technologies inexaplicably ceased to function, and your most well hidden secrets have somehow made their way into the hands of your enemies.
Attacking these vessels, even *if* you eventually manage to drive them off, is always a headache-inducing waste of resources. Their ships are never where you expect them, there is no rhyme or reason to their defenses, they only ever take minor, calculated losses. Best case, you maintain this frustrating dance until they leave. You have no idea what their objective was, or whether they achieved it, all you know is that you desperately need to refuel and rearm, and that you're so far out of position that any aggressive third party would have a field day if they knew about it. Oh my, I hope no one will tell them. That would be terrifying.
[Answer]
Your species has no weapons, but is *naturally* toxic to most other sentient life. Or their stress-released pheromones are toxic.
This could be a chemical toxin, or that they emit radiation, or that they live at several thousand degrees hotter than any other species, ...
Or if you really want to be nasty, they're made of antimatter...
[Answer]
I would suggest either psychological warfare or technological denial tactics.
Why psychological warfare, if you make any potential enemy shutter in their boots before ever seeing one of your ships, they may jump to FTL before a full threat assessment is made on your Navy's ships.
You can also possess a form that just irks others. Taking a spectral form, or some "ghost" like appearance that others just get nervous about may deter others from wanting to interact with you.
Use of tactics or technologies that would make approaching your ships a detriment. If you emit some kind of energy field that effects technology, such as FLT denial, gravimetric distortions or significantly effects power generation. If someone gets too close and, let say, their anti-matter containment for their warp core just up and quit, they may think twice before approaching weapons range.
Another thought, if the field just altered one aspect of how physics work, such as electrons reverse their spin for some reason, it would definitely cause some issues with potential attackers.
[Answer]
Your nation could have reputation as being full of a bunch of disaster prone idiots (either deserved or undeserved). Whenever your nation's ships show up, people would dread whatever problems that will come up. For example, maybe your ships will leak space oil everywhere, or docking with them will cause an outbreak of space rats. Your ships could cause any number of very annoying problems that don't involve violence.
[Answer]
**Reflective Shields**
Borrowing from Lois McMaster Bujold, you don't necessarily need to have weapons of your own if you can use an aggressor's weapons against them. Your people have a special kind of force field shielding on their ships that perfectly reflects energy and projectiles back to their origin\*\*. If someone decides to attack them, they blow themselves up. Moreover, given the ranges involved in space combat, most would-be aggressors don't even realize that your ships are unarmed--every time they try to attack, they get blown to smithereens, with no indication why.
Given the pacifist character of your world, it could be that this system wasn't even designed for defense against warfare--it was just supposed to be a really efficient shielding against space debris and cosmic radiation. Once they encountered the rest of the galactic community, it turned out that their shields were also a perfect defense against aggression.
\*\* Note, "reflected back to the origin" may need to be refined further depending on how "hard sci-fi" the setting is. In a more Star Wars space-opera-ish kind of setting this is straight forward. In a more realistic setting, this gets more complicated. A projectile or beam weapon that literally is bounced back along the trajectory it came from would probably miss since the attacking ship would have moved (and projectiles might or might not have traveled in a straight line to begin with), unless there's some handwavium involved.
[Answer]
I'll assume a truly peaceful species (not vegetarians, peaceful towards everything they believe to be sentient) . No violence. No threats to sentient species. No posturing (implicit threats). They will FTL into any meteoroid-storm to rescue fellow sentients, brave any gamma ray excursion to bring help to fellow sentients. Their point defenses are just that good.
There was this one time where fellow sentients were in danger of being annihilated by a particularly insidious meteoroid swarm. A sequence of complex biochemical reactions had given rise to concentrations of fissile material, that had subsequently been carried, by an unfortunate, but really unavoidable sequence of events, towards the home planet of their fellow sentients. They stopped the radioactive meteoroids, and stopped the biochemical reactions giving rise to them (it would have a high possibility of happening again, they concluded after some sampling. Sad. Someday this primordial soup might have given rise to sentients) by supernovaeing the star of the system in which the biochemical reactions were taking place. The star was called Sol. Don't be like Sol. Be sentient.
(Some of the sentients they know happen into localized gamma ray excursions quite often. It's a mystery. They are investigating)
[Answer]
## Mutally Assured Destruction
Whilst this nation will not threaten you with violence, their technology and cities are built to ensure that an attacker would also be destroyed if they attacked your nation. For example, their ships may contain nuclear reactors which means that, if that ship were to be destroyed, the reactor would go critical and create a large explosion, likely killing the attacker.
This would discourage anyone from attacking these ships for fear of destroying themselves in the process. This could apply to other technology, such as a fuel tank releasing fuel everywhere if it was blown up or an air purifier releasing contaminated air if sabotaged. For normal people, this would not be much of an issue, they would see the warning signs (similar to signs in our own world) and leave well alone. For attackers, they risk destroying themselves by destroying your technology, discouraging them from doing so.
This could lead to far more severe accidents if failsafes were not in place. However, it is very likely they would be and fail safes might be turned off or bypassed in case of an attack. You could intimidate someone like so:
>
> We must inform you that we have turned off the fail safes for our nuclear reactor. If your ship fires upon us, it will likely go critical and create an exlosion that would wipe out 4/5ths of your fleet. We urge you to reconsider your attack or you will be destroyed.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Well, the core of a starship is its FTL drive. Most aliens have sane, mature, and reliable FTL with good efficiency and high performance. Your aliens have drives so bad that just thinking about them can make those sane FTL drives melt down.
Actually attacking one of those "ships" or being anywhere near one of them when the spineless cowards in it get spooked and try to do emergency FTL... Yeah, how about **NO!**
The question makes no mention what the limits of FTL technology in the setting are but by their nature FTL drives twist the normal rules of space and time. Really weird things usually happen if an FTL drive malfunctions. A drive that simply does not function properly to begin with would routinely cause really weird effects around it. And the things that it leaves behind when it emergency FTLs out would be genuinely scary.
I mean, why was that pirate ship filled with corpses with their heads and only heads vaporized with no signs of combat? Why did that battleship warp straight into a planet when that drive should not even work near a planetary mass? Why was that one ship full of people who died of old age in fifteen seconds? Why did the crew of that cruiser turn into cannibalistic zombies? Why was that space fortress cut in half and where did the other half go?
Kind of makes the normal side effects of just your power plants, computers, and space drives glitching and shutting down feel nice. Apart from those times the power plant explodes or drive melts down and takes half the ship with it or the computer shuts down life support and cannot be rebooted.
Besides it is not like you could even hit those buggers or board their ships with the weird way the ship flickers and randomly jumps thousands of kilometers for no reason.
[Answer]
An interstellar craft is a potential weapon. If your society has FTL travel it has the power to inflict tremendous damage on other societies, and if those other societies also have FTL travel they will have also calculated the potential destructiveness of FTL ships.
A starship doesn't need ray guns and missiles to devastate a planet. The crew can just program the navigational computer, leave in lifeboats, and let the ship ram into the planet at high speed.
Or maybe they could program the ship to ram into the planet's star at high speed and disrupt the star, dooming all life on the planets of that star.
Or a starship could match orbits with and attach itself to an asteroid or comet or change the course of that asteroid or comet, then go to another asteroid or comet and change its course, and do it again and again and again until tens or hundreds of asteroids and comets, each large enough to devastate the planet, are headed on collision courses with the planet.
I remember an article in which a scientist who thought the idea of interstellar travel was silly calculated that if a slower than light interstellar rocket ship launched from Earth using full power the energy in its rocket exhaust would be enough to kill all life on Earth.
You may have heard of the theoretical Alcubierre warp drive. I have read that a ship using that warp drive would accumulate matter and energy as it traveled, and when it turned off the warp drive that matter and energy would be discharged in a blast that would devastate any planet it hit.
If so, a starship using that warp drive would have to stop to discharge energy in interstellar space and restart several times during an interstellar voyage in order to preserve the destination. But a warship headed to another planet to destroy it would leave the Alcubierre drive on for the entire trip to built up energy for a blast to destroy the target planet at the end of the voyage.
So societies which have interstellar travel will no doubt know how dangerous starships can be, and they will react to such knowledge. Perhaps they will have laws and regulations requiring all ships which approach their system to travel at specific courses and speeds.
in the *Star trek: The Next Generation* episode "Haven", an unidentified spaceship approaches the planet Haven from interstellar space, and the ruler, First Electorine Valeda Innes, asks help from Captain Picard of the *Enterprise*:
>
> VALEDA [on viewscreen]: An incoming vessel has bypassed our stargate, violating our law. It has refused any attempt at communication.
>
>
> PICARD: Are you saying you believe it to be hostile?
>
>
> VALEDA [on viewscreen]: Failure to communicate is inherently hostile. We have no defensive capabilities here and our treaty with the Federation specifies your obligations in that matter.
>
>
>
I don't know what the stargate was, nor exactly what bypassing it means, but obviously Valeda Innes considers approaching in an unusual manner to be extremely threatening.
I don't know whether Tracy Torme and Lan O'Kun, the writers of "Haven", were thinking of the real life danger potential of starships when writing those lines, but they might have been.
Another way interstellar civilizations might react to the potential dangers of starships would be with massive planetary defensive systems for every important planet. They would have gigantic ground based ray guns and missile launchers and force field generators, and gigantic ray guns and missile launchers and force field generators in low orbit around the planet, and gigantic ray guns and missile launchers and force field generators in high orbit around the planet, and gigantic ray guns and missile launchers and force field generators in orbit around the entire solar system, and so on.
In *Second Stage Lensman* in E.E. Smith's *Lensman* series, the space fleets of two entire galaxies fight a battle. One fleet destroys the millions of space battleships in the other fleet. But the victorious fleet with millions of space battleships doesn't dare to attack the planet Onlo with the super powerful defense system of Onlo.
And if interstellar travel ever becomes a reality, it is probable that most societies with interstellar capabilities will build defense systems as powerful as Onlo's to protect their important planets and solar systems against attacks by foreign space navies or by terrorists using hijacked civilian starships.
So if your planet knows about interstellar travel and doesn't build a super defense system against interstellar war and terrorism your neighbors are likely to think that they have a short window of opportunity to invade and conquer your planet before you wise up and start building a super powerful planetary defense system.
[Answer]
## Make Allies to Guarantee your Independence
Ideally, be so useful to three or more Great Powers that none of them will allow any of the others to take you over. Get them to agree that, if anyone tries, everyone else will team up to stop them.
Your pacifist ethics might or might allow loopholes such as mercenaries, although if you're not going to waste any resources on defense because you're so outmatched that it's hopeless, presumably that also applies to hiring aliens to fight for you.
In the real world, Belgium and Switzerland had armies of their own too. Depending on how FTL works in this universe, you have to be very careful of a quick strike turning into a *fait accompli*. If another empire can reach your entire territory immediately, they could alpha strike all your important resources before any ally could respond. If it takes time to cross your territory, they could get pretty far given a head start. Several nations historically have been created as *cordons sanitaires*, but only a small handful have had no army whatsoever, and they haven't tried to "threaten" anybody.
So, to be able to fight an invasion off, when you yourself have no defenses whatsoever, you'd need someone else pre-positioned to defend you, like the Empire of Alice having bases deployed along the border with the Confederacy of Bob, and vice versa.
You could also just give up on ever being able to actually defend against an invasion, and turn yourself into a tripwire. If the Great War had just been fought in Serbia, the Central Powers would have won easily, but the Entente turned it into a war of attrition on many fronts. You just have to make sure that nobody can end the war and get the other powers to accept the result before your defenders could mobilize.
## Make it Not Worth Their While
Your valuable resources might be bits, not quarks. Your credible threat might be to destroy or hide or evacuate or encrypt them. Anyone attacking you would have nothing to gain and everything to lose.
[Answer]
Your aliens are actually too friendly. They are pacifists so attacking them would not only be rude, but quite frowned upon in the galactic community, but at the same time hosting them is a nightmare.
Each of their ambassadors insist on meeting with all of your homeworld leaders when they visit, and each meeting involves a 3 hour ceremonial exchange of greetings before discussing the purpose of the visit.
When they join you for a meal, they perform an elaborate 20 minute ritual before anyone is allowed to eat, and they eat 6 remarkably small meals a day.
They never speak impolitely, and yet everything they say seems somehow judgemental.
Their engineers insist on droning on in detail about all of the finer implementation details of their FTL engines and proper modern maintenance routines when all you want is for them to either install the engines on your ship or repair the existing engines.
They dress in distracting color-changing outfits. They listen to quiet, but disturbing music and insist that your own music and festivities are too loud and upsetting.
They are nice and willing to share their technology,,, but they kind of give off a mildly unpleasant odor and make squishy sounds when they talk.
I mean... they're a fine race and all... and yet every time their ships arrive in another system it always seems like the current occupants of that system are temporarily away.
[Answer]
**The best form of attack is defense**
How nonviolent are these people? Sure, they might not attack anyone, but if they themselves were attacked by a dangerous enemy would they roll over, or defend themselves in some way? For them to even still exist in the harsh intergalactic climate (let alone, thrive and intimidate others), I posit three scenarios:
* They are utterly pacifist. Dangerous enemies exist, but none has ever attacked them. No-one realises that a single-occupant fighter ship could take over their
entire empire. This is barely believable; there are always chancers and lunatics about, regardless of how much power they may project.
* They are utterly pacifist, and dangerous enemies do not exist. Your species is so advanced that no other race could even think of hurting them. To attack would be like blowing bubbles at a battleship.
* They are non-aggressive, but will act in self-defense. This is the easy one; everyone is too scared to attack them after that one fleet that picked a fight and got disintegrated.
[Answer]
There are other avenues of conflict besides warfare.
Going back to the Traveller RPG, the Hivers, a race of starfish like aliens won a war with the K'Kree, a race of militant vegetarians centaurs who were on a crusade to rid the universe of carnivores. They won by showing how they could manipulate K'Kree society to convert them into meat eaters. The K'Kree were so horrified with the possibility they ceased fighting the war and abandon their crusade.
Few societies want to see their way of life threatened by radical change.
[Answer]
**Knowledge is power**
You world has somehow obtained secrets that could cause irreversible damage to the reputation of rival worlds or seriously compromise their defenses.
How you have obtained this knowledge is for you to decide (or keep a closely guarded secret).
The possibilities for it's use are vast though.
You could use it to blackmail worlds with powerful fleets into protecting your own interests, with ftl communications the secret can be shared long before they can launch an effective attack.
You could barter the information and gain great wealth.
With enough money you can essentially pay the citizens of another world to destroy it from the inside.
Even just having the information without a plan to use it may be enough to deter an attack and create a sense of dread in your enemies.
An interesting example of this would be the Shadow Broker in the Mass Effect game series
<https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Shadow_Broker>
In this case the Shadow Broker continuously sells secrets to different rival parties, ensuring that they remain in control and feared whilst simultaneously maintaining the status quo.
[Answer]
Invincibility is a prerequisite to nonviolent intimidation; otherwise the stronger folks will eventually figure it out, and all is lost.
The best bet for your pacifist species is to be like the Organians in Star Trek TOS ("Errand of Mercy," season 1, ep 27) -- invulnerable to physical harm, virtually omnipotent, and able to inflict non-harmful discomfort on inferior species, i.e., the humans and the Klingons.
[Answer]
If your ships can quickly travel interplanetary or interstellar distances, your ships are armed and dangerous. Your ships' drives, anti-meteor defenses, and inherent momentum can be used as weapons.
On a much lower energy scale, Larry Niven wrote a story called "Deadlier Weapon". The weapons involved could travel at speeds measured in meters per second, so they had energies measured in kJ or MJ. Your ships travel a thousand times faster, and have parts a thousand times more massive, so they are a billion times more dangerous than the "Deadlier Weapon".
[Answer]
They don't dread you, they dread what will come after you.
*You are hunted by a nemesis*. Your ships are fast enough to always escape; every other civilisation isn't as fast, and the nemesis will simply eradicate every system they happen to visit. Either as collateral damage, or for target practice, or because the nemesis needs to pick up all mass in the system for *their* method of FTL.
*Your presence has a nasty side effect*. It may take days, months, or years, but maybe the star will die, or go supernova. Molecular bonds my start to mysteriously change. You might be an AI civilization, and some local AI will become SkyNet.
If you want dread instead of immediate panic, make this not a certainty but a small chance of happening.
Variatiations: your species is unaware of the effect, becomes aware during the story, is aware and sorry, is aware and doesn't care.
*You are a prophet of doom*. Your species is the messenger of some superpower that will eradicate systems. Or civilisations.
Maybe the superpower will usually punish, and sometimes reward; the sense of dread will come from "oh my god THEY have come, what will they bring?"
The dread will last until the message is handed over. There might be a protocol that takes weeks until that happens.
Being this kind of messenger is pretty storyworthy, actually: Some civilisations might decide to shoot the messenger if they're going to go down anyway. So your species may have created that kind of protocol so it (hopefully) can escape before the doomed civilisation knows what kind of doom is going to descend.
[Answer]
Pour as many resources as you can afford into researching and improving defense systems. Depending on what your universe has to offer that may be shields, polarized armor plating or the likes. If a potential enemy cannot even dent your defenses, they will think twice about what your weapons(which they won't know you don't have) might do to theirs.
[Answer]
I would imagine you need an 'edge' of some sort, which is basically what you are asking for in your question. How about telepathy? Or a unique set of technology which allows it? Your civilization maintains absolute adherence to 'no violence' allowed... but also none tolerated. A ship/person/empire starts to attack, they are given the 'more merciful' alternative to destruction; a mind wipe/reset where they now consider themselves loyal members of your civilization. Or just a wipe/reset of any hostile thoughts toward your civilization. Permanent or temporary. Whatever application would seem to fit in with the given collective's moral views. You view this as totally sane, normal, and compassionate versus killing them. Other races, having seen the result, fear/loathe you because of it and don't, for the most part, ever deem it worth the risk. Why? That is based on their culture. It is a basic violation of self awareness to highly intelligent races. It is considered 'emasculation' to the warrior societies. Etc. Maybe others even actively seek your metal take over or wipe as a form or worship/wonder of your power to bring mental peace and contentedness.
[Answer]
### Information
If your race has access to FTL communication, and has some unique methods for gaining access to secrets (super quantum computing code cracking, seriously capable spies, hackers supreme, or even telepathic, precognitive, and/or psychometric snooping), then simply threatening to spill secrets across the galaxy in real time could prove a very effective deterrent.
Depending on the method in question, this could be tailored to individuals, specific ships, or groups and organizations, up through entire political structures, social groups, and cultures.
Might not prevent them from getting killed more and again, but others of their race can sure make them regret it every time.
[Answer]
Mount very powerful sublight reaction engines on your craft, even if they are no longer necessary because you have FTL. As Niven wrote in a short story, the efficiency of a drive is directly *as a weapon* related to the efficiency *as a drive*.
] |
[Question]
[
Besides the supremely unlikely "because they're just cool like that". Any pretenses towards the selfless or altruistic sharing of their vast cosmic wisdom just for the sake of welcoming us into the galactic neighborhood or whatever should be dropped at the door. What are some practical reasons aliens might want to uplift us to near their level of science and technology?
The ones I'm most stuck on are that they're doing it for either scientific or military purposes, and while the former is valid, "because we felt like it" doesn't usually make for a compelling story. So that leaves military purposes, like the Salarians uplifting the Krogans in Mass Effect. But why? Surely robots would be more efficient soldiers? Or is there some benefit to having human soldiers over swarms of mass-produced drones?
[Answer]
**Cold War**
Cold war between two K2+ civilizations, treaties prohibit them from establishing automated/independent machine colonies in our solar system or our spiral arm. Providing weapons, and technology to another species would allow them to have access/allies without breaking treaties. If one of the K2 civ is expanding in our local area, other can give us technology and agitate us to commit terrorism [Mujaheedin funded by US to counter to USSR]. Situations similar to Vietnam/Korean War over ideology is also possible.
[Answer]
A possible reason is that complex and sentient life is rare to find in the Galaxy/Universe and as such they believe it should be preserved.
What with are somewhat wanton destruction of the environment and vast population growth rates they decide that gifting us advanced technologies to be able to meet our energy needs without harming the environment and allowing us to expand to other planets is the only way to preserve such a rare specimen.
[Answer]
As with most question like this the answer is already known. Why does America send support to Africa? Decency.
The advanced aliens feel for the lower ones and common decency makes them want to help. It only seems like they're uplifting because the information they don't give us, we never see.
Of course as Chinu pointed out, true decency is impossible. Even true altruism has another purpose, if only for public appeal at best, enslavement at worse.
[Answer]
Diversity. Just like a loss of genetic diversity is critically dangerous to a species, and conversely a large genetic diversity provides a broad array of solutions to many different problems, the same dynamic is at play with ideas. These aliens want a different perspective to add to their empire, for their own survival. These aliens recognize that there are aspects of their culture and technology that could be improved, but they also know they have a hard time seeing a different way of doing things when they have traditions that have been around for millennia.
[Answer]
**tl;dr - Humanity doesn't understand nor care about what they are missing out on. Once they do though, they'll want it *desperately* and become a great new, very cheap labour force just to be given the opportunity to participate in the alien society (even if only on the bottom rung of the social ladder).**
# Capitalism
As a great civilisation these aliens are used to a certain quality of life.
While a great deal of what is required to maintain their quality of life is automated away through sheer technological mastery, there are still plenty of jobs out there that need doing but nobody wants to be the one doing them.
Luckily, it looks like humanity is at least physically able to do what needs doing, and given the right conditions they breed like rabbits...
These tasks are truly horrid though, ranging from degrading through unhygienic or just downright mind numbing. Humans aren't about to up and leave their relatively simple but pleasant lives to do what is needed simply because the aliens *asked nicely!?*
Popular opinion on the alien social media is that intergalactic slavery is "problematic" and it would be career suicide for any politician to even mention the idea. Some other strategy is clearly needed here.
Luckily the aliens produce plenty of dangerously addictive substances and luxury consumer goods beyond imagination.
**Any sane human would gladly lay down their life to experience even a few moments of the extreme luxury and technological marvels these aliens take for granted - if only the humans understood it...**
**It's clear that the laughably simplistic human society in its current state wouldn't have a clue what to do with even the tiniest droplet of the fountain of scientific and cultural miracles that is the alien's society.**
## Phase 1
**Humanity needs a huge kick up the technological behind to appreciate what they do not have, form new desires and appropriate feelings of inferiority.**
(Alternatively the aliens can wait a few hundred thousand years for things to progress more naturally.)
## Phase 2
Once the humans feel the desire for, no, the *entitlement* to the basics of alien society, the free lunch ends.
Once deprived of their newfound "needs", humans will work for a mere fraction of the cost of an alien labourer doing the same job out of desperation and that carefully cultivated feeling of inferiority.
## Phase 3
The aliens closely monitor and throttle humanity's societal progression.
Anything that resembles true growth will be quietly sabotaged, stolen/appropriated or outright banned/destroyed by the aliens.
The more that humanity depends on the alien society for culture, science and resources, the easier it is for aliens to continue to exploit humanity.
[Answer]
## The Most Dangerous Game
Humans are, by and large, an intelligent and violent race. We have gotten incredibly good at killing each other and as technology advances that trend is only growing. In the last 100 years we went from muskets and cannons to drones and nukes. It is pretty safe to say that at the rate things are going, in another 100 years warfare will be almost incomprehensible to us.
Any sufficiently advanced lifeform that discovers us should have no problem noticing this trend. Now, they should be so technologically advanced that in an actual arms race we could never possible catch up. But that is assuming a very homo sapien-centric viewpoint. If those aliens are advanced but not war-like then Humanity could very well be an Out of Context Problem for them.
## Future-proofing the Galaxy
Assuming that the aliens that find and observe us are disturbed enough to need to do something, but unable or unwilling to just wipe us off the face of the galaxy, then they are going to need some kind of alternative to prevent us from being a future problem. One way of doing this is to guide us away from the mindset that makes us such potentially vicious neighbors.
So, the sufficiently advanced life forms show up on our doorstep and offer to bring us into a new era of enlightenment. They start off with quality of life improvements, solving problems like world hunger and disease. Then they slowly start to introduce things that make life easier, maybe easing us into a post-scarcity society.
At the same time, the aliens are going to be sharing their own culture and views on life. They will start preaching about the inherent advantages of peace and cooperation, maybe give a (factual or not) accounting of their own violent past and how much better things got once they changed their ways.
The important thing is that the aliens are attacking Man's natural tendency to violence on two fronts. They are going to act to remove the natural and sociological factors that drive us to violence (poverty, sickness, lack of resources, etc.) and at the same time they are going to try to guide our thinking to be more in line with their own (peace, altruism, cooperation). At the end of the day, whether they believe what they are telling us or not, the aliens' goal is to be making sure that the rest of the galaxy is safe from the barbarous hordes of Humanity.
[Answer]
Let me start with two assumptions
**1: They're a civilization**
*Meaning that they're a group of cooperating individuals*
**2: They are (or were) Organic**
*Meaning that evolution creates organics, and machine races are the descendants of organics*
Organics die, and more importantly organics will try not to die. We'll hunt, graze, flee from predators, fight our competition and so on so that we an continue to be alive for a bit longer. Humans - and a few other species - are special in that we can look at other organics and think "That thing is behaving like it doesn't want to die." We're able to empathize and see the reason behind anothers actions. This opens up some possibilities, notably the thought that "If I help that human not die, it will help me not die, so I can help it not die." Empathizing with others forms the basis of cooperation.
After thinking "I'll assist in killing that mammoth so we can both eat" it's a fairly logical progression to "You go hunt, I'll stay behind and build our hut" to "Well, bad news is your transmission is trashed. We can fix it but it'll probably run you a couple grand." At its core, Civilization is doing eachother favors so that it's easier for us to not die. Since a machine race will be composed of individuals - or at the very least be created by organic individuals - it will have much the same reasoning.
*But why would aliens help us? We're a different species.*
Same as before: Empathy. We developed a civilization so we're obviously capable of cooperation. At first they couldn't ask us for anything big, like building a new Matrioshka Brain to expand their Gestalt, but they could pave the way for bigger things. A first contact package might contain an example fusion drive and a message reading
*"We noticed you have a few gas-giants in your solar system. Some of our seed-ships will be passing through in a few thousand years, and will need to restock their reserves of Helium-3. They're capable of constructing harvesters themselves, but if you wish you can use this Fusion drive to colonize your solar system and build your own refineries. All we ask in return is that when our ships arrive you provide the fuel they require."*
We get massively advanced fusion drive technology, they get a fueling port they didn't have spend any time to build. Asking for a favor thousands of years in the future might sound far-fetched, but remember that they're a K2 civilization - They're in it for the long game. To them, a possible threat is now greatly reduced, and a new asset has been created, all for the cost of a probe and some translation work.
*But why wouldn't they just exterminate every possible threat?*
Because a civilization of this size is going to run entirely on cost-benefit analysis. The material-cost of a first-contact package is going to be minuscule compared to the material cost of enough weaponry to exterminate an entire biosphere. Even if you used a single drop of self-replicating nano-plague, there's no guarantee that your victims won't reverse engineer it and turn it back upon you. Instead of a planet full of cooperative refinery builders, you have a planet full of reverse-engineered-nanoplague armed bloodthirsters out to avenge their fallen.
**Note: Uplift can be a form of extermination**
Stargate: SG-1 had an episode involving this. A friendly sister-civilization had uplifed the Earth, cured all disease, fixed the environment and given us all free energy, stopped all war - basically a utopia. What they didn't mention was that 'curing all disease' also meant 'making the entire population infertile.' Potential civil unrest was dealt with by simply shipping in their own people and pretending to be the next generation, coupled with discouraging people from talking about their infertility.
Within a generation they'd have an empty utopia for their own citizens to move into. A complete planets worth of infrastructure, all for the cost of some diplomacy and genetic warfare.
Similar story with X-COM 2: The ADVENT Coalition is formed after we discover that the alien invasion was a simple misunderstanding. Disease, aging, poverty, resource shortages - all fixed by our benevolent alien masters. In reality, the clinics where they cured all disease were labs where humans were dissected and replaced with mimics. The war never stopped: It was just dressed up as medical aid.
[Answer]
A few disjointed possibilities off the top of my head:
* They want more [artists? trade opportunities? scientists? something we don't yet have the technology for?]. We got "far enough" as a species that they'll boost us the rest of the way.
* A very alien (literally!) sense of honor: they are culturally obligated not to take advantage of "lesser" species - so they raise "lesser" species to be on par to avoid any temptation.
* Stewardship of knowledge. They are going to evolve to a higher plane of existence (or commit mass suicide as a religious experiment) and want SOMEONE to carry on intelligent life in the universe. We're the closest thing they've found so far...
* Pure evil: their religion believes that sacrificing a "higher being" grants benefits in the after life, and they're running out of higher beings. Easiest solution: make some more!
* Boredom. Let's make some playmates to stave off our post-scarcity doldrums!
* Curiosity. Humans occasionally try to see if whales can make music, apes can paint, etc. They're just taking it farther...
* Solidarity against a bigger threat. An even MORE advanced civilization is coming to wipe them out, and we'd be innocent bystanders anyway - so why not let us join the fight? (Hopefully we'll be on their side...)
* Investing in the future. "I do this favor for you as a friend, and ask only that in the future you remember I did you this favor... and that we are friends." (That last sentence is paraphrased from a Vampire: the Masquerade roleplaying book, but I can't remember which one to quote it properly; I'll edit if I find it later.)
[Answer]
# More and better technology for everyone
As shown by the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, Silicon Valley, and most recently the Internet, the rate at which technology improves is a function of the number of people working collaboratively on that technology. One person on their own achieves little. A small group of people on their own are a bit better. A large group of people working on the same thing can push things forwards so much faster though. With a large group, you even have scope for competing subgroups who spur each other on and stop development getting stale.
Assuming humans are broadly equivalent in intellect and "drive" to other participating species, then the alien alliance has just added 5 billion adults to its development teams. Even if their development teams can only use 99th-centile humans, that's still 50 million extra brains on board.
[Answer]
Because we're dangerous.
The flipside of D. Hancock's theory, that we are uplifted to promote diversity (through providing alternate viewpoints), is that certain methods of seeming to do so will not only deny diversity, but prevent it - by making humans clients, possibly dependent on our benefactors, or possibly growing and furthering *their* culture, instead of ours.
## Its a trap
So, if we are given technology, instead of developing it on our own, we are not likely to go back and discover alternate ways of doing things (potentially better ones) for quite some time, if ever. We will not understand the technology at first, we must take their word on it, and we will have to catch up to that level before we are comfortable modifying the tech or seriously questioning its principles - and even if some theory sounds unlikely, having devices that work will override that for most of us, so our progress might be further hindered.
The "uplifting" species might then be able to control what tech we get access to, what theories we learn "proof" for, and keep us with tech that *they already know about*, and that they can counter. It might keep us from developing the tech to be a threat to them - especially if to progress further than what they gave us *requires* theories or technology from the intermediate development period that we skipped, or takes a significant leap to get to the next stage. It will make us less of a threat.
It may make us dangerously dependent (the tech has some obvious weak-point or shutoff we don't know enough to counter, that they can trigger if we disagree). If an EMP or something disables electricity, we can survive a step backwards and rely more heavily on non-electric tech, and we already have some redundancies and backups in place because we know over reliance is dangerous - but a people (say, hunter-gatherer tribe) given electronics and become dependent on them without those intermediate steps will not know how to manage without. It might mean we abandon theories or tech that would be dangerous to our "uplifters", once we get boosted in a different direction - who wants to work on outdated, backwards tech when we have the shiny new stuff to play with (only, they are weak against chemical, and dumped physics in our lap so we never figured out how to defeat their "X").
I don't think this kind of setup would last forever, as humanity is curious and sneaky and always looking for an edge, but a) the aliens *might not know that*, and b) they might be content with a time-limited advantage, to gain some benefit until we can't be controlled.
## Whose Empire is it, anyway
Alternately, the trap may be cultural, rather than military. It is possible that D. Spetz's answer is correct, that they plan to indoctrinate humans in ideas beneficial to them while using the tech as bait - but it is also possible that they are trying to assimilate us, instead of 'brainwash' us. Humans are clever and creative and pretty good at making things work. The aliens might think our potential too dangerous to be left alone - that once we develop our own tech, we will be as powerful, or more, than them - and will eventually have the potential to be a dominant civilization.
Maybe we don't have a tech advantage, but we might someday if we have another potentially dangerous advantage - because we're operating on different timescales (maybe faster), or we have psychological advantages, or we're really good at lateral thinking or loopholes, or whatever. Keep in mind that we're talking potential and eventually, but no reason that the uplifters can't plan ahead, right? *But*, if they grab us while we're still young, and relatively small (perhaps compared to multi-planetary civilizations) and they teach us what they know - we will uplift their civilization instead of our own, because we will be one civilization by then.
What discoveries we may make are right besides and working with their scientists and will advance their civilization, we will adopt their history and change their customs and laws (rather than make our own), our children will seek their tales, their adventures, and eventually forget our "backwards' culture, science, stories in favor of the greater opportunities they offer - and grow up integrated members of their civilization, with no chance to form their own (potentially greater one) independently. Like adopting a child to continue family traditions, they raise us up (genuinely) and in turn we see ourselves as part of their civilization even if "actually unrelated", and raise it up instead of competing for dominance.
(credit where it's due, idea comes from Poul Anderson's "[Turning Point](http://hell.pl/szymon/Baen/The%20best%20of%20Jim%20Baens%20Universe/The%20World%20Turned%20Upside%20Down/0743498747__21.htm)")
## The experiment does *what*?
Alternately, we can go back and look at scientific purposes. They might be genuinely curious - like us teaching primates sign language, which is a very effective technology, just to see what they're capable of - and what we might learn about ourselves. Giving us tech is a way to look at themselves from a different perspective.
But, slightly more cynically, it can also make us a testing ground for unproven ideas. If there are experiments they want to see the results of that are dangerous or half-baked, they can give us the ideas, and watch *our* versions of experiments instead of risking their own people. How about testing social or psychological theories - especially if such experiments might be "unethical" if performed on their own people without informed consent (which might make some experiments tricky). But, humans might not have the same status - or maybe so can be "offered" information that leads to the situations, because 'observing' isn't the same thing as deliberately setting up such an experiment, of course not! If they aren't sure about adopting some idea, they can play down their concerns, offer the base information, and see how crazy it drives us, and what loopholes they didn't think of, and how society might change if *they* adopted the idea.
Obviously, such experiments won't be absolutely relevant to them and their society, any more than mouse or monkey testing is absolutely relevant to us - but it can give ideas of what to look for and how careful to be when they are working with those they don't have to be quite so careful with. "uplifting" humans to their level would be one way of eliminating variables (access to vaguely similar tech, exposure to vaguely similar ideas) or baiting the trap of proven tech, to get us to accept and experiment with unproven tech and radical ideas.
## Actual tech-trade
And now for something completely different!
The reverse of the situation in the "Its a Trap" section, where we mightn't be able to cope if tech was withdrawn, and we didn't have intermediate steps to fall back on... maybe that's what the uplifters are looking for, having lost their own ability to step backward. There's an idea now, to look at cultures with less advanced tech, and re-evaluate their 'traditional wisdom' for ideas that might have been missed the first time around (due to cultural superiority or superstition). There's an idea for looking at historical methods and 'traditional' technologies for survival or reenacting or just so they don't get lost, if we ever need them. And we have enough cultures, with different tech levels and yet similar enough for understanding, to mostly bridge the gap - though there are some things still lost to us in history, sadly, from when we weren't as careful about preservation.
So, I'm imagining the uplifiting culture has missing gaps - from "low tech" solutions, to survival skills, to all the things their culture might not have valued at the time in favor of more 'advanced' ideas and tech. And maybe they are unified enough, or advanced enough, they don't have other cultures to borrow from to fill the gaps or they just reached a place they can't step back from. But, humanity might have the missing gaps - or at least make some headway on filling them in. Maybe there's an actual reason (they actually need to move in or colonize areas with little tech, and don't know how to survive there), maybe they have a problem that needs a lower=tech solution that they've forgotten how to figure out, maybe it's just the equivalent of hoarding knowledge by survivalists and fans of post-apocalyptic fiction that tells them they should know how, just in case.
So, they can trade the shiny tech, for our current, primitive methods. They don't even have to admit the problem, just ask to observe our culture (for comparison purposes, of course), and maybe access to historical records or entertainment (like reenacting, it will look harmless). They're willing to hand over shiny tech because its what they have on hand to trade with, or because it's pocket change to them (shiny bead equivalent), and because they don't care about what it might do to our civilization, as long as they get what they need for theirs (as higher tech cultures have *traditionally* traded with low-tech ones, really, "non-interference" is *storybook nonsense*).
Unlike most of my other ideas, this would be genuinely, or fairly genuinely, a trade for mutual benefit. They can get the things they need - "primitive" but useful tech, ideas, survival knowledge, knowledge about how to adapt or innovate or progress with limited resources. We get tech, and support, and with access to ideas and trade eventually hit a roughly equal level of technology.
[Answer]
**Self-Preservation**
When our aliens developed FTL travel and explored the galaxy they discovered something very disconcerting. They weren't the first, but they were the only advanced civilisation left. Everywhere else, ruins. And not a clue as to how this had happened. The *Marie Celeste* on a galactic scale.
Since this discovery they have been doing two things. Concealing their own existence to the greatest extent possible. Spreading life across the galaxy and uplifting younger races while never revealing themselves (c.f Iain Banks "Inversions").
If an unknown horror returns it'll attack these *noisy* younger races first, giving our aliens the maximum chance to know the enemy and to decide whether to fight it (with plenty of allies/ cannon fodder) or to quietly flee from it (hopefully un-noticed amidst the presumed chaos).
[Answer]
To prevent self-extinction. Perhaps these aliens have observed that our behavior patterns will eventually lead us to extinction (through warfare or catastrophically failed experiments) and don't want that to happen.
Possible reasons to prevent our extinction:
* Ok, sure, we're not gonna just gonna throw our tech around willy-nilly, but can we really allow this unique species to go extinct? Similar reasoning to what we are applying, for example, protecting pandas from extinction.
* Intelligent life is rare; if we let them commit (unintentional) suicide we'll lose valuable opportunities to study them.
* The extinction event will have disruptive consequences on the rest of the galaxy. Say, we'll annihilate ourselves by accidentally creating a supermassive black hole which would disturb the rest of the galaxy.
* It's not really the entire race that wants to save us; just a kind soul that may even be disobeying the authority to do this out of simple compassion.
* Curiosity. We never saw another sentient species. Let's see how they'll evolve in time. Too bad we'll have to interfere to prevent their destruction but, oh well, can't do much about that.
* For the challenge. Are we able to prevent their extinction? Let's try.
* For another challenge. We all know each other too well. Nothing is exciting anymore. We can easily foresee how we will react in any kind of confrontation. Let's call in these humans. They're stupid, they won't act in an optimized manner. It's still interesting to fight against them/with them/play games with them (cooperative/competitive)/play games with them (e.g. take a human spaceship and drop it on Alpha Centauri. Let's see how long it takes them to get back).
By supplying us with warfare technology that doesn't have such disastrous side effects and is more effective the aliens can avoid an extinction war. By providing us with knowledge they can avoid us performing dangerous experiments.
If another potential reason for accidental suicide can be found, similar reasoning applies.
[Answer]
Combining three points
* Humans are on a path of self destruction
* Highly benevolent aliens who care about other's wellbeing and survival, but don't want to rule us
* They posses technology that can prevent our self destruction
If all of those points will be met, the aliens won't have any other chance than to give us that technology.
[Answer]
I am surprised that the reasons given in the *Lensman* series appear to have been forgotten.
The race that is uplifting humanity is locked in a life-or-death struggle with another race that is ruthless and tyrannical. Although the Good Guys can presently hold their own, they are reaching the limits of their potential, whereas the Bad Guys' ultimate limit is much higher, which means that unless the Good Guys can find someone to take up the mantle, the war will end with the triumph of evil.
The Good Guys survey the various races in the galaxy, and discern that humanity's potential far outstrips their own, but it will take too long for us to develop naturally; so they work to accelerate our development.
Read the series. It's a classic of the genre.
[Answer]
Let's assume for a moment that all world religions are right, and that all people have immortal souls created by the God (a soul is what makes a human different from a machine). Further assume that the God has created only a finite amount of souls for each civilization. Then alien race who reached immortality may soon discover that it can no longer procreate because all individuals are already alive.
For such a race the only way to expand their mental capacity and progress in the quest for knowledge is to find another civilization and uplift them.
[Answer]
**For trade**
[Balanced trade is usually beneficial](http://www.economist.com/node/605144) to all societies which engage in it. However, in order to conduct trade, your trading partner must have something of value.
Despite popular fiction, advanced alien civilisations with access to interplanetary travel don't need our raw resources (water, metals, ores, whatever), they can mine these for themselves from any asteroid field or dead world, and they have a whole galaxy to strip mine if they want to. You don't waste a planet with a biosphere.
So what do we have to offer an advanced alien civilisation? The truth is, probably not much. But if they shared some of their technology with us, we become a trading partner with something of value. Suddenly, we're able to produce things they want, and in quantities that makes trade worthwhile.
Now, even a fairly altruistic alien civilisation will organise this trade to their advantage, making sure the price is right for them, and selecting carefully what technology to share. But in return, we gain access to advanced goods and technology, which is a good deal for us too.
**Because life is common but intelligence is rare**
Life, especially in its most basic forms (bacteria, single celled organisms, etc), is possibly reasonably plentiful and can take hold in a variety of environments. However, intelligent life, the kind of life that can develop a culture and which you can engage in conversation and share ideas and perspectives with, is probably extremely rare.
The universe is just an unfriendly place for biological intelligence to evolve and survive. It requires fragile, complex bodies which are closely tried to their required environmental conditions, lots of energy, and the right evolutionary conditions.
If we discovered another sentient race, and we weren't in competition for resources, there's a good chance we'd keep them around (and give them technology to ensure they stick around) just so we'd have someone other than ourselves to talk to.
It's possible other alien life may think the same way. If they came along today, what technology could they give us which would radically improve our chances of survival? Probably, clean energy technology, such as fusion or anti-matter (if it's possibly), so we can stop burning coal and oil. Access to spacefaring technology so we could mine our solar system for resources which are running out at home. The technology to inhabit other worlds, so we can't be wiped out in a single disaster like a large meteor strike.
**Genetic diversity**
Someone else also mentioned genetic diversity, which I think is a good point. Right now, if something (e.g. an epidemic) wipes out the human race, then as far as we know, that is the end of intelligence in the universe.
Intelligence may be so rare, that it's worth preserving for its own sake. And the best way to do that, is to secure the survival of other intelligence so that we don't have all the genetic eggs in one basket.
[Answer]
# Reparations for harm done.
Some member/faction/corporation of their race was responsible for a major environmental accident/catastrophe on a global or solar-system wide scale.([circumstellar](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/232117/35993)?) They have determined the fallout of this incident will likely end our existence before we will be able to develop the technology to save ourselves.
For example the moon's orbit has been destabilized so that over time it will fall within the Roche limit and be torn apart. Before this time the tidal forces will become stronger and stronger causing great seismic events.
They do not have the technology to revert the damage.
They do not have the resources available locally to save us by themselves.
So they are forced to provide the technology to us that we might apply our own global resources to the problem and save ourselves. (or at least allow us to be an active participant in their plan to save us.)
[Answer]
A possibility that I don't see listed elsewhere here is that we may have some sort of physical trait that they find to be very useful. For example, they may be very small, very large, aquatic, unable to breath in oxygen rich environment, etc. For that reason they may want us to become more technologically advanced so that we can work along side them in a mutually beneficial relationship.
Imagine that we came across a relatively intelligent alien species, but they had the anatomy of a flea. Setting up communication with them, teaching them about more advanced technology, and figuring out how to work together could be super useful. Just think how good that species would be at doing precise work like dentistry or brain surgery. At the same time we would be good at things they are less good at like building large machines, having better vision, etc.
[Answer]
May be just like we humans study ant colonies behavior , or like give cycle to guinea pigs [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MODHZ.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ctXMj.jpg)
And see what we do with new technology and make fun of us .
[Answer]
If advanced alien sapients uplifted humanity the reason they would do this is simple. They don't like talking to idiots. Non-uplifted humans would be as dumb as rocks compared to advanced aliens. Can you have a meaningful conversation with a dumb rock? Of course not, but if you could uplift that rock to the point where you could both have a meaningful conversation wouldn't you do so? Of course, you would.
Besides this would have the advantage that uplifted humans could explain what humanity was about (before we were uplifted) in a meaningful and comprehensible way.
[Answer]
I would think one of the most likely might be to prevent the destruction of Earth (or, if we had achieved local colonisation of our Solar System maybe other planets) with our 'primitive' technology. To a sufficiently advanced civilisation it would likely be unconscionable to allow us to spread to other planets in the way we have on Earth, damaging environments and sucking out resources. They may see their only options to be to remove us (which would likely also be a totally immoral concept to an advanced civ) or to attempt to teach us how to maintain our growth in far less invasive ways.
There are multiple mentions of this kind of thing throughout Iain M. Banks' Culture series, where the Contact section deals with low level civilisations to shape their future into a more 'civilised' state less likely to completely screw up their planet's ecology and the life on it. However there it is a very indirect intervention technologically, with agreements in place on the galactic stage to prevent a civilisation giving technology to those much less advanced. Indeed Contact agents normally have to disguise any tech, like drones, they take with them so as not to influence the civilisation in that way.
Ken McLeod's Engines of Light trilogy contains a less friendly concept of this, when the collective minds that form gods (with a small g) give humanity light speed engine designs to try and get rid of some of our 'noise' so they can think in peace. They valued their own intelligence above all others, and when a species began producing too much noise in space - radio signals, rocket flight etc. - they would intervene to 'shut them up'. For example they would give a civilisation their light speed engines, then hack them to direct those jumping to a specific location in space and into immediate conflict with another troublesome species. Part of their enabling of humanity is intended to counteract the front lines of one of these wars. If the enemy arrived at our 'present' stage of development we'd be no help at all basically, so they gave us advances intended to drive our own development of further weaponry, while also diverting some of the population to other war fronts to basically drive huge population crashes.
[Answer]
The classic Sci-Fi book called "Childhoods End" by Arthur C Clark Explores this idea well.
In the novel our race is poised to destroy itself. To prevent that aliens came to prevent the destruction of our race. Then guided our evolution along a specific path so we became a telepathic collective that would assist in solving the mysteries of the universe with other similar races
[Answer]
The Librarian of Halo recognized humanity's potential for great management and protection of life even at her own species' detriment. She recognized humanity was only attacking Forerunner worlds containing Flood parasites.
She knew her species would die at the hands of the Flood, so she selected humanity as her favored species to carry the torch after Forerunner extinction.
This is the only practical reason I can conceive which would force an alien civ to uplift another, and it still preserves the Forerunner's influence over the Milky Way through us. There is literally no other reason to uplift a species. Even a creature as benevolent as the Librarian wouldn't sacrifice or risk her own place in the universe to save another species. As good as she is, she only chose humanity because the Forerunners would die fighting the Flood, and she wanted good managers after her death.
Any spacefaring civilization compared to a planet bound civilization has / should have
* Unlimited resources
* Unlimited real-estate
* Infinitely greater destructive capability via relativistic bombs
* A mastery of science and technology we could only dream of
* Absolute control over their own survival assuming they're the only space-farers around and
* A healthy fear of any threat to their survival.
More than likely a space faring civ would take the Imperium's approach to diplomacy and call in an exterminatus on any blooming intelligent life, and they would be smart to do so.
Any Prometheus wannabes should be punished with death as well. The threat of extinction is simply too great should another species rise.
[Answer]
The more intelligent the alien race is, the more likely it is for it to be able to see beyond what the current state of humanity is and find potential which we - as humans - currently may not be capable of comprehending. This potential will most likely be profitable to the alien race. Just like humans saw the huge potential of domesticating wild animals - exploitation. Just like humans created machines to take care of daily chores a supreme alien race will see the benefit of using us for some purpose (hopefully beside the next meal on the table or sex slavery ;)).
[Answer]
Humans have been marked for death. The aliens are the executioners.
By advancing humanity, the aliens-
* make themselves feel better by giving humanity a fighting chance.
* have fun fighting more challenging prey.
* give humanity the opportunity to remove the reason for the death sentence.
[Answer]
The simple answer is that all perspectives and life, especially sentient life, is valuable, and for every advanced civilizations out there are hundreds of failed ones that you can educate and bring up to your level which will allow you to think in a more broadminded way.
Also, it's not like the uplifted species is just going to be a member of a hunter-gatherer tribe and then suddenly be made a member of the galactic federation. It might seem instant to us lesser advanced species, but any species able to travel the stars probably has the ability to connect directly to the mind of a creature and with that they can simply run them through several lifetimes where tech and philosophy increases, raising them up through the history of a non-failed civilization till they are at the same level or close to the same level as the one doing the uplifting. All of this can be done nearly instantly so it's not really a problem...
As to why they might do it beyond that...as weird as it might sound to you, because they want children/to reproduce. What you have to understand is that they will likely be very long lived and live in a world where there is no real problems which leaves children to be listless and wreckless which is a dangerous combination with super technologies. The longer they live the more likely normal children won't be able to self actualize and more likely just to be depressed and suicidal. That being the case, if they want biological entities as children which might not be a thing since they might be digital, they might choose a species to "raise" because the people in that uplifted species will have problems and be self actualized already so there is a far lower risk of them growing depressed and suicidal.
Just a thought...
[Answer]
Given the timing of this question I'm surprised nobody has said...
# Politics
Why do politicians love getting the support of the uneducated masses? Because all those numbers make them look good.
Perhaps there's an intergalactic election happening in the next decade or so and the Milky Way is a swing galaxy. Providing us with some fancy tech (and the promise of more tech in the future) will be a sure way to get the human vote.
[Answer]
## Don't awaken the Old Ones!
Humanity has reached the point where would love to explore the universe, but we're *very* limited right now - with no FTL capabilities, traveling to other stars will have to be done with generation ships. To make matters worse, these trips would have to be one-way, and it would be very hard to guarantee that once it arrives they won't find out that their destination is not suitable (meteor strike, incompatible atmosphere, the planet has developed a deadly plague, etc.). As such, research into FTL is going to be a priority.
How could we make FTL work? Some of the common ideas are hyperspace, wormholes/gates, and a warp drive. Hyperspace is where you enter a different universe/dimension where the speed limit isn't the same or doesn't exist. Wormholes and gates are a method of linking two points in space to each other to allow quick travel between. A warp drive warps space and makes it so you don't have to travel as far.
What do all of these FTL methods have in common? All of them involve distorting or leaving our universe. When you do that, you weaken the barriers between our universe and void between dimensions. That is where the [Old Ones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_One_in_fiction#H._P._Lovecraft) are.
The Old Ones are most definitely *not* friendly. There are occasions in which they can exert a mild influence on our world, [and the result of even that small influence is not pretty.](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/22166210) Breaking down the barriers that keep them from us would bring doom not only to us, but potentially the entire universe.
You might ask why the Old Ones are able to exert any influence in the first place. Wouldn't that require that someone had already weakened the barriers that hold them back? That is exactly what happened - the advanced alien race, when they were at a point comparable to where we are now, began to experiment with FTL technology. At that time they didn't know the dangers, and they didn't have any warnings.
Fortunately for all of us, they learned of the danger before it was too late (and figured out FTL that doesn't damage the barriers). Whatever catastrophe they experienced (or nearly did), they were able to mostly repair the damage before the Old Ones could escape into our universe. But their escape was narrow, and other civilizations might not be so lucky.
Knowing full well the danger that an unwary civilization might unleash upon the universe, the advanced alien civilization now watches carefully for any civilization that has reached the point where they will start experimenting with FTL. They will then boost the technology of that civilization to beyond the point where they can endanger the universe.
**More general answer**
The basic idea is that along the course of technological development, there's a point where the experimentation required to advanced further is dangerous. The advanced alien civilization could either be benevolently helping us skip that step so we don't destroy ourselves, or doing it in their self-interest because the danger affects them as well. If the Old Ones don't fit in with your story, there are other ways to go down the self-interest route. For example, FTL fuel, when used incorrectly, could start a chain reaction that would convert the entire galaxy into dark matter (which can't sustain life as we know it).
[Answer]
**Military conflict with another civilization**
There is a civilization (let's call them civilization A) that is very powerful and has some interest in keeping humans on Earth alive and independent of any of the bigger powers and reason to believe that civilization B, which A has fought with for a while and will continue to do so for a while, wants to kill all humans or take control of the Solar System.
The motives for A trying to keep us alive and independent are up to you to describe. Maybe our solar system is a strategic location to occupy because of a recent development in the war between the two, maybe A is a democracy and the people would forever hate any ruler that stood idly by as another sapient species was destroyed, maybe the people (or ruling class, if it has one) of A love eavesdropping on our artwork).
The same goes for B wanting to kill all humans or take over the solar system. Maybe our solar system is a strategic location to occupy because of a recent development in the war between the two, maybe the primary religion of civilization B teaches about how detestable anything that moves on two legs is, maybe they think that we might be a threat to them eventually and they want to get rid of the potential threat while they still can.
Naturally, civilization A would want B to lose in trying to do so with a minimal loss to both us and A. However, A must also not be able to merely bring in its space navy and defeat B.
One such situation: A's space navy will take 11 years to get to Earth, while B's space navy will take 10 years. Even though A's space navy could beat B's, B could have killed all of us before A gets there. However, A has a FTL science ship with no weapons capability hidden near us that can communicate much more quickly with the rest of A (perhaps they figured out how to send light through an [Einstein-Rosen bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole) but not how to send matter through it). This ship can download specs on their technology and then give it to Earth in a matter of days, leaving us plenty of time to build our own high-tech space navy that can fend off B's space navy for the needed year.
Another situation is that A is not that much stronger than B and thinks that, if we join the fight, we could make a dent towards A's side. This would really be feasible if both such civilizations had only colonized a few star systems to the point of them really mattering in the conflict. If this is the case, A gaining humans as allies would greatly help them win the war against B.
A last option is that us humans are much better at battle strategy than the other civilizations. Maybe most civilizations are all members of one race that never had wars until they found themselves communicating with members of the other race, and only humans have had large amounts of conflict on their home world with themselves. This would make people much better at battle strategy than any other race, and could make us significantly better than programmed robots or it could make us able to improve their programmed robots.
[Answer]
I find this quote from Arthur Clarke's 2010 a good motivation:
>
> “And because, in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped. And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.”
>
>
>
] |
[Question]
[
The society I am building is highly automated, post-scarcity, with the ability to essentially "3-D print" anything.
Is there a reasonable way for me to explain why the people of this civilization would actually go out and do things instead of sitting around taking 3-D printed drugs all day, having orgies with sex bots, or other forms of hedonism?
[Answer]
This is an old question, usually asked by those who fear hedonism. Reality is always much stranger.
We've all heard that, if you put a rat in a cage and offer them food, water, and heroin, that they will prioritize the heroin until they die. Many people have extrapolated this into the idea that you need to keep heroin out of people's cages.
Rarely is it suggested that the problem might be the cages. As it turns out, if you give rats a choice between food, water, heroin, and social interaction, [they will prioritize social interaction.](https://nida.nih.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2019/08/rats-prefer-social-interaction-to-heroin-or-methamphetamine)
You can further generalize this to identify that scarcity creates popularity. For instance...
* When the US illegalized alcohol, it created a boom in the underground alcohol business. The number of bars in New York, pre-prohibition, was about 800. After prohibition, the count of speakeasies was around 2000.
* When we illegalized marijuana in 1935, it was a small problem on the south border that mostly involved immigrants and jazz musicians. Today roughly a third of the US smokes pot every now and then.
* After Colorado legalized marijuana, our high-schoolers reported that it was an old people drug. *Auto accident comment removed as per @AncientGiantPottedPlant's input*
* Between the passing of the Controlled Substance Act in 1970 and 1990, cocaine use in the US tripled.
* As another anecdotal point, if you talk to "exotic dancers" across the US, you find that the raunchiest strip clubs (and highest paying) can usually be found across the border from high regulation areas.
* Extreme kinks are [correlated to high-stress occupations and parental issues](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/what-causes-sexual-fetishes#But-is-it-a-mental-illness?), not having too much free time on your hands.
Let's face it, jobs are a cage. They restrict our time from the things we really want to be doing, and they actually increase the probability that we'll want to perform high-intensity behaviors in our free time.
But we have other cages we can put people in. Social retribution is a common one. When Portugal decriminalized drug use, the drug use didn't drop, but the bad side effects like death, addiction, disease, unemployment, and incarceration all dropped significantly. This had nothing to do with availability of free time.
So, let me ask, if you had unlimited free time and no artificial social restrictions, would you spend it all doing drugs and having sex? If not, why do you think that everyone else would?
**Addendum:**
Yes, some people will go that way. Some people need board games in order to effectively socialize, some need sports, some need to be passing the peace pipe to be comfortable with those around them. The point is that post-scarcity won't *increase* this behavior, and there are factors that suggest it will decrease.
The most poignant detail is that, for those who do stay at home and do drugs or go to orgies, it will have zero impact on their ability to contribute to society. In today's society, such behaviors would take them out of the workforce. In a world where nobody *needs* to work, that isn't an issue.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs has a couple of layers above biological needs and security that are all about achieving social acceptance and significance. You can't do that by laying around at home. When people spend less of their time digging in the dirt, they have more time to do the things that are important to someone besides the shareholders.
[Answer]
**Because it gets boring**
**Because it's unfulfilling**
**Because it's frowned upon by society**
**Because it's unlawful** (an extreme version of "frowned upon by society")
A lot of people even in our current society have the means to do that today, and most don't. Some do, of course, and it's inevitable some will in your society as well.
Also, I would argue that your (and pretty much any other post-scarcity) society would still be [hedonistic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism), almost by definition. It's just that most people would, eventually, seek longer term pleasure than what is offered by just having drugged out orgies all day every day.
[Answer]
### The problem solves itself.
No matter if the reason is cultural or genetic; those who embrace hedonism disappear by themselves.
The hedonists no longer need to have to take the others into account to satisfy their objectives.
With all the means at their disposal, their move into their palaces were their robots do everything for them: they take care of the needs of the place and the owner, they provide for their distraction and pleasure.
Effectively, that people no longer belongs to the society, they have shut themselves out of it.
The people who are interested in other things beyond pleasure, continue to interact with other peoples. Those are the society.
It even allows you to explain why they are few hedonists, if any, in your current society: as technology made it easier, hedonists tended to isolate themselves, making it more difficult for them to reproduce. This gradually led to a decline in the proportion of hedonists, because either if it is due to genetical or cultural issues, the following generations would mostly descend from non-hedonists.
[Answer]
**Hedonism**
First off, why is hedonism the automatic response to extreme wealth?
In a lot of cases, things like drug addiction, alcoholism and whatnot tend to be caused by outside stress that causes the person to seek out some kind of escapism.
Drug addiction for example is certainly not a problem that occurs in the world's lower classes less than in its upper-classes.
I've met wealthy people and kids before. Many of them could easily afford to be wastrels, but they're fairly productive people in the sense they still work out, make art and have hobbies.
**Capitalism and Post-Scarcity**
We live in a world where addiction is incentivized. Where companies deliberately try and make advertisements, applications and food that hooks you in because those companies, in order to survive, must compete for the limited resource which is people's time and attention.
In a post-scarcity world where anyone can manufacture anything. What then do these companies exist for?
**Context is key**
So your world is post-scarcity, correct?
But that doesn't tell us much about anything in it really? What is its culture? What are its people's beliefs?
Is it simply 21st century America, but one day people woke up and found Replicators in their living rooms?
Presumably your post-scarcity culture is one with a very different outlook on things like leisure, work, wealth and productivity.
People in this scenario can apparently afford to casually make 3d printed drugs.
But then doesn't this mean, with all this wealth and automation, this society must similarly have impressive medicine and psychology that can treat addiction easily?
If you ask why people go outside and do things? Then I'll ask, what happened in this society to make people alienated and anti-social? Why does no one have friends or family to hang out with? Is there no where interesting to travel to?
[Answer]
## It *was* hedonistic, back when it first became post-scarcity, but the current cultural milieu is the product of a successful countercultural pushback against that hedonism.
There's no shortage of reasons to suppose a post-scarcity society *would* be hedonistic, that's why you're asking in the first place. Okay, fine, let's take that at face value and say that's exactly what happened when your society eliminated scarcity. Then what?
A few observations:
* People always, in every era, [lament](https://xkcd.com/1227/) what they see as [cultural decay](https://xkcd.com/1601/) compared to the "good old days."
* Whatever has been conspicuously changing lately makes a good candidate target for people to rail against as the factor responsible for kids these days not being okay. Thus, it's plausible for the increased hedonism of the newly post-scarcity society to be something that receives a lot of pushback.
* Countercultural, anti-establishment movements have historically *loved* the "society has become corrupted, and we need to get back to the purity of our roots" angle. (E.g., [Savonarola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Savonarola), [Martin Luther](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther)).
* Sometimes, countercultures (or, more often, partially watered-down aspects of them) *win* and become just regular culture. How radically anti-establishment is it to be in favor of racial integration of schools in 2023?
So, if your timeline can adapt to being a couple generations down the road from post-scarcity, you can write this process into your history.
* The generation that eliminated scarcity were suddenly able to quit their jobs and party harder than ever before, and they did.
* Their kids (or maybe their grandkids) grew up in a post-scarcity world without ever knowing anything else, and their generation's form of rebellion was condemning the hedonism of their elders.
* Then those kids grew up, and now they're in charge, and some form of their anti-hedonism has become the new cultural norm.
The fun part of this approach is that you get to *make up* this whole history, and then enrich your setting by including references to it and its consequences. In real life, ideologies don't *stay the same* over long periods of time. History is full of changes in norms and attitudes, and the present is always filled with cruft from the path taken to get there.
What kinds of ideas are normal and taboo in a society that's gone through such a process? Was it a peaceful cultural change, or did the anti-hedonists have to fight and win a war to enforce their values? Can you make your setting feel realer and more lived-in by including fragments of writings from back when hedonism vs. anti-hedonism was a live issue?
For a very successful example of this approach to future history, check out how Ada Palmer's [Terra Ignota](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Ignota) series approaches the development of opinions and norms around gender and religion between our present day and the setting's mid-25th century.
[Answer]
In the short term, it probably will catch a significant number of people. Hedonism as such is already a huge draw.
Suppose every intoxicating substance currently known becomes "push the button on your microwave" easy to produce in high purity and volume. Some people will crawl into a bottle and never emerge. Or into watching videos or playing computer games. Or going on hikes in the woods. Or eating fattening food. Or whatever-it-might-be that diverts them.
All the things that addicts already do.
Suppose the trend is towards libertarianism, even aloofness, with regard to those who become addicted to something. Those folks will steadily remove themselves from social interaction. They will "Darwinize" themselves. They would much rather do another line of drugs than go have friends. Even the few friends they do have will tend to be other addicts. They will tend to have fewer children and die much younger. And, in a few generations, the problem will self correct. People who can't handle freely-available-whatever will crash out of society.
People who can really leave it alone, or who can function through it, will presently dominate in the gene pool.
So it will be hedonism. But it will be the sort of hedonism that looks at the entire life's pleasure. Even multi-generational pleasure. Not just the range-of-the-moment. What will I be like when I'm 40? When I'm 50? When I'm 90? What kind of children will I have? Let's just leave some of those drugs in the package for next time.
So if you're that nameless guy face-down in his own sick, you wind up leaving nothing behind. Including leaving none of your genes behind.
But if you're Keith Richards, you can produce some remarkable music while doing your level best to test that "post scarcity" thing. And having five kids.
[Answer]
Because post-scarcity is always temporary.
Looking back at history, in the early 1700's, colonists to North America believed they were in a post-scarcity of trees. Wood was used liberally. Similarly, logging in the northwest states used to be done as if they were post-scarcity and there were struggles to try to make logging sustainable.
Similarly, when oil was struck in east Texas, the gushers convinced many that they were in a post-scarcity with oil. Again, it was a challenge to impose limits on pumping oil which was done to protect the oil fields from over pumping. Recently, people had the sticker on their cars, "God, give us another oil boom. I promise not to p\*\*s it away like the last time."
Currently, we are in another boom based on technology. Our constantly improving smart phones can convince us of the existence of post-scarcity. However, the rare earth needs of technology have limits. The energy use of the Internet has limits.
Heinlein wrote, "Daughters can always spend 10% more than fathers can earn." The next generation growing up with energy, technology, and wealth can always spend it down. It is very common that great wealth gets spent by the next generation and grandchildren of wealthy people often have to have regular jobs. Humans are very good at creating enough children to use up any post-scarcity.
[Answer]
**Reputation is the New Currency**
This was the approach of the Union in the Orville that with everything available at the snap of your fingers, there will still be people needed to keep the machines running. The drones that do the dirty work still need to be programmed after all, and if you have a reputation as good programmer naturally they’ll look to you.
**Hedonism can get Boring After a Century or Two**
If there is anything we as a species have learned after COVID, it’s that looking at your phone gets boring after awhile. So given enough time a people with nothing left to do will want something, ANYTHING to do just to kill the boredom. Why do you think the paradise of the Federation has so many people seeking out new life and new civilizations?
[Answer]
**Humans need a challenge to be psychologically healthy.**
I've gone a few months between jobs before--I had enough money saved up that I wasn't too worried and was looking, but in the meanwhile I went a while without having a job. By the end of the third or fourth month, I was going out of my mind with boredom.
Everything that was once interesting to me had lost its sheen. Movies and TV shows were boring, video games lacked any holding power, I had a few books I was enjoying reading but would get antsy after a few hours. I couldn't practice instruments or music for too long since I didn't have the passion, and trying to make things like art was just a slog. Interacting with people was the one thing that kept its staying power, and even then I found myself sometimes just not wanting to put in the effort of seeking people out.
Without a challenge, we stagnate and then decay:
* Too much sleep causes you to constantly feel sleepy and tired, since your body assumes you don't need to do anything and doesn't allocate energy for it.
* Living in a zero-G environment causes your bones to become more brittle and your muscles to deteriorate.
* Playing a game where you're invincible and one-shot every enemy will be intensely boring since there's no challenge.
* Being handed a solution to a puzzle or riddle isn't satisfying, it's disappointing and frustrating.
* Constantly having all the sex you want would (I assume) get pretty boring after a bit.
Humans *need* to have something that pushes them a bit and gives them something to focus their energy and efforts on--some structure to work within that gives life contrast and shape. And it doesn't have to be something they hate, as there are plenty of ways to get that structure:
* It might be something like a hobby--I was heavily involved in theatre, which gave me a scheduled time that I would interact with other people and something to challenge myself with (learning lines, acting, etc).
* It might be a volunteer job done for the good of others or for the sake of it, like tending to a botanical garden or a zoo.
* Maybe it's done for the love of the task, like designing new spaceships or buildings, or boldly going where no one has gone before.
[Answer]
This question has been answered a couple of times in Science fiction, one example would be the Vulcans of Star Trek. They were a passionate people who gave into hedonism and desires and almost destroyed themselves through war as their emotions over spilled and became distructive.
Your society could have some moral or legal code that discouraged hedonism as a way of preventing a re-run of a more destructive period of their history.
A different take would be that of the Science-fiction comedy The Orville. Characters live in a society that is both post-scarcity and post currency.
In that society a person's social position and wealth is measured in terms of reputation. People who act in the common interest, or who dedicate themselves to public service or the arts\sciences are rewarded by the people around them through reciprocal arrangements or positions of status. While those who act in their own self interest are shunned and pushed to the margins of society.
A third example is the Eldar race from the Warhammer 40K tabletop universe and its associate literature. The Eldar lived in a post scarcity society, and they grew bored of everyday pursuits and distractions, and they sought out ever greater extremes that lead them towards hedonism and debauchery.
This caused their society to collapse and become vulnerable to other alien races, and then finally the combined psychic energy generated by their hedonism manifested into an intelligent form that ripped a hole in the fabric of space-time.
The Eldar now devote themselves to religion and cultural practices in order to keep their emotions in check to avoid this.
In the Anime, Shinsekai yori (From the New World), the world government secretly genetically engineered the population not to be hedonistic, and encouraged people to dedicate themselves towards artistic pursuits in order suppress strong emotions, and if people didn't fit in with this they had them secretly killed.
[Answer]
**Brainwashing**
Part of what was needed to establish the post-scarcity society is extensive behavioral modification to remove the parts of the people's nature that would bar the formation of an effective post-scarcity society, including propensity towards hedonism. This was accomplished through some good ol' brainwashing, and not just in the sense of broadcasting copious amounts of propaganda, but straight-up mind control, not too far off from what the Fatherland from the film version of "Habitable Island" uses.
Alternatively, propaganda that so perfectly caters to the psychology of whatever species makes up your society that it is effectively the same as mind control technology. We know that propaganda can be used to get an entire nation onboard with exterminating millions of people, now add to that an AI that is capable of generating terabytes of propaganda broadcasts per second and learning what works and what doesn't several orders of magnitude better than any human could hope to, and you could have a society that is effectively brainwashed into not being hedonistic even in the face of effectively infinite resources.
[Answer]
A simpler premise: **Because going out and doing things brings people joy**.
If the society is post-scarcity, then by definition you should not *have* to work a job you dislike just to get the resources you need to live. As such, nothing then prevents the people from doing that they *want to* with their lives instead of doing what they *have to*.
### Hedonism
*"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means" -- Inigo Montoya*
Pop culture references aside, there is the matter of hedonism itself. I'm not a philosophy student, so the best I can do is a dictionary on the matter and I see two definitions for the word:
* The pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence.
* The ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.
Based on the question, the sense is it is asking about the more self-destructive forms of hedonism -- the self-indulgence parts of it. Honestly, nothing stops people in so many words and I would actually suspect that this more indulgent form is a phase that people go through in their development in some way or another.
For some, they will get trapped in that place for sure. They will self destruct in a glorious warning to others about excesses or else get unsubscribed from life in a spectacular example of natural selection.
But in all honesty, there are more ways to get pleasure than life then sex and drugs -- there is also rock and roll.
Without need to work a dead-end job to live, people can derive pleasure from taking up the arts, or in the pursuit of building things from garments to furniture and all the way up to full buildings. They'll have the time to learn and because they want to learn, information might be better retained. In our timeline, these are the hobbies that we try to squeeze into our lives -- in this timeline they are more like jobs that we have chosen.
Then we get to the people that would genuinely take up a service job because they like the work. Not only does it keep them busy, but there is a certain pleasure in the idea that they work you do is not only well done but appreciated by others. Teaching, medicine, childcare -- three professions that people could genuinely get into for the joy and pleasure of doing it.
A life pursuing those two things above could also be seen as hedonistic pursuits. They would be undertaking these activities for the pleasure of creating something or a joy of a job well done. But they aren't the self-destructive kinds of hedonism so it may not be thought of in the same manner.
So, nothing stops people's hedonistic pursuits -- it's just different kinds of hedonism the people seek
[Answer]
**EARLY CHILDHOOD INCULCATION**
There's an all pervasive religion in your society that makes it clear that hedonistic behavior is a terrible sin. Inculcate all children with that notion and they will grow up into adults who don't even question it.
As a matter of fact it doesn't even have to be from religion, though that works best in our real world, because it's reinforced with notions of sin and the reward of heaven or punishment of hell. But it could be state driven.
It just has to be something that so drilled in from an early age that people don't even know to question it.
[Answer]
Frame challenge. Because post-scarcity is artificially limited by outdated social order.
Sure, your 3d replicator can create practically anything. Your 3d replicator is immune to wear and tear, as it can self-heal. And it is also powered by energy of vacuum and can transform part of said energy into matter, thus neither energy nor matter are any problem, they are are free. But you see, in order to replicate say, a pen, you need to access a file that contains information about how to replicate said pen. And in order to access said file you need to buy a subscription for this particular file. After expiration of subscription to "pen" file you lose access to said file, meaning that your replicator can't replicate pens anymore. And even with active subscription you are limited by how many pens you can replicate per month, PRO-subscription is needed to replicate pens without restrictions. And even then, only you would be able and allowed to use pens replicated by your replicator (and maybe members of your household), as pens won't work if your friend Jerry will try to use them, and omniscient mass surveillance system will report this incident to authorities.
[Answer]
This general question has been addressed extensively in James P. Hogan's 1982 novel 'Voyage from Yesteryear', which happens to be a pretty good read as well as being just interesting.
Several people have already mentioned the 'reputation is currency' concept from *The Orville*, and linked it to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But *Voyage from Yesteryear* did this decades earlier. Basically if everyone has all their basic needs fulfilled (food, shelter, etc.) they still feel the urge to be respected. In our society, wealth is a proxy for respect - someone who has a lot of money, several flashy cars, and all the gold they can eat *looks* like a success. And often throughout history that wealth was gained by theft - either through actually plundering some village somewhere, forcing people into slavery to work for you, or the pseudo-theft of having someone work for you and then getting the acclaim for their hard work. But when anyone can have whatever they want the appearance of success becomes meaningless. Possessions no longer indicate that you're high up in the social order, and you can't steal someone else's expertise. The only way to appear good at something is to actually *be* good at something. And if you want to become good at something you actually have to earn that aptitude by studying and practicing.
In the post-scarcity society Hogan posits - in a human colony in the Alpha Centauri system - everyone grows up aware of status derived from ability, rather than status signaled through fancy clothes, uniforms, titles, and the like. So they're extremely good at spotting frauds, don't defer to authority figures like politicians and priests, and are constantly striving to be experts at whatever they happen to do for a living (whether it's pure mathematics, painting houses, designing spaceships, or anything else). Of course there are some people who don't work, stay at home, and take drugs or indulge in mindless entertainment all day. To humans from Earth, this sounds like a dream come true. But the colonists view these people with pity - rather than being a hedonistic life of luxury it's a self-imposed prison, wasting the gift of existence and isolating oneself from the respect of the rest of society.
[Answer]
What is Hedonism and is it really problematic?
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism) says that ... *a family of theories, all of which have in common that pleasure plays a central role in them.*
Well, as long as my activities to seek out pleasure do not interfere with other people, society really couldn't care less.
As stated in other answers and comments, most people prefer social interaction, and only a minority will be "lost" to the society.
We can think of those theoretically lost as some form of [Hermits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermit), who are motivated by their own urge to seek out pleasure. Such pleasure may take any form: a secluded free-love retreat for some, a quasi-monastic life in search of reason and wisdom for others.
However, the original question highlights another pertinent point: by assuming post-scarcity, the premise hand-waves away the need for factory-workers, farmers and all other producing jobs.
But what about the service industries:
*Who is there to cut your hair, when no one needs to work to make a living?*
[Answer]
Because life is not one-dimensional, we not only derive pleasure from hedonistic activities, but we also derive pleasure from not-so-hedonistic activities, such as learning a new language, learning how to code, learning science, etc.
Over-indulgence gets boring after a while and might lead to stagnation. We have other emotions to take care of such as feeling accomplished, fulfilled, etc. I think this goes back to our animal nature. We used to be the prey of other animals so a state of hedonism is not a state of alertness, and alertness is what's needed for survival.
It's also mentioned above that we also strive to build a good name for ourselves and how can you do that if you sit around and do drugs all day?
[Answer]
First of all, the brain has a mechanism to prevent over saturation with anything that is joyfull. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill>
Meaning, without breaks, anything looses its joys pretty fast. Yes, even heroin, which is why dosage must increase, till it starts to suppress breathing.
Finally, the reward function the brain can be retrained to reward for almost anything. Create art, reward yourself. Feel in control of your body, not eating a thing? Reward yourself. The truth is, that the hedonistic crash, imagined by puritans, does not exist that much in the wild. Instead existing, is a shapeable organ, that can be set on any task. The "hedonistic" crash, as in the opioid crisis, is mostly a attempt to combat depression, when those dreams and tasks can be not fulfilled, and life must kept bearable.
There are regions in Europe, were puritanical christianity overdid it so much, they died out and the regions returned to nature. So much work, so little hedonism, all work and not play, made the fields return to forest. The hedonism feared above, would mostly turn out to be a great art avalanche.
] |
[Question]
[
Wizards have developed a Grasp-at-a Distance spell. It has numerous uses in everyday life of course but the Emperor (may he live forever) wants it to be deployed as a weapon of war.
**Spell operation**
1. A wizard (but no-one else) can grasp objects at a distance. Both hands (and other body-parts) can be used, as in normal life. Whatever body-part is used, full skin contact is required, so no gloves, etc.
2. Suppose my ale is across the room - I can reach out my hand and make a grasping motion. If I am accurate enough, it feels to me precisely as though I am holding the glass in my hand.
3. If I maintain the grasp and lift the glass, an observer will see it floating in exact synchrony with my hand - apparently in mid air.
**Limitations**
(a) If I pull the grasped object towards me, it will only move as my arm moves. In other words I can't pull it all the way. I have to bring it in arm-length stages. The simplest way is to alternate hands. It looks rather as though I am hauling on a rope. Eventually the object will be near enough to actually grasp it normally.
(b) I can't 'grasp' a red-hot or sharp object without injuring myself. The effect is exactly as though I was really touching it.
(c) I only have my normal strength so I can't 'grasp' and lift a weight that I wouldn't normally be able to lift. Most wizards are not at all muscly and non-wizards (e.g. warriors) cannot use the spell.
(d) I can break a fragile item precisely the way I could if I was holding it normally - the object will interact with items close to itself. My hand will interact with items close to me **and** objects near the object (via forces transmitted through the grasped object).
(e) In most cases the wizard must be able to see the object being grasped in order to correctly and accurately locate it - this is the most difficult skill to master because your distant 'hand' is invisible. In theory someone who can play piano blindfold could play it at a considerable distance by first locating the piano and then finding the correct keys by touch even if they were too far away to be discerned individually.
(f) If the wizard grasps at a distance and someone else grasps the object normally, they won't feel each other's hands but will experience the forces. Thus a weedy wizard couldn't wrestle a sword away from a strong warrior who was holding the weapon firmly but the opposite would be the case.
**Question**
Non-fatal tests have been performed with the Emperor's own soldiers who weren't pre-warned. They soon learned to keep a tight hold on their weapons or strap them into their scabbards when not in use. They also learned to keep an eye on any obvious hand-movements by the wizards.
So - How can weedy wizards use their Grasp-at-a-Distance spell as an effective long-term weapon against powerful warriors?
**Note**
There are hundreds of warriors on each side in this battle but only ten wizards on the Emperor's side. They all know the spell. The other side has no wizards but a slight advantage in foot-soldier numbers.
**Edits in response to comments**
(1) No change in leverage. Just make sure you are standing on a firm surface and the area around you is clear. (2) No penalty for distance. In theory you could grope around blindly behind objects such as castle walls. However mind you don't accidentally grab something dangerous. (3) Eye contact is only needed to locate the object and that is the main problem. Trying to grasp a small object at a mile away could be tricky. That's why I mentioned the piano. It's easier to grasp the piano first and then slide your hand until you find the keys.
**UPDATE**
I forgot to mention that the interaction must be a 'grasp'. Merely a punch won't work - you have to grab onto the object. Also you are limited as to how much of you can be projected. At the current state of development, it's about equivalent to two arms or one leg. If you can't grasp with your toes then this last will be useless to you.
[Answer]
**Communications**
The classic answer to the question of "what modern invention would turn the tide added to a medieval / ancient army?" is "radio". This spell can work as short range, all weather undetectable battlefield communications. Whether the transmitting wizard is manipulating a quill on parchment, chalk on a blackboard or a "morse key", they can pass short but detailed messages instantaneously and accurately without revealing their position to the enemy forces. This increase in command and control capability will give the Emperor's forces an overwhelming advantage in combat.
**Communications jamming**
On the flipside, the Emperor's enemies will be communicating using flags, bugles and/or runners whenever they are outside of shouting range. The wizards can interfere with all of these - by grasping the top end of a flag the wizard can wave it around when it should not, trying to blow a bugle becomes interesting when someone keeps smacking the end of it or pinching the bugler's nose unexpectedly and runners are easy to impede in all sorts of ways whether they are on foot or horseback. (Tripping, undoing fastenings, spooking horses - endless fun possibilities.)
While the wizards could be used for other activities (sabotage in rear areas etc), the command and control functions above can be conducted while keeping the wizards well-guarded and outside of missile range (ie protected from enemy action). Given that the Emperor only has ten wizards, keeping them from harm while maximising their effectiveness against the enemy is crucial.
[Answer]
**Traps**
Being able to move things from a distance would give the art of trap-making and -springing much more flexibility, because you wouldn't have to figure out how to set it off without endangering yourself in the process. Simply stand at a distance and "PULL THE LEVER, KRONK!"
Step 1: Set up a trap with a trigger. Step 2: Wait until the enemy is over/under it. Step 3: Pull the rope/lever/whatever from afar. Step 4: Voila! The enemy is in a pit, or under your falling rack of spikes, or beneath the pile of boulders you just dumped on them.
Traps are a classic tool of the wimp against the muscleman. They don't require you to overpower your enemy, just be more clever than they are.
I initially posted this as a comment, because it's a fairly simple reply to what may be a more complex question, but there you go...
I wanted draw some traps for fun... So I did. Hope you enjoy. [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I3gka.jpg)
[Answer]
BEHOLD THE GREAT WIZARD MOE!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/o4b1N.jpg)
<http://mentalfloss.com/article/550053/facts-about-the-three-stooges>
The Moe Howard skill set is perfectly suited for this spell. Among the Moe Moves that Grasp-At-A-Distance would make so much more effective:
1: Eyeball grasp. Most effective in this bunch but variety is the spice of life.
2: Double nostril grasp.
3: Ear pull.
4: Titty twister. Best vs the bare chested warrior types.
5: Moe's got your tongue!
6: Hair pull. Useful against hair showing on any part of an adversaries body.
7: Package grabbage. Self explanatory.
8: Last but not least: WEDGIE FEVER!
Stooge magic will keep the king happy and keep your adversaries on their toes - especially #8.
[Answer]
**Daggers**
What you’ve essentially done is given melee weapons a huge boost in their reach. If you don’t know, reach is one of the most important factors in melee combat, if my spear can reach you before your sword can reach me, i’m almost always going to win (obviously it depends on what armour you’re wearing and how skilled you are, i’m just talking generally here).
With this in mind, daggers will likely be the weapon of choice for these wizards. The reason being is that a dagger is just as effective as a sword or a spear for killing someone. The only problem is that, because you’re opponent will always be able to outreach you, daggers are not often used in Medieval-style combat. However, the major exception to this is against armoured opponents.
If an opponent is wearing full steel plate, they are extremely hard to kill, you either need blunt force (such as that from a a war hammer or poleaxe) or you need to stab in between the openings. The one place you can guarantee will always be exposed is the eye slits, you can’t have armour in front of your eyes or you wont be able to see. Knights often carried daggers to stab them through these eye slits, killing their opponent. Knives or daggers were used rather than swords as, being smaller, they are much easier to aim with and are typically narrower, making it easier for them to slide in.
Your wizards would likely use daggers in the same way, slipping them into the eye slits of fully armoured opponents to kill them. You could also use this against people who are not wearing full plate, in this case you can go for the face (especially if wearing an open face helmet), the neck or the back of the knees where the tendons and arteries are. A stab to any of those places could easily be lethal.
**Hammers**
You may instead use hammers, use your magic to swing it and deal a lot of blunt force damage. It would also be easier to hit someone in the head than to try and slide a dagger into their eye slits, especially from afar. You could also use it to disarm or knock people off their feet. A simpler version would be to just drop a rock on them.
**Grappling**
You may also use the magic to pull opponents to the ground, using magic simply pull their leg as they walk or pull their shoulders back and down. If a solider falls on the battlefield, he is likely dead, especially if wearing full steel plate. The enemy will quickly be able to kill him whilst he is vulnerable and can’t adequately fight back. This could be used in the battlefield to great effect, the wizards pull, the soldiers stab.
[Answer]
## Instant Death
According to your guidelines, line of sight is only actually necessary for precision work: you can do things by feel in a pinch, "behind castle walls", if necessary. Excellent!
When you cast the grasp spell, a magical version of your hand appears in a place previously occupied by matter, in this case, air. At that point, one of three things must happen:
1. That matter appears inside of your own physical hand, in which case casting this spell is just a really fast way to die of an [air embolism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_embolism). I'll disregard this one.
2. That matter is displaced by your hand, and disturbed as normal when your hand moves.
3. That matter is temporarily 'ignored' until your hand begins to move around, at which point the matter it touches is manipulated as regular matter would be.
If 2, you just cast the grasp spell inside of their skull, and their brain tissues get displaced instantaneously, killing them horribly. If 3, you cast the grasp spell inside of their skull, and, uh, grasp, with the same results as 2.
After a dozen foot soldiers drop dead within a few seconds with blood and brain tissue running out of their facial orifices, the rest of their friends will probably turn and run.
[Answer]
Get your wizards some training in the oriental type fighting styles.
Then teach them how the Monkey Steals The Peach.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/x7Vl6.jpg)
Do it to the enemy warriors, their horses/camels/elephants, etc.
In the case of geldings or mares, do it to the reins, or loosen the girth straps, etc. (not sure how mid-ages saddles were done). Same if enemy is using women warriors - attack the infrastructure and what is carrying them.
There will be panic and mayhem, the fighting ability of the enemy will be drastically decreased, and then your foot soldiers can wade in and finish 'em off.
To attack encampments at night simply grab a handy torch and drop it on a tent, etc.
[Answer]
Your wizards will suddenly be required to attend physical training with the rest of the soldiers, to maximise their strength and thus the effectiveness of their ability.
**Hidden needle / Fallen arrow stab**
It's not just soldiers' own weapons that can be used against them, but anything pointy near them, including arrows that missed them, and the needles we left on the ground / catapulted over earlier (or indeed, passed over in a reverse-rope push style).
The danger these present is small against an alert target, in daylight. But at night, these smaller weapons will be hard to spot until they're literally (literally literally, not metaphorically literally) in your eyes.
And keeping alert against the constant threat of sudden stabbings will take an emotional and mental toll on the enemy.
**Sabotage / Screwing with them**
Little stuff... moving things round. Knocking over lamps. Pulling their hair. Ripping their maps, spilling their food, opening their bags so stuff falls out...
Not likely to be lethal (unless they don't spot a knocked over lamp), but will mess with their mental state, reducing morale, and leaving them vulnerable to stabbings or just regular soldiers in battle.
**Paratroops**
3 wizards can probably lift a regular soldier? From your description, they can work together to lift him with this spell. So let's lift him up and carry him over and drop him on the enemy :)
**Traps**
... or they could drop a rock or tree on the enemy. It's super hard to spot a branch 10m up in the forest isn't actually attached to a tree until it falls on you.
[Answer]
If you can bring item to you (via "rope-pulling") I suspect you can push items away from you via rope-pushing motion. For example, you can then sneak near enemy's camp, lit an oil-lantern, and move it near flammable items, such as straw heaps. Then you would release the lamp, likely causing fire.
More precise but less efficient way to deal damage is to move large boulder over watch's head, and then release the grasp, hence knocking sentry unconscious.
[Answer]
There are a few interesting ideas around force multiplication.
### Teamwork
With enough practice, all ten wizards should be able to grab the same item and move it at the same time. This could be used to create an "invisible catapult", but it could also be used to accelerate smaller objects (like spears or [plumbata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumbata)) to unexpectedly high velocities. Imagine Yondu's arrow from Guardians of the Galaxy. They all pick up an iron spike and hurl it into an enemy. Then pick it up and hurl it into another. Then another. Scary.
Or, even scarier, they could all pick up the biggest guy in the heaviest armor and use him has a wrecking ball.
### Mass Driver
Another option is for single wizards to "rethrow" items that are already in motion. Have a burly normal soldier get a really heavy spear moving, then the wizard keeps "grabbing and throwing" it during flight. This increases the range, velocity, and accuracy of the throw.
### Drunken Master
A very cinematic setup would be pairing each wizard with one or three capable normal warriors for fighting in small groups. The wizard's job is simply to upset the balance of whomever the warriors are fighting. Bumping shields, tripping feet, pulling hair, etc. A full scale battle would probably be too chaotic for this technique to make a huge difference, but in small groups it would be devastating. Imagine trying to defend yourself from a swordsman while the invisible man is practicing his judo moves on you.
[Answer]
Here's a fun one...
The most powerful warriors are not merely iron clad brutes carrying swords and maces, they are kings of other realms, leaders, challengers to the throne. Yes they are skilled and strong in melee combat, but they are also the leaders of many others. Simply killing them with your magic would make for a martyr, a call to arms for your enemies.
So keep things on the down low. Don't use your magic for war, don't throw around your military weight with your new found forces. When an opposing leader (Let's call him Larry) is causing you trouble, send a diplomat, talk peace.
*Meanwhile*... every night when Larry sleeps in his castle he hears strange scratching noises from the walls, the doors, under the bed. He hasn't slept in days, he barely eats any more. Larry is sure people in his court are our to get him, his room was ransacked yesterday while he was on a hunt. The safest room in the castle, ripped apart. It must be one of his closest, most trusted. Who can he turn to? Who can he trust?
Do you offer Larry your help, save him from his treacherous court, offer him the chance to join forces, let his kingdom reign under your banner? Or do you let him go slowly insane, as his kingdom falls apart and rumours of curses swirl.
The true power of your wizards is never going to be in their hands, it is in their minds.
[Answer]
First some **training**: get the wizards strengthening their hands, arms, and core so that they can grab more securely, and pull and manipulate larger objects. Their arms should all be strong like Popeye's. Then train them in dexterity with the world's best jugglers so that they can easily throw an item remotely, and grab it again with another hand, thereby allowing them to make an object travel quickly through the air.
Then split them into two forces:
# Battlefield Disruption (Stranglers, Disarmers, Deconstructors)
These wizards will position themselves at distant vantage points before and during a battle, using whatever vision-enhancers are available (spyglasses, crystal balls, scrying). Their job before a battle is to systematically disrupt the enemy's camp: knocking down tents, throwing lanterns into haystacks, making swords come to life, releasing horses, etc. Whenever a commanding officer can be identified from afar, they become the prime targets for **strangulation**.
Once the battle begins, they will do much of the same disruption, focusing on spooking the calvary, pulling down (and choking) commanders, and undoing armor. Their tactic will be to stab, punch, pull, and strangle as quickly as possible and then move on to the next person or horse.
# Covert Accident-Orchestration
The second group will be tasked with infiltrating the enemy's towns and cities, and getting as close to the leadership as possible. Then they will wait for the perfect opportunities to **trigger "Final Destination" accidents**. A small push on a noble who's at the top of a staircase, disconnect a chandelier while the royal family is underneath, tip over a candle during a feast, trip the lords during important meetings. Bonus if they can also spread rumors of a curse on the enemy's leadership, helping to removing their support among the nobles and people. Of course if they can get into a good vantage point that allows their hands to stay hidden, it's always helpful to engage in some remote strangulation.
[Answer]
Wait until the enemy army sets up camp for the night, then sneak poison into the food supplies - there a probably a number of large pots with stews being prepared to dish out. It doesn't even have to be particularly sophisticated: The most basic method would be to wait until the main cooking is done, and the stew is just keeping warm, and slip some raw chicken in.
The next day, your main army storms the camp while the enemy is "indisposed". Done carefully, the actions of your wizards will go entirely unnoticed, and you can reuse the same tactics again in following campaigns.
If your wizards need to sneak closer to or into the camp to achieve these goals... Well, tapping someone on the shoulder makes for a good distraction. Your wizards are now ninja.
[Answer]
Pull your enemies' sleeves to get them to **slap each other**, and start hilarious fights amongst themselves. Tie their **shoe laces** together just before they charge at your ranks. Turn their **helmets around** in the middle of a fight. etc, etc.
Be sure to play funny old British music as the battle rages on.
[Answer]
Many of the other answers focus on individual attacks, which when only dealing with a small number of soldiers is fine, but might be too slow to noticeably affect the battle. I think focusing on tactics that affect more than one soldier, or hinder the enemy commander or messengers will be more effective against an army.
## Death From Above
Have your wizard pick up the heaviest rock they can and slowly bring it to hover in the air above a chosen target or group (enemy commander or messengers). If they don't notice it, you've just dropped a heavy weight from hundreds of feet in the air on top of their head.
If there is no single target, just have the wizards pick groups of enemies at random and drop the rocks, it's likely that it will hit someone.
## Fear tactics
If they notice the rock, they'll have to keep moving to avoid it being dropped on their heads. This will at minimum prove a distraction for the enemy leader(s) and most likely also keep one or more scouts out of the battle (someone has to watch the rock and find out where it's going). With 10 wizards, the enemy commander (and strategists) might very well spend the entire battle avoiding being crushed by rocks, preventing them from meaningfully contributing to the battle.
This is still effective without a commander to target, since it will prevent groups of enemy soldiers from creating or maintaining a formation that isn't constantly moving.
## Bombs away
This tactic is extra effective if your side has access to gunpowder or other chemical/alchemical explosives.
## Light in the eyes
Another effective technique (if it's sunny) is to take a shiny piece of metal and use it to bounce sunlight directly into the eyes of the enemy soldiers. This will function as both a distraction and an easy way to blind the enemy soldiers at a critical point in the fight.
---
*Edit: Additional ideas*
## Flint and Steel
See if your wizards can discreetly get flint and steel (or some other kind of fire starter) across the battle field. Then have them set to work attempting to light anything flammable such as wagons, barrels, torches, tents, or food supplies. They might not get many before people notice, but the effect will range from "distracting a few soldiers" to "distracting a lot of soldiers and burning a lot of enemy supplies".
[Answer]
There are many ways, as others already pointed out, but simplest is just "going to your foe's throat"... literally.
Just choke him with your "extended" hands.
If you like bloodshed, you can grab your foe's dagger and stab him with it.
Variations on theme are endless.
If you want to be more "creative" (and avoid letting out you are doing something "strange") you can let a normal battle progres and have magicians to "disturb" foes grabbing hands (or putting a finger in eyes, or tripping, or...) in topic moments, that would be enough to give your warriors a huge advantage.
[Answer]
This idea works only if a wizard can grab moving object precisely: multi-stage weapons.
Example: medieval napalm: Make a catapult, put a barrel with a lot of fuel inside, some tinder on it, and target area above enemy forces. During flight, have a wizard unlock the barrel and use the tinder to immolate spilling fuel.
[Answer]
Wizards being in short supply, it would be best done as a terror weapon.
* Using more time, grasp a shoelace from an empty boot, and strangle the guard. Not sure if it's best to strangle them dead or just unconscious.
+ Have two men anchor the wizard. Have him seek to pull men off the wall.
+ tip the boiling oil bucket early.
+ Start from your lines and dump the head of a soldier into the castle well.
Can I grasp something inside another something? E.g. Can a grab a glass in a room with a closed door? I can't pull the glass through the door, but does the grasp work? Does the object feel grasped? Can I only grab things that have room for my hand around them? (Possibility for different ability levels here)
* These would allow me to reach into the enemy general's chest and pinch his aorta closed, pinch his esophagus, render someone speechless by holding his vocal cords. Or just clapping my hand over a face and keeping the guy from breathing.
* Do other wizards have a scrying spell? E.g. can another wizard run a magic mirror that lets you see closer what you are trying to do?
+ If you are looking through a spyglass, does this give you better vision? (Larry Niven's Gil Hamilton was telekinetic, but it was limited to anything his arm could reach. But he could reach *through* a 2 way telecomm link. Imagine someone grabbing your beard though a skype call.)
A good part of making this work would be getting stuff in place for the wizard to use later, and getting a destination set up with 'feelable' landmarks. A covert operative wizard may have a team of 20-60 people working together. Wizard is unlikely to be head of team.
---
Suppose that you can set up a skrying link between two mirrors. Now two wizards working together: Each carries a mirror and a something. The usual, trade off from hand to hand, but one holds his mirror where it has a view of the other's work. Yeah. There's 2 mirrors and 2 daggers floating about. Suspicious.
The mirror doesn't have to be very big. The dagger can be made of enchanted glass, and very hard to see.
] |
[Question]
[
TLDR: Is it possible, and if yes how can they be as deadly as possible, to have modern day megafauna that prey upon humans at least moderately often without humans wiping them out?
Evil Genius #637 has developed an ingenious gene sequencing device. Likely building upon the handwaving of the Jurassic Park scientists, he now has the capability to create his own animals. These animals still need to be able to eat, survive, procreate, etc, so there are a variety of biological necessities he can't just ignore, but he can build whatever type of animal with whichever special abilities he desires regarding speed, camouflage, stealth, what have you. He is disappointed with the way that humans have historically eliminated or greatly reduced animals that preyed upon them, and wishes to watch some "exciting" hunts.
His goal: to develop a species of large animals that can successfully prey on humans without being wiped out. No "mosquitoes are *technically* the deadliest animal" will do for this maniac, he wants to build large (at least 200 pound) critters and watch them hunt and eat humans. He can place them in whatever region of the world will be most effective, so long as there is a decently large population of humans for them to hunt.
Is it possible for our villain to come up with carnivorous megafauna that will be able to avoid being wiped out by humans for at least ten years, while entertaining him with their hunts? He can create up to ten thousand of the creatures.
Note: please avoid answers such as "an African Lion in the right place will do plenty of damage," because come on. We can design any predator we want, let's not be lazy with our villainy.
Bonus points if you can give me (I mean our hypothetical villain) a location to release our animals where they will be able to survive for a while and hunt humans so I can sit back and enjoy the show.
This is not a repeat of the question asking about an "Ultimate Predator" from 2016, that question wants to know how an animal can best hunt other animals. I need an animal (a large one) that can hunt humans successfully as a main part of their diet without being immediately exterminated.
Edit at the request of JBH: looking for an animal that can terrorize an area the size of Louisiana, in the 21st century. The ratio of people to critter is up to the answerer, as it can be placed anywhere in the world. I am open to answers that include an animal with a strangely high level of sapience.
[Answer]
People mention humans, but isn't the main deadly feature of humans (along with their non-conspicuous appearance) their intelligence?
### You need an intelligent animal that is good at hiding.
Imagine what damage you could do if you really set your mind to it, and trained to do it. Now imagine that you look like a monster, but are stronger and faster than a human. It's a bit harder, but shouldn't be impossible.
**My first thought is a large sapient snake.** They can not only tug their bodies away into small spaces, but they can also go a long time between meals. Venomous or constrictor? Both.
Imagine a not-totally-urban area, maybe the outskirts of a small town. You're an anaconda like snake, 10 meters long, resting under an abandoned car where you have been digesting your last kill for a week. Tonight it's time to hunt again.
You struck your last victim coming up from the sewers, so the humans have been looking for you there. In a few weeks or so the sewers might be safe again, but tonight it's time to pay a visit to the trailer park by the creek. There are a few roads to cross along the way, but all have small passages under them for rainwater which should be large enough. At least before eating.
Today is Friday and the weather's nice, and there will be people out, most likely having a few beers. The plan is to hide near a path by the creek and wait. If someone is walking home around midnight, or go there to have a piss, you will eat. You can't fully understand what humans are saying, though you can pick up words, and you cannot speak, but since you are engineered to be deadly you can mimic human noises well. "Fussing baby" is the most effective, but you don't want to overuse it; IF your victim should survive you don't want to have people learn what to avoid. "Crying woman", "puppy" and "vibrating cell" are good too.
Afterwards you could comfortably swim down the creek for a quarter mile or so and then slid up into the nearby forest where ever the ground is firm enough not to leave easy-to-follow tracks. If you want to lay low for a while there's always the cattle ranges; there are even those where it's easy to slip under the fence, grab a sheep or small cow, and be gone without anyone noticing until they count their animals.
---
A second thought:
**Kraken!**
Humans use boats and go out to deep waters. They do this to fish and transport stuff. Imagine how easy it would be for a large squid with 12 meter tentacles to sink a small boat, or just grab people and pull them down! Being so large, they probably need to eat other things as well, but there might be a neat balance here: If people start avoiding the sea, pretty soon fish will grow larger, and small whales and seals will become more numerous. This might make this scenario slightly less infeasible.
EDIT: Having thought a bit more along the marine mollusk track, a truly giant octopus is probably better. Octopi are already very clever, and can survive for short periods on land. If they were motivated to kill people, I think they would be hard to stop, as you wouldn't be safe anywhere too close to the sea.
[Answer]
**No**
Megafauna are big and are such, not a threat to us. Sure you can make them tough but we have jet fighters, attack helicopters, cruise missiles and 50 cal sniper rifles with depleted uranium bullets that can headshot someone at two miles. All else fails, we have thermonuclear weapons that can level a city.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yverm.jpg)
A threat to man needs to be smaller, not bigger. The smaller and more numerous something is, the bigger threat it poses.
[Answer]
Ummm, make a human substitute? They hide among us, because they LOOK like us?
Create a human-like animal that has superior strength, stamina, and intellience than humans, but is not our genetic secies.
Think in terms of the aliens in X-files. They were so hard to eliminate because they looked identical to us, and could walk freely among us.
Our most advanced weapons would not be effective because they could also use them against us. Anything we can do, they could do, only far, far better and faster.
The credible scenario is that we would have to wipe out all of the humans, in order to be sure we had destroyed all of them. That would be the ultimate, wouldn't it? We wipe out ourselves to destroy our competition?
Of course, the final scene would be that there is still one more of them left, hiding among whatever few survivors of us there are, after the final climax and all-or-nothing battle scene, when the remaining humans think they are safe.
***EDIT***
Additionally, give them a hive mind, a collective mentality. They all think as one. Killing just one has no meaning to them. Like cells on our body, each individual is expendable. The intelligence is in the collective.
[Answer]
**Crocodiles.**
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile\_attack#:~:text=It%20has%20been%20estimated%20that,killed%20by%20crocodilians%20each%20year](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile_attack#:%7E:text=It%20has%20been%20estimated%20that,killed%20by%20crocodilians%20each%20year).
>
> It has been estimated that about 1,000 people are killed by
> crocodilians each year.[1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SnAl6.jpg) The two species with the most well-known
> and documented reputation for preying on humans are the Nile crocodile
> and saltwater crocodile, and these are the perpetrators of the vast
> majority of both fatal and non-fatal crocodilian attacks.[1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SnAl6.jpg) Each
> year, hundreds of deadly attacks are attributed to the Nile crocodile
> in Sub-Saharan Africa. Attacks by saltwater crocodiles often occur in
> Southeast Asia, Australia, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.
> Reviews indicate that at least half of all attacks by the Nile and
> saltwater crocodiles are fatal[1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SnAl6.jpg)
>
>
>
So there you go. Megafauna that eat humans exist and they eat plenty of humans every year. Maybe your evil doer can get his jollies off of plain old crocodiles doing what they do.
It is the big ones that do the people eating, people being big, and so if he needs to create something to make it work for him, he could create really big crocodiles. With spikes. That talk. The crocodiles, not the spikes. Ok the spikes too.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SnAl6.jpg)
[Answer]
## Giant Amphibious Starfish
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/4jzSY.jpg)
Okay, I know this sounds like a joke, but starfish physiology makes them one of the most terrifying megafauna to try to face with human weapons. 99% of human weapons are all about either penetrating vital organs or dismembering an opponent to the point of death. Starfish however have no vital organs to shoot through and if you cut one in half, it will not die, both halves will just regenerate giving you two starfish to worry about instead of 1. Hit one with a flamethrower, but don't successfully kill enough tissue, then the dead bits just attrophe off and new starfish body parts grow in to replace them. Blow one up, and you might have a dozen new starfish grow up from the remains. Bassically, they are Deadpool, if all of his parts formed new Deadpools every time he got ripped apart.
The way humans kill starfish in real life normally involves locking them in a box and waiting for them to die of dehydration... or eating them. But if your killer starfish are over 200 lbs and able to overpower and eat humans in hand to hand situations, then boxing them becomes very dangerous in its own right.
## Features to Consider
It is important to use the RIGHT starfish regeneration as a template. Many starfish can only regenerate if a section of the central disc is still attached, but some starfish like the linckia diplax do not need part of the central disc. They use nutrients stored in the severed arm to generate a new disc for eating, and from there they can regrow the rest of their body.
One of the down sides of starfish is that they "bleed out" very easily on land, and take up to 10 months to regenerate a severed limb. So, their regeneration genetics should be combined with that of an Axolotl or Newt. These animals are able to contract their vascular system shut very quickly around major wounds preventing bleedout. They can also regenerate much faster. Axolotls can regrow a missing limb in as little as 40 days.
The reason I suggest a giant starfish as opposed to a giant lizard is that lizards can only regenerate lost limbs. I single hit center mass will be just as lethal to them as to any other animal, but against a starfish that can contract its wounds shut, you are looking at something much harder to stop with bullets.
You could further improve this giant starfishs' asexual reproduction rate by making it toxic. In some cases, predators might be able to scavenge the fragments of an exploded starfish before they can regenerate, but if they are covered in toxic stingers like the crown of thorns starfish, then scavengers would quickly learn to avoid those chunks of starfish matter left behind by artillery bombardment.
On top of all of these abilities, it's up to your imagination as to how you want them to hunt humans. Maybe they are clever enough to sneak into our homes at night and attack us in our beds, maybe they are ambush hunters and hide places waiting for someone to wonder too close, or maybe they are unnaturally fast and can just emerge from the nearby wetlands to chase people down and overpower them. etc.
## Distribution
Evil Genius #637 evenly distributes a seed population of a few thousand killer starfish across the area he wants them to infest, very quickly people will start trying to shoot them which will not work so well and those people will get eaten; so, then we will resort to blowing them up. This will seem very effective at first so we will blow up lots of them. Then very quickly we will go from having thousands of them to 10s of thousands if not hundreds of thousands before we realize we are actually making the problem worse. Because killing a starfish is so different than killing a bird or mammal, we will eventually have to come up with and mass produce a new kind of weapon for fighting them. Poison dart guns would seem most effective, but starfish have thick, bony, calcified skin which could render any existing dart guns ineffective. And most poisons take several seconds or longer before they start to diabilite; so, you might still shoot one get your head ripped off, and then it dies. So, we'd have to make newer stronger dart weapons than we've ever had to mass produce before and develop tactics for surviving long enough to not get overrun while you wait for it to take effect.
Eventually we will devise enough good weapons and tactics to wage a proper war on them, but starfish can also go into the water where we can not see them. This means that even after we become adept at responding to them with military lethality, wiping them out entirely is not really an option unless you plan to poison the water supply of an entire state... and with it everywhere that the water will eventually run off to.
[Answer]
**"...with some fava beans and a nice chianti"**
As noted, humans are really good at hunting down anything that they regard as a threat. Many humans also hunt for enjoyment or food, with a relatively rare subset hunting (and more rarely eating) other humans.
Predatory humans are difficult to deal with, because it is so hard to differentiate them from other humans in the population they live in. Modern society has dealt with this threat by forming specialist units within law enforcement agencies to hunt the hunters. Therefore, what Evil Genius #637 needs is:
* gene sequencing and/or conditioning to build a group of 200+ lb humans (or creatures externally indistinguishable from humans) who are physically attractive, addicted to human meat ([except the brains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease))), sociopathic yet obedient to EG #637
* training for the psychopaths in surveillance, combat techniques for subduing other humans and cooking
* provision of secure, private bases of operations in widely separated locations
* provision of solid identity and employment documentation
* hacking / communications jamming support as required to prevent pesky targets calling for help
At this point, Evil Genius can sit back and watch the show. If the psycho creatures are trained properly then the large majority of their kills will go undetected as murders. Thanks to mass media, only a tiny percentage of their kills need to be identified as being murders for the relevant area to be "terrorised" as specified by the OP. (Although the bodies should never be found - any human remains not eaten and all personal effects of the victims must be incinerated or otherwise permanently disposed of.) Serial killers with far less resources and no support have gone much longer than 10 years without being caught, so there are good odds of the 10 year requirement being met.
[Answer]
# Doggies!
Make your creature a dog. A totally ordinary, looks-and-smells-and-barks like a regular dog. A biggish one, of course. We want it visually indistinguishable from normal pooches.
Something like this friendly Mastiff, weighing in at 310lbs:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QcdXm.jpg)
Who would suspect a cutesy-wutesy puppy-wuppy? Who's a good doggy?
For extra benefit, have it wear a support animal's livery.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/T32Cn.jpg)
Now give it a human-class brain, and some tactical training. And some real cunning killer instinct.
.
.
**If the OP is willing to put aside the "big animal" requirement**,
consider this modest proposal:
A pack of medium dogs would be more effective. Something cute and loveable, like a Collie or a Setter. The sort of dog that is very often a support animal, a blind guide, a drug sniffer. The "good guys".
A pack of innocent-seeming dogs, operating with human intelligence, selecting their targets as if they(the dogs) are skilled serial killers.
Taking care to only attack solitary targets.
Disposing of the bodies(what remains after mealtimes) down storm drains and in garbage dumps.
It would take a LONG time for the humans to clue up to this.
[Answer]
**Carrots and Sticks**
The problem is that anything sufficiently dangerous will eventually be hunted to extinction simply because by NOT doing it then we will have an existential crisis. So you have to create a creature that is either not worth the trouble or SO worth the trouble that its not worth the trouble anymore...
Examples
**Carrots**:
Your creature is worth more alive than the number of people that it might possibly kill in the 10 year timeframe. According to the CDC site over 500k people die a year due to various cancers, a cure embedded in the DNA of your creature that can only be extracted while the beast is alive and wild (perhaps something else they eat in their native environment) would mean that no matter how many people they hunted, they would be protected by all possible measures due to how precious a commodity they would be alive. Similarly if they secreted a drug in their saliva that caused unbounded euphoria for a short period of time and if this drug was safe and non-addictive but only was possible due to the living creature hunting human prey...
**Sticks**:
Embed in the creature's molecular structure a substance that, upon their death, releases a noxious plague into the air. This substance would specifically target human physiology and would be incredibly deadly. The death of a single creature would result in 100,000x the number of human casualties. The cost of hunting each creature would be far outweighed in the human suffering that would occur upon their deaths. They would be avoided and shunned but not hunted and the creatures would be free to roam free in whatever habitat they chose.
[Answer]
>
> No "mosquitoes are technically the deadliest animal" will do for this maniac, he wants to build large (at least 200 pound) critters and watch them hunt and eat humans.
>
>
>
# 200 lbs. humans
I am quite sure that right after mosquitoes, the animals that kill the most humans per year are other humans.
I found [this article in Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/homicides). Only two animals are causing human deaths there and we are second with over 400,000 deaths per year. We're just efficient like that. No other animals appear in the list.
Since you don't want mosquitoes and humans over 200 pounds are a thing, all you need to fulfill your requirements is some fat cannibals with guns. You can even be sneaky about it: [make sure carb rich diets are addictive, accessible, cheap and promoted in media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me), while also ensuring that [angsty men always have easy access to automatic rifles for no good reason](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rifle_Association) and your goal already almost achieves itself on its own. As a last step use your subjects' [favorite media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InfoWars) to convince them that they should eat human meat and watch all the damage that'll do.
[Answer]
What has to be true.
1. They have to be bulletproof humans with guns are just too good of a killer, if a human with a rifle can kill them they won't stand a chance, humans where ever they are released will kill them.
2. they need to be amphibious. They need able to hide, humans can use fire and bombs to kill ALL of them otherwise. With current technology that means they have to be able to live in the ocean, the ocean is the only place something large can hide from humans. But they can't be fully aquatic because then humans can just avoid them. Ideally they should be able to breath air and saltwater.
3. They need to be released somewhere that that is already at war or that suffered an natural disaster, so confusion and lack of communication can keep them secret (or at least delay response) long enough for them to disperse. Ideally you would have multiple release points. Because once society as whole knows about them they don't stand a chance the bulk of them will be eliminated in short order.
[Answer]
# [Lizard People!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_conspiracy_theory)
Why is Humanity an Apex Predator? Because they are extremely good at adapting to everything, and we do that with tools. There's a mammoth? Make a tool to kill, then skin, then cook and turn it into clothes. There's an enemy tribe? Make a tool to kill them. There's a storm? Make a tool to weather it out. Humans are resilient because they are smart.
An Apex predator that hunts humans needs to be just as smart or smarter. It might even pass for human. That's what Lizard People do: they infiltrate humanity, they disguise as humans, and breed humans as their **ultimate prey species**. We are the Xenomorph, created by the Lizard men, we just don't know our creators! Dr Evil simply encountered them, and they are training *him*!
[Answer]
I got an idea! Or at least I think I do.
It's also a pretty iconic one, so i think you will know it.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ftt2q.jpg)
It's a Sandworm from Dune. I imagine if these guys were dropped in Northern Africa or the Middle East or really any places with a sandy desert things could get tricky for the inhabitants. Give them some additional upgrades such as removing their weakness for water and they should be able to disrupt the world's oil flow for a while as oil drilling extraction sites and refineries become death traps and cause a new refugee crisis.
Now whilst people would find ways to deal with them, I do think these things should at least last 10 years. Especially since whilst the big ones like on the picture would be able to threaten cities, they would probably get hit with a missile sooner or later; the smaller ones though should remain a threat for land travel for much longer.
[Answer]
You want something that is large, practically invincible, intelligent, and has extreme offensive capabilities.
My recommendation is Wurms. They are giant serpent-like dragons with nigh-impenetrable scales, breath weaponry, intelligence, and potentially burrowing capabilities.
With their subterranean nature and their armored scales, they would be nearly impossible to kill, not to mention they take out buildings by creating tunnels underneath them, destroying their structural integrity and causing them to collapse.
Also with their varied breath weapons, they can "pop out" of the ground and destroy vehicles and troops quite easily, and then burrow back underground again.
[Answer]
You don't need to resurrect an extinct creature. We already have a large carnivorous animal that actively hunts humans... polar bears. Furthermore, with global warming, humans are spreading further north, while the hungry polar bears are finding their hunting grounds on the ice increasingly inaccessible, and are instead taking to the land further south.
All Evil Genius #637 has to do is breed 10,000 polar bears and release them; then just sit back and watch.
[Answer]
Sustainability
Most of these answers, whilst deadly, have little to allow for any level of sustainability. A big rampaging monster is all well and good, until it runs out of people to eat and starves, leaving the rest of the territory unattacked; or gets discovered and is hunted down, however many you have, you cannot really protect them from guns/bombs. Not even if they are really stealthy. So you need something that can make up for the inevitable losses. Something like :
Werewolves
Instead of making a new creature wholesale, make a way to convert some existing ones. A disease that turns humans aggressive (ideally with some growth for good measure) allows for a steady supply of new monsters. Add in infect through serveral vectors (airborne, waterborne and bloodborne, as well as surfaces touched and the classic bite), and a long enough incubation period for the disease to spread beyond geographic boundaries, and the whole world will be plagued by monsters.
[Answer]
Terrestrial Octopus/Cephalapods. They have several natural super-power like abilities: shapeshifting (they can change the color/texture and shape of their bodies in very intricate ways), Regeneration, dispersed neural systems (up to 2/3 of their cognition is contained in ganglia in their tentacles), multiples hearts, AND they're some of the most intelligent, problem solving animals on the planet. They also have thick cloudy ink (some inks can paralyze upon ingestion I think) and travel by jet. They never stop growing larger, if they have the food they need. They do all of this without any parental support and most only live for a year. There are theories that their lives end after mating because if they didn't they would grow to be massive and dominate their ecosystems so completely that there would be no food left. So imagine, what an encultured, educated, massive, shapeshifting octopus (and his friends) that lives on land could do to sneak around, kill/eat people, and shrug off massive damage (again, regeneration, primary organs have many backups). Many also have some sort of venom! Really the only things holding these animals back in the wild is their automatic deaths after mating (a trait which your evil genius could remove) and their lack of sociability with other octopus (again, a trait your genius could add in). Their stealth could be upgraded by having your scientist give them better (non-colorblind) eyes allowing the octopi to better see (and hence blend into) their environment, or he could upgrade their/cuttlefish's ability to hypnotize prey by giving them some really flashy bioluminescence that would absolutely stun humans on a giant massive charging octopus on land. They combine the stealth, chemical, tank, and intelligence advantages needed and I think that would make them unstoppable.
[Answer]
My first thought was also a dog-looking predator, exceptional intelligence (the level of intelligence up to your scenario), with a ruff around its neck that resembles a collar at a distance. I see that I'm not the first to have the idea of canines or canine-like predators. Make their bite poisonous, or so they can otherwise near-instantly kill, or disable their prey (optional), some sort of armor or damage resistance (limited regeneration?) is nice (but also optional), etc., etc.
Here is the innovation, no one seems to have realized that *Location* is more important than the predator itself: set them loose in Delhi or Hyderabad, India, the slums around Rio de Janeiro, the Kibera and Mahare areas of Nairobi in Kenya, Orangi Town, Karachi, Pakistan, Ciudad Neza, Mexico City, etc. There are literally BILLIONS of people that very few would miss, and none with any power to get something done, and some elements of the police, military, and governments would tacitly or even overtly, appreciate it.
I read a book called 'Planet Slum' I think, a long time ago, pretty horrific. Or watch some Indian movies. As an example, when the book was written (10+ years ago?) Rio had I think 7 million people living in the outlying slums. I mean 1 water spigot per 1000 people, and if you had a wood, sett metal lean-to you were high-styling it.
And that is for a modern-day scenario. Even setting it 50 years ago, would make it even more deadly, let alone 100s or thousands of years.
ChrisP
[Answer]
## A sadistic self-driving car
This is not really fauna, but it blends right into society where there are lots of vehicles. Plenty of people already die in hit-and-run incidents all the time. If some of them disappeared entirely, that wouldn't be too surprising.
If you try really hard to make it a "living" car (i.e. "fauna") the concept is less realistic. But if all you want is a nominal number of human deaths and *possibly* a way for the predator to derive some sustenance from the victims, this is totally feasible.
If you want to go further, you could make a predatory Uber that sometimes kills its passengers.
>
> After writing this, I remembered Dæmon by Daniel Suarez. So there is prior art. For the Uber, the best approximation is the Sherlock Holmes story with the hansom cab driver.
>
>
>
[Answer]
### Sharks or pterodactyls
To prey on humans your fauna needs:
* To sneak up on humans
* Take them away very quickly
* Consume out of reach of humans trying to avenge.
* Live in an area humans have difficulties accessing.
Sharks sneaking up and pulling swimmers below the waves - tick. Especially if you give them a super jump strong enough to pull fishermen off a jetty.
Pterodactyls snatching pedestrians in the suburbs and eating them in the mountaintops - tick. Especially if they glide in silently and abduct children on the way home from school.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LRMLJ.png)
Crocodiles are a close contender, they have the fast surprise pounce, but they don't go far enough away to eat - so they're often vulnerable to angry mobs avenging death.
[Answer]
A gigantic flatworm, malleable enough to squeeze through cracks and drains while still being big enough to classify as megafauna. Perhaps it enters its host and quickly eats it from the inside out, each host allowing it to reproduce, creating exponentially more of them while the human population continues to decrease. Flatworms are pretty much impervious to physical damage although the scientist should probably add to its durability so that it can survive things like extreme temperatures and radiation.
[Answer]
Simple: Don't make it too large. Otherwise, it'd be like eating ants that have weapons that can kill you, and vehicles that can easily outrun you. And humans aren't that nutritious to begin with. The human body contains 125-144 thousand calories, and there's Kleiber's Law to put into equation. If we assume an activity level that can be estimated via Kleiber's Law with a human, then we can find the mass of the creature, assuming that it needs 1 human/day.
134500=2000\*(m/70)^.75
67.25=(m/70)^.75
m/70=273.5
m=19.1 tonnes
That's surprisingly small, but it easily exceeds the weight needed. If we assume that it's an apex predator that's got 3 tiers below it, then we can estimate how much territory just one needs. It would need 563 MJ/day, which equates to a power of 6.51 kW. As the solar flux is about 1360 W/m^2 for Earth, and each rung on the food chain is only 10% efficient, one individual would need 4.79\*10^4 m^2 of territory to survive. Louisiana has an area of 134265000000 m^2, so it would take 2.8 million of those beasts to claim Louisiana as their territory. But that's not all. We need a way to actually pose a threat to humans. Maybe a bite strength similar to the extinct Dunkelosteus, which had the highest bite strength of any creature. And that bite came down hard and fast.
One of those buck-toothed sea monsters could chew up a person like taffy (if they didn't go extinct millions of years before humans evolved). Maybe, an suit of natural armour similar to the Ankylosaur, which had bulletproof hide. Being bulletproof would really do it favours, and that monster could bite right through weaker walls and doors, before chewing up its victim. And maybe it's capable of a high-speed sprint, so you can't drive away. And give them the intelligence to work together, like blocking off all exits from a building while coming in to devour its prey. Or if you think you're safe hiding in a skyscraper, maybe those armoured beasts could keep charging into its foundations until it crumbles, then they'd evacuate themselves out of harm's way, and dig through the rubble.
Oh, and maybe they could spit out a sticky substance that prevents prey from moving, for them to store food away for later. And developed noses so you can't hide from them. And make them good swimmers, as well as having a fast reproduction time, so a depleted population will replenish, and they have the possibility of spreading globally, and take relatively short periods of time to adapt to new climates.
[Answer]
Nine tailed saber toothed foxes would be the best choice. The rest would be obviously spotted and killed. Wham. But nine-tailed saber toothed foxes can turn into people, so no one would suspect it. So our evil genius#637 breeds twelve million nine-tailed, man-eating saber-toothed foxes and unleash them on Earth, starting in China because China is the most populated country. No one would suspect them because they can turn into people. Evil genius#637 will train these foxes positively so this way they will only listen to him. Now all Evil Genius#637 has to do is sit back and watch his foxes run amok.
[Answer]
A Parasite plant.
A plant could release spores into the air that humans then breathe in. Once inside, the plant uses that human for resource gathering for a period of time before it uses the host to reproduce making a new plant when humans bury the dead, you could make the spores invisible to modern science.
This is where it could really bad, the host keeps their intelligence but becomes paranoid and becomes violent, dragging victims closer to the plant. If they are someone with authority then I could see whole church groups get infected. If the plant is underground then it could stretch for miles, infect food, water supplies, use whole graveyards to make even more.
[Answer]
## Would humans quickly exterminate man-eating predators?
Actually there have been megafauna which preyed on humans at least occasionally for hundreds of thousands of years.
Some of the species which once occasionally preyed on humans have become extinct over the millennia, and some not. And of the species which preyed on humans and became extinct, it is not always certain that humans were responsible for their extinction. And in cases where humans drove to extinction species which sometimes preyed on humans, it is not known if that occasional preying on humans was the main reason why humans caused their extinction.
Humans who settled in an area and destroyed the natural habitat to make it better for humans could have caused an ecological collapse which led to the extinction of the normal prey animals of large predator species, and thus eventually the extinction of the predators themselves, humans not being a good enough substitute for their natural prey.
There is little evidence of the causes which led to the extinction in prehistoric eras of predators which occasionally preyed on humans. Thus there is no proof that humans exterminated some of those species, nor any proof That the motive for human extermination of those species was to prevent them from occasionally preying on humans.
Of course early men only had spears, bows, and arrows to kill large predators which occasionally preyed on humans. In historic times, and especially in the modern era, humans have had a lot of deadly weapons to slaughter dangerous animals with.
But is it true that in modern times humans always react to occasional attacks on humans, and predation on humans, by exterminating those predators?
A few people are killed by American alligators every year, and some are eaten. Thus American alligators do occasionally prey on humans. And there was a time when American alligators were hunted almost to extinction and became endangered. But while some people hunted American alligators because they were potentially dangerous to humans, most hunters killed and skinned alligators for their hides, which make good leather.
But American alligators have been saved from extinction. Alligator farms were formed to raise alligators from eggs and kill and skin them when they reached the size which had the best skin. And American alligators were put on the endangered species list and it became illegal to hunt them. In recent decades the numbers of alligators have multiplied, and thus the frequency in which they attack, injure, or kill people has also multiplied.
And so far as I know there is no great public demand to exterminate American alligators to prevent them from ever killing any human again.
And in many poor parts of the world where weapons are not as easily available as in the rich USA, populations of people co exist with populations of other species of crocodilians, including some species which sometimes prey on humans. So I think that a few hundred people are killed every year by members of various crocodilian species around the world. And so far as I know the various occasionally man-eating species of crocodilians are not in imminent danger of being exterminated.
Among the megafauna which occasionally prey on humans, there are lions and tigers and bears, oh my, and leopards, and wolves.
And of course the numbers of those species of predators have drastically declined over the last few centuries as human populations expanded. And some of that population decline was due to humans hunting those predators because they occasionally preyed on humans, and some was due to humans hunting those predators because they often preyed on species that humans like to hunt, or preyed on domestic animals raised by humans. And a big part of the population decline of those predators was due to humans expanding their farming and grazing lands and destroying the natural habitats of those predators and their natural prey.
So it is certainly not correct that humans will immediately mobilize to exterminate any species which occasionally kills and eats humans, or that such eradication efforts are always quickly successful.
However, probably only a few hundred or a few thousand people are killed and eaten by predators each year. That isn't many considering that hundreds of millions of people live in close proximity to thousands or millions of predators which sometimes prey on humans. It is possible that is not enough slaughter to satisfy a mad scientist seeking to unleash predators upon humanity. If the mad scientist finds a way to make new and improved predators kill ten times or a hundred times as many people per year as they do now that might cause humans to fight back hard enough to exterminate those new man eaters in less than the decade specified in the original question.
That is the risk that a mad scientist seeking to unleash deadlier predators upon an unsuspecting world has to face, the risk that if predators started eating a larger number of humans, even a slightly larger number of humans, that increase might possibly enough to cause humans to make an all out effort to exterminate those "improved" man-eaters and do so in much less time than the mad scientist desires.
## Hungry, hungry hippo.
What kind of man-eaters should the mad scientists design?
How about hippos which are more carnivorous than present hippos, and which are genetically altered to find human flesh tastier than any other meat?
At the present time, hippos probably kill more people than any other large African animals, merely from aggressiveness, bad temper, and territoriality. Hippos are herbivores and don't usually eat meat. But members of many herbivorous species have been known to eat meat on rare occasions, and hippos have been reported to eat meat.
Hippos which had been genetically altered to be more omnivorous, eating mostly plants but eating more meat than present day hippos, and with an special attraction to human flesh, might be seeded among regular hippos and the increase in humans they killed might not be realized to be the result of mutated man-eating hippos until the required decade was over. Thus any human effort to exterminate the man-eating hippos might not even begin until they had already been preying on humans for over a decade.
## Man-eating elephants?
When I was a child I overheard something about a elephant that kept a human body or part of one in its mouth for a long time.
This could have been the circus elephant Rajah who kept a (detached) arm of his trainer Frank Fisher in his mouth for some time after killing Fisher in 1899.
Or this might have been the story about a European zoo elephant that allegedly killed and ate a woman who sneaked into its enclosure about the end of World War Two. The most authoritative version I could find indicated that she was killed "not just merely dead, but really most sincerely dead", if you get my meaning, but doesn't mention that any parts of her were eaten.
And there have been a few reports from India of rogue, man-killing, elephants seen with body parts of their victims in their mouths. This has been explained as the elephants holding limbs in their mouths as they pulled apart the bodies of their victims.
But in 2011 a elephant was killed which had killed 17 humans. According to the news stories, meat was found in her stomach, which was DNA tested to be human meat. Supposedly her rampage was the result of the death of her calf.
Elephants are very intelligent animals, perhaps as intelligent and emotionally complex as humans.
There is a story that when Emperor Caligula was killed in AD 41, his assassins cut off pieces of his flesh, and some ate those pieces. In 1343 the Count of Briene was deposed as ruler of Florence, Italy, by a mob which cut two of his followers to pieces and allegedly ate some of those pieces. Johann de Witt and his brother Cornelius were murdered by a Dutch mob in 1672, and their livers were allegedly eaten by the mob.
So if humans can sometimes become angry enough to eat pieces of their enemies, and if elephants possibly have intelligence and emotions as complex as humans, perhaps angry elephants might sometimes eat pieces of their enemies for the same reasons that angry humans might do so.
So if a mad scientist used genetic engineering to create slightly carnivorous elephants, and gave them an instinctive craving for some small part of the human body, and released them in the wild, the difference might not be noticed for a while. A number of people are killed in human-elephant conflicts over land, food, and water each year, and there are occasional elephants that become so angry at humans for various reasons that they hunt down and kill humans.
If the new man-eating elephants rip open human bodies to take small organs which they consider very tasty, but leave the rest of the bodies uneaten, people might interpret it as the usual mess that angry elephants can create while making certain that their victims are dead. Thus the existence of genetically-engineered man-eating elephants, instead of angry man-killing elephants, might not be realized and reacted to until the ten years are over.
The *Saturday Night Live* show used to have a gag about a land shark that would knock on people's doors, and say it was a delivery man or something, and if they opened the door would eat them.
I once read an urban legend - or more like a rural legend - from India or Nepal about a man-killing elephant that would sneak into villages at night and knock on doors, and kill anyone who opened the door. If that story is true it would be an example of an elephant being clever and lazy enough to do things the easiest way. Because most houses around the world are flimsy enough for an elephant to smash their way into if they want to go to the effort.
## Coeurls?
In "Black destroyer", by A.E. van Vogt, Coeurl was an alien being of human intelligence level who looked like a gigantic black cat with tentacles coming out of his shoulders. Coeurl had the power to control electromagnetic vibrations with his body, thus making him the equivalent of a very powerful comic book superhero or supervillain. Coeurl needed phosphorus to survive, and would kill any living creature to get the phosphorus from the body.
In "Black destroyer", Coeurl was a survivor of a civilized species of his planet whose civilization had fallen. But "Black Destroyer" was included in A.E. van Vogt's novel *The Voyage of the Space Beagle* in a rewritten form, in which it was speculated that Coeurl might be an artificial lifeform created by the advanced biological science of the natives of the planet. The creation of a race of coeurls could backfire in obvious ways, leading to the extermination of the species which created them.
So if a mad scientist could create a species with powers like coeurls and release them on contemporary Earth, they might be invulnerable to Earth weapons and might exterminate all humans. So writing a story with a mad scientist creating and releasing predators with human intelligence and coeurl powers upon an unsuspecting world would justify the predators surviving and preying on humans for ten years and more.
However, such a story would have two problems:
* making the coeurl's control of electromagnetic vibrations seem plausible or even possible
* making the mad scientist's disregard for his own safety seem plausible.
If a writer can make those two aspects seem plausible, then he or she could use genetically engineered large predators with human intelligence and coeurl powers in his story.
## Salt Vampires?
In the *Star Trek* episode "The Man Trap" the planet M-113 has ruins of an extinct civilized species. It also has a "Salt Vampire" or "M-113 creature". Salt vampires need salt and can suck salt out of the bodies of other beings, usually or always killing their victims. They also use a form of telepathy to appear like harmless or even desirable persons to their intended victims, and perhaps immobilize them with some form of hypnotic paralysis in the final stage of the approach to the victim.
The plot of "The Man Trap" has some similarity to "Black Destroyer". So I have always wondered whether the Salt Vampires were the people of the planet who had built the ruins before their civilization collapsed, as Coeurl was in "Black Destroyer", or if they were an artificial species created by the advanced biological science of the native civilization, as Coeurl might have been in *The Voyage of the Space Beagle*. Or maybe the Salf Vampires were created by the advanced genetic engineering of another civilization on another planet, and then beamed down to the surface of M-113 to exterminate the M-113 natives and then die out eventually from lack of salt.
So using predators with Salt Vampire powers as the predators in a story has the same problems as using predators with coeurl powers. The problem of making plausible their salt sucking abilities, and their telepathic illusion powers, and also the problem of making the mad scientist's lack of self preservation seem plausible. If a writer has answers to those problems predators with Salt Vampire powers might make good predators for such a story.
[Answer]
Okay first, this wouldn't work due to the amount of firepower we humans have, so in order to work, we need to make an environment conducive to supporting a population of deadly megafauna. Here is how that can work maybe:
**Step 1: Pull a Dougal Dixxon**: You know how like we humans are smart? Yeah, let's rob that from ourselves, let's make some hand-wavy nanomachine virus that reorganizes the human genome structure to turn us into post-human monstrosities of Dougal Dixxons After Man. Basically what happens is the grey matter in your brain expands making your brain bigger. If the brain is too large, neural signals have to travel farther to relay messages throughout the brain, making our thought processes slower, soon this would reduce us to nothing more than bipedal animals that grunt and hiss. We'd lose our ability to plan and communicate and simply rely on our instincts. Couple this with the ability to make the nano-virus change the human body to adapt to certain climates better and you have a new species of weird post-human monsters. You can have ghouls with bow-legged feet that bite people and turn them into ghouls. You can have tundra ogres or real-life mermaids, or some hive mind ghoul swarm. Make the virus highly contagious and immune to vaccines and release the virus in as many places as possible to spread it as quickly as possible. These aren't like your regular zombies, these are posthumans, they can adapt, survive, eat, and procreate via normal sex to produce more ghoulish offspring, they don't necessarily have to bite people. They are social pack-hunting animals adapted to killing large prey or humans (maybe they are still intelligent enough to trick people by wearing clothes or ambushing them by mimicking baby cries)
**Step 2: Now this is where the fun begins**: This is the part where you are free to release whatever havoc you want to release upon the human race. This part is up to you, you can make a whole ecosystem of dinosaurs that claim the urban spaces once occupied by humans which would make it extremely difficult to reclaim, But honestly, I think the best solution is just to mutate regular vermin, giant mutated rats, monitor lizards, and especially bugs. Maybe reprogram your posthumans to adapt to these new deadly vermin megafauna and learn to avoid them or intimidate them. Some good inspirations for giant vermin would be games like Rain World or webcomics like HIVE. HIVE is basically about climate change releasing so much CO2 into the air that it mutates wasps and turns them into bear-sized wasps that build giant paper nests on skyscrapers. They are like the Starship Trooper Bugs fused with Xenomorphs. They can create disturbing human zombies infected by wasp larvae or straight-up bug centaurs. Rain World takes place on an alien planet once ruled by a dominant ancient civilization that offed itself thousands of years ago, now the animals they saw as vermin and pests roam free in their ancient ruins, you got cybernetic vultures, neon lizards, intelligent minks, and primates capable of carrying tools around, flying centipedes and squid bats, pole plants and monstrous kelp that will eat you. Also Love Death and Monsters does a similar thing where an apocalypse causes cold-blooded animals such as invertebrates, reptiles, fish, and amphibians to grow to the sizes of cars and kill and eat everybody.
**Conclusion**: Ta-DAH now you got a post-apocalyptic world crawling with sub-human mutants and giant vermin. You can handwave this all because maybe the mad scientist villain really likes monster movies and was wronged in the past or something and wants to get back at humanity by bringing the monsters they feared to life. Make him like an immortal cyberlich with nanomachines and clones that can regenerate himself but give him one big weakness or something.
**Bonus Tip**: If it seems too unrealistic as to how all these creatures would coexist, make drones or robots that monitor the ecosystem. Something AKIN to horizon zero dawn or breath of the wild with robot animals or guardian mechas that are self-sustaining and autonomous able to collect data on its ecosystem and making sure the wildlife doesn't get too out of control.
] |
[Question]
[
A being known as Dea is the creator of all things in the mortal world. He created human beings as living batteries in order to fuel him and give him power. Dea feeds off of human worship, which it uses to get stronger. It is the source of all religions in the world, both monothiestic, polytheistic, or otherwise. He gains power anytime humans pay homage to any god, irrespective of creed or type. Christianity, islam, hinduism, etc, all fall under his domain.
As time goes on, the world becomes more populated. The amount of worship from humans increase and makes this god stronger. Eventually, Dea conducts a rapture like event which ends the world. During this rapture, he consumes the souls of human beings, both living and dead. All humans ascend to this being and become a part of it, existing everywhere and nowhere at once. The world resets itself and Dea re - seeds the earth with life. This process occurs every few thousand years.
If this god depends on the worship of human beings, why would he continously conduct these end of world scenarios??
[Answer]
## SaaS(Souls as a Service)
Dea is actually an Agile Soulware Developer. However unlike the developers we're familiar with, he has complete control of all aspects of the ecosystem. The raptures are basically his way of deprecating+recalling older products, and the next wave of life on Earth is the next release wave in his Internet of Things.
Every time he re-seeds life on Earth, he introduces new 'features', new 'meatware architectures', new 'Etherealnet protocols', etc. How big the changes are would be entirely up to the developer's whim; we'd never know, since none of the previous iteration of humans would be around to compare with. Who(other than Dea) knows what the changes actually are either? Siamese twins with cerebral palsy? That's not a bug, that's a feature.
In the meantime, Dea has asserted that telepathic humans who can rotate their heads 360 degrees will survive and flourish against giant armoured fire-breathing cockroaches in the Jira-ssic Age. What will happen? Maybe the return will be *exceptional*
[Answer]
**Harvest.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/9oam2.jpg)
[source](https://www.ou.org/holidays/shabbat/melacha-3-reaping/)
>
> To every thing there is a season,
> and a time to every purpose under
> the heaven:
> A time to be born, a time to die;
> a time to plant, and a
> time to pluck up that which is planted;
> A time to kill, and a time to
> heal;
> a time to break down, and a time to build up;
> A time to weep,
> and a time to laugh;
> a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
>
>
>
[Ecclesiastes 3:1-4](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/ecclesiastes-31-8)
[Answer]
# Knowledge and Competition
When the humans become part of Dea, he gains all of their knowledge. This means that he knows what drives them to worship him, so he can remake the world in a way that makes them more eager to worship him next time around. He draws power from multiple worlds across the universe/parallel dimensions and can survive without the worship of one of such worlds.
Dea needs this small amount of additional power because he competes with other beings in an eternal game to control the rest and their spheres of worship in the multiverse. Only a certain amount of these spheres can exist because power gained through worship increases with the intelligence of the beings worshiping. If two worlds of these intelligent beings are too close to each other, they will figure out about each other, and therefore might be able to figure out the presence of the Creators when another world gets destroyed, and stop worshiping the creator. The beings could also become Creators by gathering the worship of another world that are less technologically advanced than themselves and take spheres of worship for themselves, making all other Creators have a worse chance of winning.
By gaining the small amount of power, Dea can spark religions in the sphere of influence of other Creators, and potentially gain control of more worlds. Dea can also defend his world better from hostile religions, as power can also destroy the roots of religions, which is why Dea favors having multiple religions around the world instead of just one where people are more pressured into worship. This is that religions are constantly being born, and often do not last for very long. Destroying the world also lets him get rid of any foreign religions.
An optional add-on is that Dea could work for a more powerful Creator (let's call him Mil) and is using his power to experiment to get more worship in time. While Dea does this, Mil supplies him with the power to stay alive and remake the world. As Dea is newly ascended, he only had control of two worlds (the world that worshiped him, and his homeworld), but he lost one in a fight with another Creator and lost one of these worlds. He banded with Mil to ensure that he does not lose another world, and therefore become a race that is experimented on by the Creator that took that last world over (and probably destroyed, as a race that knows not to worship will not worship as much.) Mil promised Dea protection and a world after a sufficient amount of results as long as Dea continues to experiment with this new world and advance the economic theory that both he and Mil possess (and others that are working for Mil.)
Another option is that empires of Creators would form as the Creators let races ascend, but still worshiping their original Creator, allowing the more powerful creator to be able to focus on areas besides research and to gain knowledge of worship theory. Dea is either forced into this contract by Mil, his Creator, or Dea is an older Creator that is making another sub-Creator (humans) as a platform for more research. The second option would mean that there is (intelligent) life on another planet in this solar system that humans will soon be guided to find and convert.
In this system, the Creators might experience a rapture of a greater power, and that power would experience one of a greater power, until you got to the scale of the universe, in the case that the rapture would be the big bang, meaning that the universe would be cyclic.
[Answer]
**To give the worshippers a reason to worship.**
If the people know they were created by Dea, well and good. But what kind of a god is Dea, and why would the people consider him worthy of worship? Out of fear of punishment? In hope of a reward? In expectation of a Christian-esque loving relationship?
If the cycle of raptures is a system that elevates people to a higher level of existence, or makes them happy, or somehow "completes" them, then the cycle of raptures would help motivate the people to worship the god who is depending on their worship.
(Alternatively, if Dea is not in fact a loving god and the "rapture" does no good to the people involved, the scheme still works as long as Dea can convince the people it's good for them)
[Answer]
There may be several different reasons why a deity would re-seed a community with life. Let's go through a few:
# Possible reason 1: Resistance
Oh, your God builds a resistance to worship from a specific group and/or species. The more faith he collects from that specific group/species, the less effect the faith has on him, and this reduction in effect is PERMANENT. That means that once the resistance gets to a certain point, he must destroy that group/species, and start over with a new one!
# Possible reason 2: Wavering Faith
You start a religion. However, the further that religion evolves and changes, the less faith is actually going to you! When did these creatures start praying to a mountain? Do they think that it's your ancestral home? Over time, the religion wanders from your core tenet of "give me faith, you peasants!" to different tenets which don't actually have anything to do with you. And the only way to really reinforce the religion is to start over.
# Possible reason 3: Technological progress
The population increases and so does your faith! However, as population increases, technological innovation has to increase as well, to feed the people! Your worshippers get more and more technologically advanced, and sooner or later, you know they're going to become advanced enough to be able to measure you in some way. Whether that way is to measure what you are, or where you live, or maybe finding a way to harvest faith themselves. At that point you might as well start over, technology is never good for religions.
# Possible reason 4: Faith poisoning
All things are good, in moderation. Like Alcohol, Faith is AMAZING, but too much can poison your system, inducing sickness in your body, soul, and/or mind. Keeping a well regulated intake of faith is ESSENTIAL for a healthy lifestyle. (This one however, would be better for raptures which only take a percentage of creatures, that way you can keep the intake at a certain rate)
# Possible reason 5: Cuisine
Honestly, maybe the god just has a feast every 100000 years from the year he was born, and it just happens to include sentients as the main dish. The population is unrelated.
[Answer]
Dea is practicing the equivalent of slash-and-burn agriculture. It is not the most effective way, but that what he does. It is in His (or is it Her) nature to do so, an action that is neither moral or immoral. It simply is.
Another take is that Dea is just one infant from an infinitely more powerful group of beings (infinitely more powerful from our POV.)
His way of feeding off our souls is just a plaything - we are a play garden that he tends and trash and resets in a timeline that appears infinite from where we stand.
Either way, I would not attach a sense of purpose to Dea's actions. He is omniscient and omnipotent and yet mechanical. His actions are a function of his nature. He does what he does because he is who (or rather what) he is, in a Lovecraftian way.
[Answer]
**Dea is molting.** Dea doesn't actually have a limitless capacity for absorbing worship. He needs to alter himself slightly in order to increase this maximum, and in order to do that he requires a great deal of power all at once.
The temporary decrease in worship is unfortunate, but it will only take a few millenia to rebuild, especially since he can make some improvements on humanity with the next seed round.
[Answer]
>
> “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God “for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing”.
>
> “But,” says Man, “the Babel Fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own argument you don’t. QED.”
>
> “Oh, dear”, says God, “I hadn’t thought of that”, and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
>
>
>
That was Adams' take on God. Dea's response is a hair different:
>
> “It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own argument you don’t. QED.”
>
> “You cheeky little monkey,” says Dea, “Okay, have it your way,” and hits the "recall" button.
>
>
>
There's a million reasons why Dea might instigate these raptures. I'm personally a fan of the answer being "we asked for it!"
---
There is, however, some prior art, based on your description of Dea. It sounds very similar in nature to that of Hindu deity [Brahma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahma). Brahma is seen as a creator of sorts. Now I know the Hindu faith is a widely varied one, so I can't speak for all Hindu on their world myth, but I love Alan Watt's rendition of it because his is so incredibly literary, so it is the version I will channel here, as I remember it.
He describes Brahma as a god with many faces, one in front, one for each living creature in back. He describes Brahma as the dream and the dreamer, all in one. All of reality is him, and he's dreaming about all of reality. He dreams up a play so extraordinary that somewhere along the line he gets lost in the beauty of it all and forgets that he is dreaming. Thus we all forget that we are all Brahma, dreaming. We all forget that we have the face of Brahma on the backs of our heads, being dreampt wherever we go. We all become so invested in our characters that they become us and we become them.
In the Hindu faith, the world goes through four phases, each one less beautiful than the last, and the last is the Kali Yuga. In this phase, the demon Kali emerges and reigns. And from this, great chaos is sown, until Vishnu, incarnated as Kalki, his 10th and final avatar, comes forth to do great battle with Kali. And as Kali and Vishnu battles, Shiva dances. Shiva dances the Tandava, the dance of the cycle of life. This Tandava is the source of all creation, preservation, and dissolution that is life. It is the cycle of life itself, at some level. Now this dance comes in two forms. For most of the course of creation, Shiva dances the Anada Tandava, a joyful dance celebrating life itself. But in this dark hour, as Shiva watches his friends fall, he becomes more and more distraught. He dances the other part of the dance: The Rudra Tandava. The pounding drums of his dance would shake you to your very core as the reality of the dance comes forth. He dances this with such ferocity that the ground begins to crack under his feat. The world begins to break as the dance goes on. Fires erupt from below, consuming all those under him. It consumes Kali, Kalki, all of their combat, and the whole sum of everything. All consumed in the final dance that is the Rudra Tandava.
And thus, when he stops, he is alone, on the stage. No other gods survive. No mortal survives. Even the reality of the dream does not survive. This finds him center stage, peering out at the house of seats in the theater we've been performing in.
And to draw the scene closed, he takes a bow, turns, and moves to exit the stage. And as we see him turn away, there's the face of Brahma on the back of his head. Just as it had always been. Just as it has always been for all of us, our whole lives.
And thusly, the cycle begins again.
[Answer]
# It is not Dea triggering the rapture.
The rapture is actually a different deity who triggers the rapture. It's like a bully destroying an ant farm, or an invading army exterminating a helpless village, or a gamer in a multiplayer match wiping out an opponent's base. Dea actually doesn't want this to happen, but he has no choice but to watch helplessly as his creation is destroyed by someone more powerful than him.
And just like in the real world, there are many reasons why this can happen. Maybe Dea is fighting a war with another deity. Maybe this is a high stakes competition. Maybe his neighbor had enough and snapped. There are many ways to go with this, but now instead of needing to find a reason why someone would destroy something he owns, you just need a reason why someone might destroy one of your things.
[Answer]
**Exhaustion**
He might get more power from more believers and the number of those living believers increases with time. This does not change. Because he feeds from literally any religion all that matters is that the number of people with some sort of belief is there. So technology or whatever doesn't stifle or kill the religion. If that was happening he could send a "divine prophet" or do something to spark the creation of a religion of some kind. Even cults would count (although the actual cult leader may or may not be an actual contributor if they are just conning people). Regardless of what those religions are there is a steady increase. the problem here is the **percentage** of the population worshiping and the complexity of the universe itself.
There are two problems that occur. One is that human souls are increasing in number and because Dea is literally everything or essentially controlling-not-controlling everything in some weird way it means that each person takes effort to make exist. It has to compute certain things. Same with every particle in the universe. Unfortunately the way Dea likes to do things while energy might be a fixed value the complexity of the system is not. Entropy destroys order and therefore this means that any universe with life and death that is somewhat interesting to Dea is finite by nature. So that also limits Dea but regardless of that consider this thought experiment.
Suppose I give you a string of letters to memorize that is 104 letters long. Now I could give you the alphabet repeated exactly 4 times. I could also give you the sequence "ab" repeated 57 times.
Now what if I gave you the following string:
efihrfierugfberuigbedigbdkvndfivbawsuidhnedfvbisdhdogsrgfhargioharioghargihdghsrgorhguipsdrgbbfvnodgbgbv
It is exactly 104 characters. Trust me I counted. Can you memorize that and remember it? This is what Dea has to do for the entire universe. When things are orderly (every atom is perfectly symmetric, every region has uniform mixing of particles) it doesn't need to memorize or remember every single atom or particle. It only needs to know the pattern. It can effectively compress the data representing the universe to a manageable quantity. However, when entropy increases more and more patterns stop existing. The universe becomes harder and harder to remember. To compute. This means that a rapture is necessary not because of technology or humans but because the universe itself has become unmanageable. There are of course other benefits some in other answers as this is multi-faceted but I believe this is the primary reason why Dea cannot continue to sustain the universe. It just happens to be that most systems reach that point of needing a reset after several hundred thousand years.
---
I had more thoughts after posting....
The other possibility here is that Dea is a 4th dimensional being and to it time doesn't exist as time in the way it is for us. It is the same for Dea's worship feeding. Every believer believes in a thing, whether it be eternal torment for 100% of the population including themselves because of some weird reason or being ascended to become like a deity. Dea does not feed just off of worship exactly. It feeds off of the fulfillment of the promise of belief. So if someone believes they will usurp Dea and become the new Dea, Dea can reject that belief entirely and it won't feed off of it. Hence the raptures don't occur because of Dea but rather because many believers of religions all believe in a rapture and it is what Dea is fulfilling. It is worth noting that the belief has to be religious but one could play with this even further. It could also be the fulfillment of scientific beliefs as well. However, in 5th dimensional time (what Dea considers to be time for it) it has conducted many such experiments. It has tried fulfilling any desire whatsoever but chaos emerged. It essentially became a wish granting genie with a few basic restrictions attempting to please everyone at once. It also bent science to people's desires. It may have even done a mix. Perhaps the belief of magic wasn't because magic existed in the current universe but is somehow an fragment of some knowledge of a previous universe being passed down by Dea. Perhaps Dea tried to convey stories about those universes and the cycle it does to try and install what it has found to be successful and enjoying: the fulfillment of religious beliefs about the afterlife. Of course, these beliefs only involve the believer. Dea might condemn someone if a very large number of people believe otherwise but this is a rare circumstance and only reserved for those so evil that granting their belief would be an insult to literally all of the other believers (e.g. Hitler would be a prime example of this).
[Answer]
Dea comes closer to being omniscient the more power it gets.
Problem is omniscience is very boring, there are no more surprises in life which makes Dea bored after a while (possibly a century or more) so in a desperate attempt to no longer be quite so omniscient Dea clears out the faithful. Setting the stage for a new cycle as Dea equally abhors feeling powerless
[Answer]
**The System has become corrupted**
Occasionally, the system goes off and becomes economically irrecoverable. The easiest thing to do is Ctrl-Alt-Del and reboot everything. Hopefully, you have made a useful backup.
Still, it is a lot of work, waiting 10 million years, and the answer turns out to be '42'.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dKvNF.jpg)
[Answer]
A few explanations I can think of;
**Fun:** You build something into something magnificent and then it becomes boring, so what do you do? You destroy it on a spectacular way. A meteorite makes a big boom, a natural disaster is immensely satisfying to watch, world war is a great betting game. In short humans are both needed for him to have power and a source of amusement. Basically Dea plays Sim city on global scale.
**Rapid influx needed:** Perhaps there's a need for him to quickly get a lot of human souls. Perhaps some other entity challenges Dea every so often and he needs an immense power boost to defeat said entity.
**Blunt force only:** Maybe he doesn't want to create these massive disasters, but they're simply the only tool he can or is allowed to use to fix somekind of problem. Maybe the problem is solved by wiping out a single city block, but he can't create an earthquake for example that can only level that specific city block.
[Answer]
If a rapture event is an all-at-once event that transfigures humans into aspects of a divine being, releasing energy in the process, some possible reasons are:
* Greed, impatience, and maliciousness. Nobody said a god had to be a good being. It just likes seeing the little mortals squirm for a while, and enjoys the periodic influx of energy.
* Needs to feed. This implies that the god's energy level gets depleted over time. This is why humans raise cattle and plant vegetables.
* Has some celestial task to perform that requires increasing energy reserves each time. I.e., expand the scope of the universe, or keep the universe from collapsing back down to nothing.
[Answer]
Maybe those souls aren’t going to heaven like the priests say? Maybe it’s just God’s once in a millennia feeding time where he feasts on the devoted souls of the faithful (sinners cause indigestion)
[Answer]
This strikes me as a very organic phenomena. Thus it could be some kind of divine parallel to something a living thing might do like sleep during the "night".
More over, Dea might go into hibernation or chrysalis when they don't need to eat. The rapture is like one final meal to fuel the long sleep when prayers (of anyone some how left behind) go unconsumed and the universe becomes unpredictable without Dea's will to guide it.
[Answer]
**Euphoria**
Dea gains sustenance from worship, but rapture gets him high AF.
Every few millennia he goes on a bender, gets loaded off all them fresh living souls, and spurts out a new world order in a creative frenzy, and then spends a while sleeping it off until he's ready to begin preparations for the next big party.
You can also spin this with a less comedic tone with a bit more gravitas, but I think the undercurrent of "mostly, this all powerful being that we owe our existence to uses us in about the same way a hollywood producer uses nose candy" is a pretty rich basis for a variety of stories.
[Answer]
**Limited resources**
The earth can only maintain an X amount of people, by killing humans off he is thinning out the herd so to ensure a long time for us to exist and worship him, if we get to plentiful we will destroy the planet via global warming and resource overuse and once that's gone we go with it, which means no one would be left around to keep worshiping him.
[Answer]
You need some motivation besides "power" and "battery" -
To explain the motivation you need to worldbuild some context for which in the god exists. Why does a god outside of the mortal world need to do anything, really?
This might include something that actually puts the god firmly in the real mortal world as a concrete being from the viewpoint of the reader but not from the viewpoint of the people living in the world.
One could be keeping the species living on the planet quarantined on a planet, while still having some motivation to keep the species alive.
For example, maybe your god feels the need to breed a perfect specimen to become another god for another planet and he can only do big resets when things start to go wrong or right. In this scenario you wouldn't need to have a backstory for where it came from, because it doesn't even know - or maybe the god is of some alien species that is supposed to do that(as a natural trait) but got orphaned for unknown reason at a young age and doesn't really know how the process is supposed to go so keeps experimenting and resetting.
Or he is a caretaker, but also has outside orders to keep the species limited to the one planet they are on - "wait here with the humans and wait for rescue ship" - only the rescue ship never comes and it's been millions of years already, but the omnipotent intelligence is hellbent to stay here and wait for the rescue ship and while at it keep any of the souls to be taken care of from leaving the planet as well(so they can be taken to the "mothership"), thus making a purge necessary every now and then to keep them from attaining technology to leave the planet(or galaxy) - that the souls merge in the god is just a way to keep them waiting for the rescue ship, perpetually. That he put them on the planet to wait and breed could be because the original stasis fields could have kept them alive only for so long. This would provide a motivation and means also for people to try to break the cycle, as the way you tell it there would be no way for the people to even attempt to break the cycle.
Now, you don't need to even tell all of it to your audience but it would help to decide such stuff beforehand so you can keep some consistency depending on your story that takes place - if the people are trying to keep the purge from happening (like in some final fantasy type of a story, quite a few japanese rpg's have some ancient being or computer try to end the world for whatever reason).
Of course, a lot of it would depend on which direction you were intending to take your story, I'm just guessing that it would have to do with one or more of these purges and perhaps some people trying to stop one from happening or with some cultists trying to accelerate it.
If you firmly intend to keep the god as a god outside of the mortal realm, you really don't have too many options besides inventing more things to exist in the same level as it exists on, to provide a motivation why the god needs power and tie that mechanism to the purges.
[Answer]
Culling
<https://www.collinsdictionary.com/de/worterbuch/englisch/culling>
Or, in simple terms: Population control.
Over time the population develops weak, ill or otherwise undesireable individuals. The regular "rapture" cleans the gene-pool.
[Answer]
# It's like Cell Division
Once Dea's gathered enough power it Ends all things and redistributes its power over an increased number of planets / planes of existence / dimensions.
This expanded pasture then slowly refills to contain more worshippers than the previous cycle could have contained.
The different places (planets, planes, whatever) can either be the same Dea stretched to cover all or separate instances of the same Dea, slowly seeding out across infinity.
] |
[Question]
[
I am trying to develop a story where it is based on Earth around the 42nd century and can't figure out if the continents would have made any noticeable/notable shifts. Any help is appreciated.
Edit: I see a lot of you mentioning climate change and I was thinking that we'd be able to meditate it/reverse some of it. So the coast lines would be a little closer to home but not drastically.
[Answer]
Over 5,000 years, there is hardly a place anywhere on earth that a before and after picture would not show considerable, very noticeable differences. In fact, 500 years would be sufficient for visible changes to occur over most of the land masses.
But would this person notice? How good is the memory of your person? Frogs can freeze because they do not notice a very subtle lowering of the temperature. Can this person accurately remember before-after recollections of the landscape?
And could you pin-point the changes to continental drift? Perhaps, if you were an archeologist or geologist.
Weathering, erosions, earthquakes, natural disasters, forest fires, flooding, sinkholes, earth rebound, they all contribute to changes in the landscape. Without scientific knowledge, measurement, and research, can you attribute the cause? Sometimes, but not always, and not always noticeable in the short term. Places in Denmark and Venice are sinking, very observably over time because when once you had to go up steps, you now have to go down steps. In places like [Toronto, Ontario](https://www.ontariobeneathourfeet.com/rising-land-isostatic-rebound) where the ground is rising in rebound to the massive ice cover, the changes occur subtly in such things as broken water mains over long periods of time, and engineers need to calculate the effects when designing mega-story buildings that they hope will last centuries. But when the land is rising relatively equally, it is almost impossible to detect with the eye.
So yes the changes could be noticeable over 5,000 years, with sufficient 'memory' of before-and-after, almost anywhere on earth, but allocating the changes to 'continental drift' would be a task for experts using expert measurements.
**EDIT Addendum**
As Greenland loses more and more snow load due to melting and climate change, the entire [Greenland plate is rising](http://sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160923123732.htm). Over 5,000 years, the changes in plate positions due to climate change could be very significant, and in places very noticeable. Site lines, for instance, could change. Landscape features in the distance could either become visible or could sink below the revised horizon, but this would be localized.
**EDIT Addendum 2**
As the [Five Gorges hydroelectric](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/chinas-three-gorges-dam-really-will-slow-the-earths-rotation-2010-6) project in China filled up, **GPS algorithms heeded to be updated** with the new information. The Earth's gravity and rotation was altered that significantly. Although not due to plate tectonics, it highlights the difficulty in attributing the cause of shifting landscape consequences to any particular factor without extensive measurements and scientific investigation. Had engineers not done the calculations, **the GPS system would have produced inaccuracies that were significant and very noticeable**. That is, even subtle changes in the Earth's shape can be significantly amplified by our level of 'precision technology' and thus become very noticeable even to casual observers who are dependent on that technology. They might not know why, or how everything moved, but they would know that 'today' did not match 5,000 year old GPS data and GPS maps. This is a 'memory' thing. Do they have access to 5,000 year old data?
Over a period of 5,000 years, all coordinates and mapping dependent on GPS navigation would have to be significantly updated to maintain the precision of GPS. Putting up a fence 120 meters from where it should be due to continental drift because GPS information and mapping had not been updated for 5,000 years would be very noticeable, and most surveying today is GPS based. "Dang, I am sure that cliff used to be over there on my GPS navigation!!!!!"
[Answer]
Continental plates move at a rate of few cm per year. That makes few meter per century, and in 5000 years, that is 50 centuries, would account for something like 50-100 meters.
Even for close continents like Europe and Africa that would be less than 0.1% difference.
Not enough to be noticeable with just human senses, I guess, especially for distances which we cannot cover in a single sight.
With sensitive instruments it would be noticeable, instead. Just having a cable laid across the two continents (a telephone cable, for example) would make noticeable that there has been a shift (assuming that the cable survives 5000 years).
[Answer]
While continental drift may be *reasonably* "unnoticeable" as per L.Dutch's answer, **natural erosion processes** won't be.
There are known settlements that existed in the last 2000 years that are now lost to the sea due to erosion. As in the cliff face is further inland, and the cliff settlement isn't buried but actually fallen and lost into the sea!
Another visual example are the light-houses and beach houses that are considered "national treasures" built on the sea front having to be relocated to avoid falling into the ever encroaching sea! They are only 200 to 300 years old. (Just google "relocating lighthouses" and several documentaries on the process will pop up!)
[Answer]
**Depends where you live**
The following picture of Birling Gap, not far from where I live, shows a row of houses. When they were built, they were a long way from the cliff edge. What you see now is only half of the houses - the rest have fallen into the sea.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CnZYJ.jpg)
You can see the original setup in the following picture. The red circle shows the house that is currently nearest the edge.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DbN2G.jpg)
**How long did this take?**
This has all happened within less than 120 years. [Birling gap before and after](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2599560/Before-pictures-Birling-Gap-shows-Britains-coastline-vanishing-sea-erosion.html)
**What is the reason?**
The mainland of Britan is disappearing under the continent of Europe. If you are lucky enough to live on the West coast of Britain, there is a good chance your property will get bigger as time goes by. If you live on the East coast, don't stay away from home too long!
---
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TDGnc.png)
[Answer]
**Yes, no and many many times maybe.**
The human brain is marvelous, adaptive, forgets not relevant details, learns new things, shifts perspective on all things it has ever learned - and holds onto unconscious biases, tweaks others into a new perspective. [Distorts perceptual details in memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception#Effects_on_perception) according to wishes, desire, regrets and societal pressures - not to mention changes in biological functioning.
It might notice changes, it might notice changes even when they haven't happened over such scales as to be relevant to you story - it might notice and then forget. Over and over again.
Tough question considering the vagaries of the human brain.
[Answer]
**Yes you absolutely would notice**
You wouldn't notice that America was getting further from Africa by eye - you couldn't see that far anyway.
However continents are grinding away at each other and internally all the time. If you lived here, a hundred years would be enough to see a big change. A thousand and the road would have to be re-shaped.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rgHXj.png)
>
> California’s Hayward Fault is considered one of the most dangerous
> seismological zones in the United States ... Technically speaking, the
> Hayward is a right-lateral strike-slip fault. This means that it shows
> its everyday action in the form of aseismic creep, the slow, steady
> sliding of land along the fault’s margin. The symptoms of this
> tectonic origami are visible across the region—in cracked asphalt,
> off-kilter curbstones, and leaning walls.
> <https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/creep-on-the-hayward-fault>
>
>
>
[Answer]
**Here is a mathematical answer**
>
> The North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, for example, are
> separated by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The two continents are moving
> away from each other at the rate of about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) per
> year.
> <https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/continental-drift/>
>
>
>
5,000 x 2.5 cm = 125 metres
No-one apart from a professional would detect that difference. However plates move laterally to one other along fault lines. If you started living directly across the road from your friend with a fault line in between, you would definitely have a longer walk to their house after 5,000 years.
[Answer]
In certain locations, you could. Thingvellir valley in Iceland is the rift between the North American and European plates.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/y17uG.jpg)
This valley widens about 2.5cm a year. Over 5000 years, with constant movement, it would widen 125 m, certainly a noticeable difference.
The valley has widened by 8.5 m since Iceland was settled 1150 years ago. This widening is somewhat less than the estimate above, but it is not trivial.
TL;DR: Yes, if you live in the right location. But it won't change travel time.
Source: <https://icelandmag.is/article/9-essential-things-know-about-thingvellir-national-park>
[Answer]
Most answers assume think about continents moving horizontally.
However, there have been significant *vertical* movements of parts of the continents during the last 5,000 years in parts of the world due to climate change, in particular the land in Scandinavia and Canada rising after the latest ice age. (Continents move *slowly*.)
Even if just a few mm/year it still changes the coast-lines noticeable and this rebound is expected to continue 10,000 years into the future (even in the unlikely case that the climate doesn't change). <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound>
[Answer]
Once in a while you get blatantly obvious movement. In 1906, the San Andreas fault ruptured and experienced multiple feet of displacement in a single movement. From [this NPR story](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5347831)
>
> At the Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County, California, a short trail takes visitors to this displaced fence, showing an 18-foot gap, one of the largest offsets found after the 1906 quake.
>
>
>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/B7qJN.jpg)
Another place in antiquity where people knew *something* had changed in a single instance was in the Pacific northwest (near modern Seattle). There's the [Juan de Fuca plate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Fuca_Plate) that is a subduction fault. In subduction earthquakes, the land is bent by the tectonic stress of the plate being pushed beneath. When that fault ruptures, the land itself sinks (and it produces catastrophic tsunamis). In this case, [a lot of coastline disappeared overnight](https://earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/historic-historique/events/17000126-en.php) (along with likely hundreds of Native Americans killed in the quake and tsunami).
>
> The earthquake also left unmistakeable signatures in the geological record as the outer coastal regions subsided and drowned coastal marshlands and forests that were subsequently covered with younger sediments.
>
>
>
[Answer]
New Zealand and Taiwan both have grid datums that move fast with time, as the land masses drift with tectonic plates, so that GPS positions taken 10 years ago are now inaccurate, unless you have an accurate model of the movements.
If you had a GPS still working in 5000 years in New Zealand in some areas, you would be going to a position maybe 200 yards/metres from the original position. A cache of buried material would not be where you surveyed it for instance...
It is a factor in geophysical surveys taken over time.
As others say, with big earthquakes, things move metres in a big jump, the 2011 Japanese earthquake moved 30 to 40 metres in one go out at sea.
[Answer]
# To the unaided Human eye: no
Over 5000 years even the fastest-moving bits would only shift by 500m or less.
The apparent shift of coastlines, widening of canyons, deepening/shallowing of waterways due to erosion will be much, much more visible and will likely swamp out any evidence of actual continental movement.
Not to mention how the sealevel bounces up and down over that sort of timespan.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jniECm.png)
# But to instruments, we notice it every day!
The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake in Japan (the one that triggered those nasty Tsunami's)
[moved the land by some 5 meter eastward](https://www.livescience.com/47898-tohoku-earthquake-mantle-flow-model.html). Which required GPS maps of the region to be updated!
It also sped up the Earth's rotation a bit, making days shorter by some 1.8 microseconds, which also affects GPS everywhere. Such changes are routinely updated into navigation databases.
[Answer]
For the reasons others have listed, yes it is noticeable, easily measurable. Yes modern people would be aware of it due to modern measuring capability and record keeping, as they are aware of it now.
But, an immortal human that can remember things thousands of years ago as well as we remember things in a normal life span would be unlikely to attribute this to continental drift in the course of 5000 years unless they were specifically interested in detailed cartography. People of normal life spans wouldn't be much assistance, unless they had similar advancements to the ones we use to measure or track it today.
To someone not paying a great deal of attention, the houses falling into the ocean, sidewalks slipping, cracks widening, etc would be attributed to their immediate, flashier causes like erosion, volcanic activity, and earthquakes. Even if they traveled across the country for 5000 years and noticed that the cliff was receding slowly, that some cities have had to realign their streets 50 times in their life, and that massive cracks open in the earth and get wider, that the mountains get taller, it's unlikely that someone with no compelling reason to sit down and draw a map of which direction things are creeping would figure out the underlying cause of the seemingly unrelated ground-movement events.
] |
[Question]
[
I am assuming that present day navies would hunt a sea monster using techniques similar to ASW (anti-submarine warfare). According to my research most ASW weapons like torpedoes, mines and missiles rely mostly on acoustic (sonar/radar) targeting, and possibly MAD (magnetic anomaly detection) or visual sighting.
Now, what if the sea monster in question has an ability to negate sonar detection via absorption of sonar waves (for a short period of time) and jamming by flooding the sonar scopes with false positive readings (deploying swarms of little copies of itself), thereby making real detection only possible via a visual aspect—a very dangerous way of fighting it. MAD would also be useless since it has no metal bodyparts.
What kind of tech/strategy would navies use to combat such a creature?
[Answer]
## Frame Challenge from a Submariner
It doesn't need to have magic anti-sonar powers.
Three reasons:
1. Sonar is pretty limited in range. The ocean is large,[citation needed] and each platform can only usefully employ sonar in a limited area. Think tens of miles for very noisy targets, and on the order of a mile for quiet targets.
2. Sea Monsters aren't ships - Passive ASW tools are designed to find the rotating machinery on other ships (screws, engines, pumps, fans, whatever). A sea monster isn't going to have those parts.
3. Sea Monsters still aren't ships - Active ASW is designed to bounce off the metal hulls of ships... which sea monsters don't have. A rounded, blubbery hide is going to absorb / scatter active sonar fairly well.
So existing tools are going to struggle to find your sea monster. Assuming that the monster can navigate the ocean depths without using its own active sonar, it's going to be very quiet - like don't 'see' it until its three hundred yards away and closing quiet.
And if you use active to try to find it, you may extend your detection range to a few thousand yards, but you've also told the monster where you are....
This is, in fact, fairly similar to hunting submarines. The quietest submarines out there are very, very, very hard to locate. A whale (or sea monster) that's not singing or echo-locating is probably about as quiet as the quietest submarine.
Which is pretty scary.
## And as for Actually Hunting it
Transients. Unusual noises associated with its operation.
What does it sound like when the monster kills and eats some other sea critter. (it's got to eat, right?)
Does it come to the surface to breath like a whale?
Does it use its own sonar to navigate?
Does it talk to other sea monsters to coordinate attacks or mate?
All of these could be fairly loud, and could help localize the monster.
Once you've got a rough idea of where it is, you vector in other assets (read submarines) and they do the whole "cat and mouse" thing. Active sonar only comes into play in the final seconds, if at all.
[Answer]
It would be a lot like fighting submarines in WW1 and WW2. Sonar wasn't really that good; destroyers usually would only notice a submarine after it torpedoed something they were protecting. Sonar would be used to pinpoint the enemy's position, not detect it in the first place.
So ships would start sailing in convoys with armed escorts. Presumably this sea monster attacks with some kind of melee weapon, meaning it must be at or near the surface and adjacent to its victim; completely vulnerable to naval gunfire. If it survives that, the escorts can drag big, barbed nets around. Modern destroyers are pretty fast, the Arleigh Burke class can go at least 35mph, probably faster too as its true top speed is classified. Can a sea monster do 35mph or more for hours on end without tiring? Because it'll have to if it wants to escape a squadron of Arleigh Burkes.
If the sea monster has a ranged attack, it's trickier but the nets could still work. Submarines in WW2 were often sunk and they could launch torpedoes from a few kilometers away, so distance is not a panacea.
Worst comes to worst, booby trap some tasty-looking ships. It bites the wrong one, and boom, the nuclear bomb inside goes off. Lets see anything biological survive being adjacent to a [W88](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W88) when it detonates.
[Answer]
A perfectly absorbing object to a sonar beam would look like a perfectly black object to visual observation: it would still stand out on the background because it would cover it, especially when observed from above.
It's just the tracking software that needs to be properly configured.
And don't forget that underwater explosions deal damage even at a distance, thanks to the properties of liquids. Therefore once a ship is attacked it can simply deploy depth bombs and at least scare away the monster.
If the ship is not alone it's possible to use group strategies, too.
[Answer]
It sounds exactly like a modern submarine, which is also designed to absorb or deflect sonar, can launch decoys and noisemakers and otherwise use (mainly classified) gear to prevent itself being spotted.
So, ASW as usual.
However, if I was being creative I'd use the US Navy's Marine Mammal Program which uses dolphins and sea lions for anti-mine warfare (and, allegedly, other purposes) or its Russian equivalent, and do some quick retraining to teach them to track down sea monsters.[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0VArk.jpg)
[Answer]
# Don't shoot a warhead at it. Trick it into eating the warhead
This thing is a sea monster. What does it want? Why is it attacking ships? Either because it sees ships as prey, or as competition for its prey, or as threats to itself or its kind. If our navy is hunting it at all, it's because it's attacking our shipping.
So unless it's shooting Godzilla breath or some other kind of death from afar, some part of this creature is coming into close contact with ships. Figure out what's likely to provoke an attack, load a ship to its maximum weight full of explosives and bait it into attacking.
This might not kill it (depending on how big it is, or if it's using tentacles from far away, or something) but it will definitely not like that much very much. If you get lucky, you kill it. If not, it will get a lot more reluctant to attack ships.
[Answer]
* (Active) [Sonar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonar#Active_sonar) has nothing to do with radar. It emits sound waves which get reflected by the target. If the target absorbs the sound waves, there would be a detectable "hole in the ocean."
* (Passive) [Hydrophones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonar#Passive_sonar) listen to the sound made by the target. The monster flips a fin, water flows, and there is sound. The monster filters water through gills, water flows, and there is sound.
* (Active) [Ladar or Lidar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar#Military) emits light waves which get reflected by the target. They're considered for various uses which involve spectroscopy, while ASW uses are more experimental.
One potential benefit of ladar are very exact distance measurements, which can detect the "[bow wave](https://ontheradar.csis.org/issue-briefs/non-acoustic-submarine-detection/)" of the monster from above the sea as well as the monster directly.
* Those waves also cause small sea animals to glow, which can be [detected](https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a084124.pdf).
So: The monster isn't as stealthy as you think it is, unless you give it more fantastic capabilities.
[Answer]
>
> According to my research most ASW weapons like torpedoes, mines and missiles rely mostly on acoustic (sonar/radar) targeting, and possibly MAD (magnetic anomaly detection) or visual sighting.
>
>
>
Well, radar is not acoustic, it's electromagnetic. But in any case, as you point out, there are many different detection mechanisms and so they would try them all until one of them happens to work.
I suppose you could declare that the monster is invisible to every single detection method. If it is at least visible, and goes to shallow water, you could find it with spotter planes. Then simply drop depth charges in the area and see if a bunch red stuff floats up... Assuming the blood and guts aren't also invisible.
If it is even invisible to sight, okay, no big deal. Even if it's acoustically invisible, things that move fast in water lead to [cavitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavitation) which is sound generated by water itself. Not much the monster can do to hide that, unless it has a way of moving fast *without* cavitating. If it does, no sane navy would destroy it under any circumstances - it would be worth its weight in gold ;-).
The one possible way around cavitation is decoys as you mention... But then this is just the one monster, and kind of an important target. Can't they just shoot torpedoes or depth charges at every decoy? How many decoys does it make? At some point you can triangulate the monster's true position simply from statistical analysis of the decoy locations.
In any case, locating the monster is super easy. You just tag it with some kind of transmitter. When it's detected in an area, drop a bunch steaks with an active transponder (sound, radio, anything) inside, so the monster swallows them. Or if it only likes boats, send some unmanned drone ships with the same. If it doesn't like the drones, well, no pain no gain - just mandate transponders on all civilian ships (or maybe you can simply home your torpedos/missiles/whatever on the existing transmitters the civvie boats have) so that no matter what it eats, it will swallow one.
Granted, if you can make it swallow things, why not just feed it a bomb? I suppose you want to capture it intact, for the stealth sub technology... In any case, if feeding it transmitters doesn't work for some reason (magically digests everything?) then you can station riflemen on every ship or convoy that shoot a transmitting dart when they spot the monster. This would work even if it's invisible - you'll see the ship being eaten, so just shoot at the air around it.
Depending on the size, speed and habits of the monster you could deploy large nets. These nets could have some kind of transmitter which would once again enable detection. Not very eco-friendly -- but it sounds like there's only the one monster, and a comparatively small piece of ocean you would disturb.
Lastly, there is always the overwhelming firepower route. You could have patrols by planes, helicopters and fast ships in the area it is spotted, even escort civvie convoys with warships. As soon as the monster attacks, immediately fire cannons, cruise missiles and the like. If it's moving around too much, you can just target the ship being eaten, depending on how long that takes. You can also just launch several speculative ones in directions it's likely to go next. Since there's only the one monster, being efficient with munitions is presumably not a concern. And of course, there's always the literal nuclear option. Again, not very nice to the fishies, but they used to do it all the time for testing, and it's really just the one time. What's one more underwater nuke?
But the more I think about it, the more I wonder, why *would* the military want to destroy it? If it's giving them so much trouble, then it's extremely valuable for the development of submarine technology. I imagine they would try to capture it alive by luring it into some cove, or at least kill it without destroying the carcass. While this delicate process is underway, they could deploy many unmanned decoy ships to minimize the danger to civilians.
[Answer]
**Harpoon it with a locator beacon.**
There could be several kinds of locator beacon. A simple one just emits a sonar ping every so often, which can be picked up with a passive sonar detector (and would thus be immune to the monster's sonar absorbtion). Another kind would be like an EPIRB emergency locator beacon. They only work on the surface, but whenever the monster is on the surface, it can be tracked worldwide.
A combination would make the monster fairly easy to track.
[Answer]
**Quantitative DNA analysis of seawater.**
[A Splash of River Water Now Reveals the DNA of All Its Creatures](https://e360.yale.edu/features/edna-rivers-fish-bull-trout-forest-service)
>
> Environmental DNA, or eDNA, is at the center of a brand new kind of
> fish and wildlife biology, and it is such a powerful tool that it’s
> transforming the field. eDNA was first used to detect invasive
> bullfrogs in France a decade ago. It was used in North America for the
> first time in 2009 and 2010 to detect invasive Asian carp in and
> around the Great Lakes. Since then, its use has grown exponentially,
> primarily in marine and freshwater environments.
>
>
> “You can’t manage a species if you don’t know where it is — even
> 80-pound Asian carp, because you can’t see them underwater,” said
> Cornell University biologist David Lodge, who participated in the
> Asian carp study. “So eDNA is particularly powerful in aquatic
> systems.”
>
>
>
Things shed DNA into the environment. You can tell what is in an aquatic environment by quantitatively analyzing the water for DNA. If this can be done quickly, you could lay out the large area your creature might be and sample water around the perimeter, then narrow your sample area down. When you get a hit you assume the hit is from the outside edge of where the creature has been lately and quickly bring your sample circle down in size. As you sample closer to where the creature has been lately, the concentration of its DNA in the water will increase.
Once you have the area narrowed down to a manageable area of several square kilometers, comb through that area visually using submarine drones with water-penetrating [imaging lasers](https://krakenrobotics.com/products/seavision/).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ctU6Q.jpg)
[Answer]
Just a comment or three.
If you ping an area of ocean, you get an echo for any object in that direction. If there is a sea monster there, you expect (or hope for) an echo. If you do not get one (because the monster does not reflect)… that is not analogous to a big black thing; it is the same as the [other] empty areas. The only case in which you would “see a hole” is if you are near a large “object” such as the ocean floor. (In that case, the monster would have to return the “ping!” when it felt the rest of the return signal. Like a lyrebird. A big, grey, bad-tempered lyrebird with huuge fangs… .)
In the case of human submarine vs ditto… one must oneself remain quiet. Depending on the details, that might well not apply against a sea monster. If it is hunting you, you need to try to be invisible in whatever way is applicable… or be more dangerous. On the plus side, it makes it easier to find. If it is not hunting you, then you can use whatever you can — really loud sonar, lasers, probes, trained dolphins, nuclear weapons, fields of sunken sonar buoys, food, lights, methane traps, biological warefare, herding… .
I am guessing that the scenario that the OP has in mind is hunting an animal that is minding its own business. In that case, the biggest problem (nod to codeMonkey) is how big the ocean is… or, putting it another way… how hard it is to see any useful distance underwater. You would be well advised to start with studying its behaviour. You might also like to work on seeing underwater, but that is why they invented sonar in the first place.
[Answer]
There's an entire host of sensor technologies out there that can detect things in water.
Sonar works by sending sound waves thru water to impact and resonate back to whatever it interacts with. So unless a creature is "Sound Proof" that's unlikely. Sonar doesn't look for the object it listens to the sound made as it travels. Passive sonar listens to sounds made by the object moving thru water, Active sonar emits it's own sounds and hopes for a feedback.
[Answer]
Track its path by looking for abnormal genetic material or biochemical markers that don't match any known sea creature in the area. Once you find something abnormal, it's safe to assume that it's a sea monster.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm writing a story that involves two superpowers at war. The main character has made a base on a large, unoccupied island that is easily accessible by both superpowers. Would there be a good reason that both of these superpowers have not claimed any part of this island even with the futuristic equipment they have at their disposal and the main character can?
EDIT: It's hard to pick a correct answer out of this since I need to take bits and pieces from all of them so if your answer didn't get put as the 'correct' one don't worry! All of the answers were considered and helped me make my conclusion.
[Answer]
The claiming of the land could shift the balance between the two powers and precipitate conflict. What you're more likely to see is people claim the land, and then not do anything about it. Other reasons could include it being positioned in an area that has no strategic use or being too small for practical purposes of military installations. It could also have to do with resource allocation, in other words this site isn't worth the resources that would need to be expended to turn it into a useful area. Let some other small party claim it, and then when they've put in the effort to extract the resources of the island, step in and either take it or demand a tax. Which is likely when the two superpowers will start stepping on each others toes.
[Answer]
Let's take a look on the real world:
Not connected to superpowers, but a place with a comparable status does exist in Africa, between Egypt and Sudan: Bir Tawil. The reason is, that both countries do claim a larger area near it but not that small one. They cannot change the claimed border line to include the unclaimed area, without updating the claim on the area claimed by both, because they cannot have two claims for one border at the same time. But for border claims it is important how old they are. If they did want to claim that area, they had to drop their >100 year claim on the bigger area. At least that's how I understood it. Maybe that, or a similar legal complication is the reason for your case? For details <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil>
A different anormality involving superpowers I can think of, is a spot that existed in the separated city of Berlin. The place was not really unclaimed, but when the Wall was built, for practical reasons a bit of the eastern part that reached into the western part was kept outside of the Wall. At some point some NATO critic protesters from the west put up a protest camp there. Neither the allied troops nor Berlin authorities could do anything against them, since they were on foreign land. Removing them would have been an act against the sovereignty of the DDR. Eastern authorities hat no way of reaching them, because their own wall kept them out (no idea if they minded them being there). Was just a really small spot, but maybe you could build something out of that idea? I do not have a link for that, sadly.
[Answer]
**Religious taboo** could keep the countries from claiming it... something like Vatican City staying independent from Italy. If your island had some sort of cultural history common to both nations, they might leave it as neutral so that their fights never have a reason to happen on that island. This would also be useful as it gives the two nations **neutral ground** to meet on to discuss treaties, should the need arise.
[Answer]
A non aggression treaty between the superpowers and or the Island leaders.
The Island is a source of a useful service or product which the Island leader can provide/produce but neither of the Superpowers can without establishing a dangerous monopoly which would cause the other to take measures.
Technology makes the proximity redundant in terms of position, ie,. it wouldn't impede a strike force even if it was fortified and it's not a useful defensive site due to whatever factors being absent that would make it one. Perhaps too small, too flat etc,. a single bomb would send it to the bottom of the sea in pieces.
Or something as simple as it's in formalised International waters outside either Superpowers borders and any encroachment would be in breach of recognised international law.
Or it's more useful as a sovereign state than not. Many Pacific Islands are in that position right now, they are extremely valuable to bigger countries because as sovereign nations they get a vote in international bodies that formulate international laws and resolve disputes.
[Answer]
# Missile range.
The two superpowers are some distance apart, and can't attack each other directly with missiles.
This can be because they simply don't have missiles reaching that far or that the anti-missile defenses are good enough to handle the long-range missiles.
This island lies smack in the middle, at half the distance from either side. It does not have missile defenses.
Both sides would *like* to have a base there, which means they *don't* want the opponent to have a base there. Both sides know that if either side were to establish a base there, the other side would bomb them to pieces with missiles before they could establish proper defenses.
While this leaves the island nicely unoccupied, it also poses a problem for your hero. If either side discovers their base, they will bomb it. Stay hidden!
[Answer]
>
> I'm writing a story that involves two superpowers at war.
> The main character has made a base on a large, unoccupied island that is easily accessible by both superpowers.
>
>
>
*Easily accessible by both superpowers*
You've already answered your question. If both superpowers can easily access the island, then either superpower can easily destroy any installation that the other creates. Therefore, assuming that neither side is ruled by complete idiots, nobody is going to waste the resources to try and build anything on this island, since it'll just get blown up or blockaded or otherwise rendered useless.
Now, this alone doesn't 100% explain why they wouldn't both at least *claim* the island. Belligerent states do tend to lay claim to everything. So, we have to take into consideration reputation and assume that neither side currently claims it. Given these two things, if either side decided to lay claim to the island, then the other superpower could prevent the construction of any installations and then just waltz in for a photo shoot every month or so. "Ooooh, look at the mighty superpower. Can't even defend one lousy island from our 'elite' photographers, ooooh." It works better if you use really wimpy-looking photographers and include their picture in the press release. **It's just too easy for one superpower to punish any move by the other on this island.**
The main character isn't affected by this, since (I assume) he/she/it is not at war with either superpower. As to why the superpowers ignore him/her/it, do elephants go out of their way to squash caterpillars?
[Answer]
The island in question has no important natural resources and even more important, it has no positive or even negative strategic value. Negative strategic value means that it is simply not defensible (too many easy landings or bomber routes, protecting it would cost much too money in relation to its value), the other superpower can easily launch a devastating sneak attack, destroying infrastructure and support without breaking a sweat.
Superpowers in those situations often display an unspoken contract: "We both know that this island is not worth the effort; don't claim it and we don't attack it".
[Answer]
What about Antarctica? The antarctic treaty of 1961 now has around 53 parties, and sets Antarctica as a zone of scientific preserve, where you can't bring your military but your scientists are perfectly okay to visit. [The treaty is available here](https://www.nsf.gov/geo/plr/antarct/anttrty.jsp). Could be an interesting take on this - the main character could be a scientist or just be hanging out there, but the countries can't take the land because they can't bring their military, they can just lay claims to it.
[Answer]
In addition to other ideas - the island is just off shore of a third superpower. While it may have many strategic uses any of the two superpowers claiming the island would directly threaten the third one, possibly involving it in the war.
Alternatively the island has too valuable resources to risk disruption. Think Sweden during WWII, which wasn't invaded because of their steel.
[Answer]
* *High maintenance costs.*
It could be that there is some massive geographically induced maintenance cost for occupying the territory. Perhaps there would be major topsoil run-off if not for some expensive anti-runoff project to keep it intact. The maintenance costs may make it unreasonable to place a military base on that location. Taxpayers may not be okay with spending that much money to place a military base there. But it might be possible for a very high revenue capitalist enterprise to occupy that location, i.e. the world's largest casino or sports stadium.
* *Location is impossible to defend.*
I'm of the understanding that high ground is easy to defend and low ground is hard to defend. Perhaps it is a location that is way below sea level, and is very easy to capture, but impossible to then defend. No one wants to capture it, because once you occupy it, it's easy for enemies to just roll grenades, cannonballs, chemicals, etc. downhill into the area. The only party crazy enough to occupy it is a neutral party with no military ties.
* *Combination of both of the above.*
[Answer]
The book `Foundation` by Isaac Asimov sets up a similar situation, but with four powers around the militarily weak planet of Terminus. The titular Foundation on Terminus cooperates with all of its neighbors, sharing technology and even educating their people. So, if anyone around it attacks them, the rest will band together to maintain their access to Terminus.
If you add a third superpower (or even a number of weaker countries willing to work together), then the same idea could work for you. And if one of the warring superpowers gets too much of an upper hand, they could threaten the balance of power that allows this island to remain independent.
[Answer]
Bog Island
98% of the surface is bog, rendering it, although nicely ecologically diverse, virtually strategically useless for either superpower to use on a large enough scale to invest time and resources.
Your main character, however, is a lone resourceful and patient person who happened to realize the excellent potential of this environment for a one-man base camp. He knows all the correct places easiest to get around, and over time was able to locate enough solid ground and make camp near a here-to-fore unknown, deep-interior, well-hidden potable spring. The very wild flora and fluid soil consistency of the bog effectively hides paths made by only a single traveler, who makes a good effort not to unduly disturb any of the areas on the outer perimeter of the island through careful route planning.
This environment allows for readily available game and edible plants for survival, and an excellent opportunity to defend camp if needed. If an unwanted visitor doesn't know the right places to travel, they will spend crucial time backtracking for another attempt at a hopefully more stable-ground path. That time allows ample opportunity for the main character to utilize whatever fun methods you'd like to create to lure or divert the visitor away from camp and eventually encouraged back the way they came--off the island.
[Answer]
Are you familiar with "And to My Nephew Albert I Leave the Island What I Won off Fatty Hagan in a Poker Game" [1969] by David Forrest. Very highly recommended. The story is set at the height of the cold war, the island is owned by the eponymous Albert who rents half the island to the crew of a Russian spy trawler who crashed there, and the other half to the US army sent to watch them. Albert and his girlfriend commute between the two sides.
The island itself has little strategic value but both sides are loathe to give it up while the other is there. Neither superpower escalates the nervous stand-off while they wait and believe that some sort of strategic or political advantage may be gained by their side holding, at least in part, the island, which each assumes must have some "value" by the fact that the other side has chosen to occupy it. The joke being those actually living on the island are abiding quite harmoniously and all notions of a border or ideological differences are forgotten.
[Answer]
The island could have some sort of unique flora or fauna. The two powers, even though they are at war, can at least agree that the island should be set aside as a nature preserve.
[Answer]
Various aspects which you can combine in various ways.
The people who live on that island wish to remain independent. They'll put up strong resistance. They'll lose, but victory will be costly for the invader, and the resources consumed would be better spent on directly confronting the enemy. Note that invading an island is *always* expensive. You need a fleet of amphibious vehicles. You need to plan for many more casualties than the defenders, because invaders are exposed on beaches and defenders are well dug in. You need to supply your invaders.
The people who live on the island will immediately ally themselves with the other superpower, and given such military support they could be worse than simply a distraction. So neither superpower wants to cause the island's population to fight for the other side (with support). Better they stay neutral.
Any military presence on that island would be perceived as a direct military threat by a significant third neutral power, so whichever superpower takes the island may tip the military balance against itself, by bringing the third power into the conflict on the other side, or merely by finding that the third power imposes export or financial sanctions.
There are no resources on the island worth the cost of invading it. Include under resources, location itself. In other words, the island might be an "unsinkable aircraft carrier", but its in a completely useless location from this perspective.
There is known to be an endemic parasite on the island, to which the indigenous islanders have a degree of resistance born of long suffering and evolution. It's infectious. Think, maybe, malaria, but capable of spreading via bodily contact rather than an insect vector. Anyway, a very good reason not to go there without supplies of a hard-to-manufacture, expensive, and not entirely reliable prophylactic drug.
The island is protected by alternating weather systems. The weather will turn against either invading superpower six months later, making its supply route hard and the other side's attack route easier.
(SF answer with acknowledgement to the late Iain M Banks) The island looks to be a prize worth taking. Except that it is also known from history, that the last five civilisations which attacked it did not prosper in the long term. Circumstantially, the island appears to have something of the nature of a local deity or force of nature protecting it. So, are we feeling lucky?
[Answer]
**The island is believed to be covered in land-mines.**
There is an actual island near Argentina that is actually covered in land-mines (or so I'm told) and the only inhabitants are penguins who are too light to set them off (or perhaps the island is pristine and the penguins are laughing at us all.) No one disputes this island, which was once war-torn iirc.
**But it really isn't.**
Now, your island is actually unmarred by land-mines or similar problems, but the main character discovers this by accident, perhaps by being shipwrecked on the island, which by all accounts should have set off a massive chain reaction of explosives. Knowing that the island isn't mined/haunted/smelly/covered-in-grues is what allows the main character to reside there.
**But that belief won't last forever.**
Everyone else just thinks the main character is both insanely lucky and just insane to continue living there, but that belief will fade with time as it is too improbable that the character hasn't blown him/herself to smithereens, leaving the character vulnerable to the two powers unless he/she can form a new lie...
[Answer]
I suggest you watch the recent BBC drama Taboo <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3647998/>. The premise of this show is almost identical to yours, the 2 powers are the US & Britain in 1814. The central character has claims to an island called Nootka Sound, he eventually succeeds in claiming the island for himself by playing the powers off against each other (amongst other methods). It may give you some ideas.
Another line of thought worth considering, if your story is set in the future, is the prospect of personal/corporate military strength surpassing nation states due to advanced AI/robotics. If an individual or corporation 'cracks' true Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) it is reckoned there would be an exponential technology advance.
[Answer]
## The existing occupants are cray
The civilization there is [one of the last non-contacted tribes on earth](https://www.reddit.com/r/polandball/comments/64d1qd/trespassers_will_be_shot/), isolated and uncorrupted by the outside world. This is by mutual agreement on all sides, although *their opinion* can only be discerned by the hail of arrows which meets every boat or aircraft. No diplomacy with this bunch, and an invasion of Texas would be less bloody. Nearby tribes who were contacted and integrated, went through pretty much the end of their society and their veritable enslavement, and the social values of all powers do not permit this anymore. So it has been the long practice of all the powers to just leave them alone.
And there is no particular value to be had there. Keep in mind all the powers already have coverage in this area with portable islands, i.e. ships.
Or for that matter it could be a Hunger Games/District 13 type situation where the occupants, though isolated, are capable of defending themselves from a modern force.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs [details or clarity](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Add details and clarify the problem by [editing this post](/posts/184281/edit).
Closed 3 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/184281/edit)
Humans have blood based on iron, thus our blood is red.
Some aquatic life has copper based blood, thus their blood is blue.
If we were gold based, what colour would our blood be, and why?
What would the pros & cons be, if any?
[Answer]
Frame challenge: Gold isn't reactive enough to react with oxygen (or most any common gas really) so that blood can carry be a transport for it. The reason our blood is iron-based is because iron is really good with reacting with oxygen (i.e. rust). The blood of other animals is blue and is copper-based for similar reasons. That's a big con to gold-based blood. ..it won't do what blood is supposed to do.
Since it is so non-reactive, I assume the blood, having no complex biological molecule to incorporate it, would just be gold coloured. Another con is that gold is rare, so it will be difficult to produce the blood. If you get a cut, you'll want to drink your own blood to keep that precious gold in your system. Or drink someone else's.
Apparently, there is about 4g of iron in a human body (not all of it is in blood though). So suppose it was best case where you could actually directly eat ore to minimize how much material you would have to consume to obtain the metal. If you were to replace 4g of iron with the same mass in gold you would need to eat at least half a ton of high grade gold ore to get that. Low grade ore would be 4 tons. But since gold is a lot denser than iron, it's probably more likely you would need similar number of atoms, not weight (don't really have a better number to go by since no gold blood exists), so you would have to eat about double the amount of ore I just mentioned. And if you can't eat actual gold ore ...well...you need to eat a LOT of plants of dirt or plants, or something else.
EDIT: It has been pointed out that gold particles mixed in glass produces tones of red.
[Answer]
[Gold III Oxide](https://www.samaterials.com/gold/1999-gold-iii-oxide-powder.html) is describe as being "brown or brownish-black powder at room temperature" though the pictures I can find look red or orange. If you had a gold based hemaglobin (auru-globin), you might expect it to be black or orange or red. That would follow the pattern of
* orange-red iron rust => dark red blood
* green-blue copper oxide => bright blue blood
But really, since it's a fictional chemical, it could have any color. Chemical compounds including a metal don't always have to follow a pattern.
DKNguyen pretty much has you covered on the pros and cons. The non-reactivity is a super strong point against the believably of gold serving this purpose.
P.S.
If you're open to suggestions, lead has a bright yellow oxide. Yellow blood would be cool, plus it would be interesting in the basic life on a planet were low-level toxic to humans on a fundamental level (all known compounds of lead being more or less dangerous to most earth life)
[Answer]
Most compounds of gold (Au) bound to a [porphyrin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyrin) recorded in the [CCDC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Crystallographic_Data_Centre) database are red, followed by orange and brown, as shown in the table:
```
SHORT IDENTIFIER COLOR FORMULA CHEMICAL NAME REFERENCE URL JOURNAL AUTHORS
GAFTAI Red C8 N4 Pt1 S4 2-,2(C44 H28 Au1 N4 1+) bis(Dithiomaleonitrilo-S,S')-platinum(ii) bis(tetraphenylporphyrinato-gold(iii)) Not informed Mem.Fac.Sci.Kyushu U.,Ser.C Zhung Jin Zhong; Y.Nishida; H.Okawa; S.Kida
GUTVAT Red C68 H44 Au1 N4 1+,Cl1 1-,C3 H7 N1 O1 (5,10,15,20-tetrakis(Biphenyl-4-yl)porphyrinato)-gold(iii) chloride dimethylformamide solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/chem.200902741 Chem.-Eur.J. R.W.-Y.Sun; C.K.-L.Li; Dik-Lung Ma; J.J.Yan; Chun-Nam Lok; Chung-Hang Leung; Nianyong Zhu; Chi-Ming Che
GUTVEX Red C44 H24 Au1 F4 N4 1+,Au1 Cl2 1- (5,10,15,20-tetrakis(4-Fluorophenyl)porphyrinato)-gold(iii) dichloro-gold(i) http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/chem.200902741 Chem.-Eur.J. R.W.-Y.Sun; C.K.-L.Li; Dik-Lung Ma; J.J.Yan; Chun-Nam Lok; Chung-Hang Leung; Nianyong Zhu; Chi-Ming Che
KOLWOA Red C38 H9 Au1 F15 N4 1+,Cl1 1-,C1 H2 Cl2 (5,10,15-tris(pentafluorophenyl)porphyrinato)-gold(iii) chloride dichloromethane solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asia.201900422 Chem.Asian J. H.Tanaka; Y.Haketa; N.Yasuda; H.Maeda
KOLWUG Red C44 H8 Au1 F20 N4 1+,4(C1 H1 Cl3),Cl1 1- [5,10,15,20-tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)porphyrinato]-gold(iii) chloride chloroform solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asia.201900422 Chem.Asian J. H.Tanaka; Y.Haketa; N.Yasuda; H.Maeda
KOLXAN Red C44 H8 Au1 F20 N4 1+,0.61(C2 H4 Cl2),B1 F4 1- [5,10,15,20-tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)porphyrinato]-gold(iii) tetrafluoroborate 1,2-dichloroethane solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asia.201900422 Chem.Asian J. H.Tanaka; Y.Haketa; N.Yasuda; H.Maeda
KOLXER Red C32 H10 Au1 F10 N4 1+,0.5(C2 H4 Cl2),F6 P1 1- [5,15-bis(pentafluorophenyl)porphyrinato]-gold(iii) hexafluorophosphate 1,2-dichloroethane solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asia.201900422 Chem.Asian J. H.Tanaka; Y.Haketa; N.Yasuda; H.Maeda
KOLXIV Red C38 H9 Au1 F15 N4 1+,F6 P1 1-,1.46(C1 H2 Cl2) [5,10,15-tris(pentafluorophenyl)porphyrinato]-gold(iii) hexafluorophosphate dichloromethane solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asia.201900422 Chem.Asian J. H.Tanaka; Y.Haketa; N.Yasuda; H.Maeda
KOLXUH Red C44 H8 Au1 F20 N4 1+,C10 N5 1- [5,10,15,20-tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)porphyrinato]-gold(iii) pentacyanocyclopentadienide http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asia.201900422 Chem.Asian J. H.Tanaka; Y.Haketa; N.Yasuda; H.Maeda
ROBTOU Red C44 H28 Au1 N4 1+,C1 H1 Cl3,Cl1 1- (5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphyrinato)-gold chloride chloroform solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2019.03.027 iScience Y.Haketa; Yuya Bando; Y.Sasano; H.Tanaka; N.Yasuda; I.Hisaki; H.Maeda
ROBTUA Red C44 H28 Au1 N4 1+,4(C1 H1 Cl3),Cl1 1- (5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphyrinato)-gold chloride chloroform solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2019.03.027 iScience Y.Haketa; Yuya Bando; Y.Sasano; H.Tanaka; N.Yasuda; I.Hisaki; H.Maeda
ROBVAI Red C44 H28 Au1 N4 1+,B1 F4 1-,C1 H2 Cl2 (5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphyrinato)-gold tetrafluoroborate dichloromethane solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2019.03.027 iScience Y.Haketa; Yuya Bando; Y.Sasano; H.Tanaka; N.Yasuda; I.Hisaki; H.Maeda
ROBVEM Red C44 H28 Au1 N4 1+,C2 H4 Cl2,F6 P1 1- (5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphyrinato)-gold hexafluorophosphate 1,2-dichloroethane solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2019.03.027 iScience Y.Haketa; Yuya Bando; Y.Sasano; H.Tanaka; N.Yasuda; I.Hisaki; H.Maeda
ROBVIQ Red C44 H28 Au1 N4 1+,C10 N5 1-,0.416(C2 H4 Cl2),C2 H3 N1,0.5(H2 O1) (5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphyrinato)-gold pentacyanocyclopentadienide acetonitrile 1,2-dichloroethane solvate hemihydrate http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2019.03.027 iScience Y.Haketa; Yuya Bando; Y.Sasano; H.Tanaka; N.Yasuda; I.Hisaki; H.Maeda
FUJFEV Orange C44 H28 Au1 N4 1+,Au1 Cl4 1- (5,10,15,20-Tetraphenylporphinato-N,N',N'',N''')-gold(iii) tetrachloro-gold(iii) http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S0108270187089789 Acta Crystallogr.,Sect.C:Cryst.Struct.Commun. A.M.Schacter; E.B.Fleischer; R.C.Haltiwanger
KOLXOB Orange C32 H10 Au1 F10 N4 1+,C10 N5 1-,C4 H8 O1 [5,15-bis(pentafluorophenyl)porphyrinato]-gold(iii) pentacyanocyclopentadienide tetrahydrofuran solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asia.201900422 Chem.Asian J. H.Tanaka; Y.Haketa; N.Yasuda; H.Maeda
HAZMOM Green C112 H112 Au1 Cl1 N8,2(C1 H1 Cl3),C3 H8 O1 (2,3,9,10,16,17,23,24-octakis(4-t-butylphenyl)phthalocyaninato)-chloro-gold(iii) chloroform isopropanol unknown solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/chem.201201701 Chem.-Eur.J. E.W.Y.Wong; A.Miura; M.D.Wright; Qi He; C.J.Walsby; S.Shimizu; N.Kobayashi; D.B.Leznoff
XIVDUE Dark Blue C56 H52 Au1 N4 O12,2(C2 H3 N1) [5,10,15,20-tetrakis(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl)porphyrinato]-gold(ii) acetonitrile solvate Not informed CSD Communication(Private Communication) Guiyu Liu
ROBVOW Brown C44 H28 Au1 N4 1+,C38 H8 F15 N4 Ni1 O1 1-,0.682(C8 H18) (5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphyrinato)-gold (5-oxido-10,15,20-tris(pentafluorophenyl)porphyrinato)-nickel octane solvate http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2019.03.027 iScience Y.Haketa; Yuya Bando; Y.Sasano; H.Tanaka; N.Yasuda; I.Hisaki; H.Maeda
TEHZOY Brown C44 H28 Au1 N4 (5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphyrinato)-gold(ii) http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2836 Nature Chemistry S.Prei; C.Forster; Sven Otto; M.Bauer; P.Muller; D.Hinderberger; H.H.Haeri; L.Carrella; K.Heinze
ILIWIJ Black C44 H28 Au1 N4 1+,Cl1 O4 1- (5,10,15,20-Tetraphenylporphyrinato)-gold(iii) perchlorate http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/b303294a Chem.Commun. Chi-Ming Che; R.Wai-Yin Sun; Wing-Yiu Yu; Chi-Bun Ko; Nianyong Zhu; Hongzhe Sun
```
I have no idea if the Au center bound to a porphyrin can still bind oxygen, like iron bound to [heme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heme) does in hemoglobin, probably not. But one of the compounds, the green one (HAZMOM) has a chloride bound to Au. So I wildly speculate a similar structure could be useful to some organism with a exotic biochemistry, that somehow breathes chlorine instead of oxygen.
As other people noticed, Earth crust is very poor in Au, as most of it sank together with iron and other siderophiles to the planet core as it formed. Lifeforms would have a hard time gathering the element, unless a planet somehow avoided to end with most of it trapped in the core. [Cyanide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide) is very poisonous to most earth life, but reacts with gold, so I imagine a environment rich in this compound could help mobilize the metal and make it available to any organisms with a biochemistry able to survive and thrive in its presence. I believe here on Earth the less abundant element to have important biological functions is iodine. Related:[Abundances of the elements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundances_of_the_elements_(data_page)#Sun_and_solar_system) and [Abundance of elements in Earth's crust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust).
[Answer]
The pros are ... [deafening silence]. The cons are it won't work on account of gold being chemically inert, as detailed by others. Evolution tries everything and keeps whatever works. Iron and copper work well enough and remain in use. Iron works better than copper. If anything else worked well it would almost certainly be in use.
If you want gold in blood for some narrative purpose you need to think of some other function it might fulfil. As to the colour, it will contribute a red-gold hue probably dominated by the colour of the iron or copper salts.
If you just want interesting blood colour, chromium salts are brilliant orange and cobalt salts are deep blue. Chromium is quite reactive. But you'll need rather different body chemistry for that. Both chromium and cobalt salts are hazardous to humans.
Platinoids are also largely inert but exhibit catalysis. Quite small quantities in the blood might give you accelerated metabolism with sparkly blood (not really, big enough to be seen would block capillaries but let's not ruin a good story).
To be honest if you want (say) brilliant orange blood there are less toxic ways to get it. Many proteins have strong colours — it's all in the bonding as mentioned by others. When you get sick sometimes you produce brilliant orange snot. Offhand I can think of only two things that colour, potassium dichromate and certain large proteins. I'm pretty sure my sinuses aren't full of potassium dichromate. [This may help you.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_chemicals#:%7E:text=Organic%20compounds%20tend%20to%20be%20colored%20when%20there,electron%20transitions%20from%20the%20HOMO%20to%20the%20LUMO.)
---
MSalters takes exception to my observation that evolution tries everything. His objection is unclear but I suspect it is basically that evolution only tries variations *on the current theme*. Changes must be incremental and compatible with the rest of the organism, so fundamental changes like blood chemistry are out of the question.
This is true, but at any given moment the majority species of biomass are small, simple and not dependent on blood as we know it.
---
A counterargument to the proposition that anything viable would already be in use is that when something works well it becomes a stable part of the organism and systems are built on top of it, committing the organism to a particular strategy — like the blind spot in a human eye.
[Answer]
It's hard to say. Gold does form [coordination compounds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organogold_chemistry#:%7E:text=Gold(III)%20complexes%20are%204,by%20forming%20a%20bridging%20ligand.&text=In%20general%20gold(III)%20compounds,studied%20than%20gold(I).) somewhat similar to hemoglobin, but the color is in the details of the binding. Indeed, spectroscopy is part of how chemists work out the the structures of such compounds. That hemoglobin and rust are similar in color is coincidence.
] |
[Question]
[
Our study of human history has numerous problems. 99% of history isn’t recorded. Writing has been around only for 5 thousand years, and much of what we know comes from archaeological evidence. Information is being shared more today because of the internet, but there is so much we still don’t know in the modern age. Adding to this, there is much interpretation built into any historical analysis and historians struggle with the concept of objectivity.
In this world, human beings share a universal consciousness. When a person dies, they are subsumed into this consciousness, which is known as "God". Thoughts, emotions, ideas, etc, are all subsumed into this consciousness and become part of a whole. In this way, it can be viewed as a perfect recording of all historical events, being completely unbiased in regards to facts.
Oracles are human beings who have trained to tap into this consciousness in order to gain a true picture of the past. This skill must be learnt, and is accessible to anyone. They are regarded as the historians of this world, passing on what they see for future records. They are used to discover and record big moments from history so we can gain a clear understanding of past events and why they happened, such as the rise and fall of empires, ancient cultures, etc.
However, there is a problem with this when you break it down. If this god is the seat of all earth history, it stands to reason that a person tapping into it can find things out about anyone. A detective investigating a murder could solve a case without having to do the leg work. A rival king could tap into this consciousness to find information on his enemies and their empires or armies, or business rivals could use it to spy on competitors.
I need to limit this system to the big moves and shakes of history. Events equivalent to WW2, rise and fall of Rome, cultures of Mesopotamia, etc. The big and important moments that shaped the world on the grand scheme, rather than the lives of individuals. This way, there can be one, linear version of historical events that doesn't depend on interpretation, but leaves the lives of people out. How can I make this happen?
[Answer]
If the collective mind contains memories of people, well... It contains what people remember, not the factual truth. This poses multiple problems:
* Conflicting memories, which may either be mutually destroyed upon merger, or lead to great levels of confusion;
* Poor attention. You have found the memories of the sole witness of whatever, but they didn't see the murder because they were playing some My Little Pony game on their cell phone.
* Fragmented memories. It is quite common for people who have undergone post traumatic stress or child abuse to have a kind of dissociation called fragmentation. This screws up the way the person collects, maintains and recalls memories. I think murder victims would have poor memories of their last moments.
* False memories, planted on purpose to confuse the oversoul, either by one's own self and volition or forcefully.
* The oversoul will have waaaaay too many stoned memories. Seeing history through the eyes of a junkie may be interesting, but not very useful for fact finding.
* Storage. The oversoul has more capacity than you. It may be that in order to get some info from it, you have to forget an equal amount of info just to make space.
* Emotional content. If you experience someone else's memories, you may feel what they felt. You will need psychological help if you go through a rape victim's memory.
---
Assassin's Creed has a similar concept, and its lore added two additional problems for people going through the memories of others:
* Poor search indexing. You can't just go to that single precious moment which is all that you want. You have to spend 20-odd hours playing previous memories until you reach what you want.
* Bleeding effectTM: spend too much time visiting memories and you start hallucinating pieces of those memories even when unplugged from their source.
[Answer]
Read the histories of the oracles and you'll see they have certain quirks. Consider [Cassandra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra), her curse was that her predictions were always accurate but that nobody would ever believe her. Other oracles were known for giving riddles or predictions that couldn't be interpreted until it was too late.
Your Oracles can see clearly into the past, but not so clearly into the present. That means that while they know exactly what happened, they're not very good at communicating it to others. In the simplest case they're talking to someone who was asking questions last week. In the worst case no two consecutive words are from the same conversation.
Riddles, confusion, and disconnection in time. The oracles know everything, they just can't tell you about it.
The next step is to find a balance.
An oracle at the pinnacle of their profession will be able to speak to a single person about an event with no other witnesses, say the victim of a murder, but they're also going to be the worst case of being unable to communicate with the present. A new oracle is still going to be relatively well grounded in time, but only be able to find out about events with loud voices in the past, great wars and civilisations with tens of thousands of witnesses. Their speech may only be light riddles, but the fine detail can never be seen.
[Answer]
It's very simple for two reasons.
* Reason 1: It is a collective memory of DEAD people. You can't remember the juicy details about your hot neighbour or the bank account numbers of a rich celebrity if they didn't die. You could get some information on the enemy troops after people have died, but you can't be sure how accurate that information is depending on who died and what they knew. "depending on who died" means that if you kill a captured officer you can be more certain about the information he'll provide.
* Reason 2: It's a COLLECTIVE memory. You ask information about some moment and place in history, everyone who feels they know something about it will respond. Steering through this mess is difficult for the user. This also means you get more clear info about things that more people know about. A murder on an important leader on national TV will be much clearer than a random death in a back alley, the back alley death might be so small that it's simply drowned out and will be mixed with similar deaths in the region and time period, making the information tainted and hard to understand.
[Answer]
First, all of human history is...BIG. So what you'd want is specialists in particular areas of history.
Here's some fixes:
* **Time.** You've got history, but immediate history is more difficult and confused to access. If you get anything at all, it's fractured. As time goes by, it gains clarity. 100 years ago is clearer than 1 year ago as the timelines of all the dead folk have had time to become part of the whole in an integrated and accessible way. For a god-like consciousness, several decades or a century isn't a big deal, and really, it might be a safety feature for just the kind of thing you are talking about.
* **Too Many Voices.** The biggest problem here is organization and indexing. How can everyone possibly bring up the information needed? How can you hear one voice when there are millions? What this might mean is that bringing up info is difficult.
* **Lies, delusions and misremberances.** Even if you can get the dead dude you're looking for, there's no guarantee that his perceptions are accurate. You call it a "perfect recording" but if humans are involved, dead or alive, there is really no such thing if you also have "Thoughts, emotions, ideas." Take a moment to research eyewitness testimony. Memory is a funny thing, and it's NOT perfect. I know your idea is perfect accuracy. But more than one thing can be true at a time. Consider the story of Logain from Dragon Age--some remember him as a hero who saved his troops from an overwhelming enemy and their country from a King who was beginning to collude with an old enemy, others consider him a traitor who left his king on the field. BOTH of those things could be and are true. It really depends on who you listen to.
You're talking about ONE linear, TRUE version of history, but I contend that there really is no such thing. Every event ever has depended on interpretation, on the perception of those involved.
I really do believe that it would be FAR, FAR more interesting and accurate if it was more confusing and harder to access. And what's true...that's not one thing. It never has been.
[Answer]
/I need to limit this system to the big moves and shakes of history./
**Signal strength increases with number of participants.**
Imagine flying along at 10,000 feet. You cannot see a man lighting his cigarette. But you can see 5000 concert goers lifting their lighters for a torch song.
So too events. Participant number increases signal strength. If you want to see what OJ Simpson did on a given night, you have only the memories of the three individuals present as a source; too weak. If you want to see SuperBowl 44, you have the memories of thousands of attendees and millions who watched on TV. The more participants there are, the stronger your signal. You can set a number of participants necessary to make any perceptible signal for the oracles, and near that minimum number signal is still very weak.
[Answer]
*"This way, there can be one, linear, version of historical events that dont depend on interpretation, "*
RL Example: In WW2, During Battle of Britain both sides were convinced that RAF was on verge of collapse. This belief shaped strategical decisions - RAF even started saving aircrafts, in order to still have some reserve, which made Germans think that not much is left. The only problem... recent studies show that both sides incorrectly estimated other side production rate and in the darkest hour Allies were decisively winning aerial war of attrition.
This information may be hard to get from a collective consciousness, but a dispassionate quartermaster (or accountant) may be a bit more useful. ;)
You don't want to make it a game breaking? Except already raised issues like false memories (including hallucinations), emotions... **Why the process should be immediate? I mean if a soul needs a few decades to truly merge, then it does not matter for ancient history but makes it mostly useless from military perspective.**
There may be even some interesting mechanism that for example sinner, individualist or very stron personalities would simply need a much more time to merge.
EDIT: Events equivalent to... evolving on savanna? [Almost getting extinct 70k years ago?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck_theory) Leaving Africa? Ice age cycles? Slaughtering all megafauna on the way? Having sex with other hominids like Neanderthals and Denisovans? Domesticating plants and animals? Going in huge migrations throughout continents? (recent DNA test show that Europeans are mixture of local population + Middle Eastern + Siberian)
It can be quite interesting as history would start at dawn of mankind and not at invention of writing.
[Answer]
**You could make it take a really, really long time to find more obscure things.** Everything that ever happened is a lot of data to sift through, so that should be reasonable enough. Like the internet, perhaps all of the major events could be well-indexed and easy to find. But the more specific and obscure things that an Oracle might want to know may be much harder to find. If the web page you're looking wasn't indexed by Google, it'd take a much longer time to find it, wouldn't you say? So as a limitation, just make it take an inconveniently long time to find things that are not the big moves and shakes of history. (This has also been brought up in [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/139834) and [this answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/139852).)
Actually, this idea comes up in the manga [*ib: Instant Bullet*](https://myanimelist.net/manga/58313/ib__Instant_Bullet) by Akasaka Aka, and I think it presents the concept of the search duration limitation rather well (read right-to-left):
[Answer]
I think there's actually an even simpler answer: **context**.
Even if the oracle can see *exactly* what the dead person saw, thought and felt, that doesn't mean that they *understand* it perfectly.
The most obvious example of this is language: I won't gain any insight into the causes of the Second World War from watching Hitler's speeches unless I can speak German - and that's a language which millions of people still speak today. What if I'm observing someone who spoke [North Picene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Picene_language)?
Context is important for everything people do. Without that context, you can see *what* happened but rarely *why*, and so what comes out clearly are the big, objective moments but not the details of people's lives.
All you need to do is ensure your Oracle isn't a kind of cultural Babel fish - people will do the rest for you.
[Answer]
**How can I prevent an oracle who can see into the past from knowing
everything that has happened?**
# No-one has the big picture.
*At least - not for long.*
Each death would represent only a small incremental increase in the God's information resource. This resembles a [Clandestine cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clandestine_cell_system#Classic_models_for_cell_system_operations) system, such as used in spy networks. Orders would get passed down through ever shifting [cut-outs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutout_(espionage)), it would all consist of disjointed and sometimes contradictory information.
* It would take a great deal of analysis by the Oracles to find underlying paterns of government or military strategy - and even then false trails, double and tripple bluffs would muddy the waters.
* Leadership. Just as at the bottom of the hierarchy, the leaders would be surrounded by [mutual anonymity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_society) - masks, mystery and would use secret passwords, handshakes and the signs and trappings of ritual to identify themselves and their position and role.
* Every time a leader or trusted adviser died, a randomisation strategy would need to be implemented, a replacement leader by lottery, a change of course in strategies - a random shifting of resources to again muddy the waters and make themselves and their plans safely obscured.
* Attempted infiltration of enemy cells, and climbing in their hierarchies would be something you'd constantly need to contend with and be attempting on your enemy.
**Suitable citizens would be segregated depending on ability.**
Intensive training would be given in:
* Oraclular studies, strategy and the history and practice of clandestine networks and disinformation systems, insurgency and counter insurgency - these would become the future leaders, academic advisors and teachers, the most trusted. They would be afforded luxury and a harem to share - but no personal attachments which could be used as leverage against them.
* Mathematics of codes and cyphers.
* The enemy's culture and language.
* Intelligence gathering techinques.
* Subversive-insurgency to infiltrate and disrupt enemy networks.
* Assasination. They would be threatened with hell-fire and promised rewards in heaven or rewards for their families on Earth to commit [Lone-Wolf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)) attacks on known enemy targets.
All in all, it's a recipe for scandal, intrigue and a pretty unpleasant and insecure workplace IMHO.
[Answer]
# Location
A simple and interesting way to limit it is to do so by location. 'God' is spread out over the world. The memories it contains are tied to the area where they occurred. For an Oracle to read them, the Oracle must be fairly close by.
Want to have an Oracle solve a murder? She has to go to the crime scene.
Need to do a study of ancient Greece? You won't be doing it from a hotel in Paramus.
Pick out the details of your enemy's plans in the war? Than you allied Oracle will have to get into an enemy base, or even better, their headquarters. And even that won't help if everyone who was present and has those memories is still alive.
[Answer]
# Background noise.
>
> I need to limit this system to the big moves and shakes of history.
> Events equivalent to WW2, rise and fall of Rome, cultures of
> Mesopotamia, etc. The big and important moments that shaped the world
> on the grand scheme, rather than the lives of individuals. This way,
> there can be one, linear, version of historical events that dont
> depend on interpretation, but leave the lives of people out. How can I
> make this happen?
>
>
>
The data *is* there, but oracles have trouble exactly *locating* it. Because the Memory is so large that it's impossible to quickly zoom in any one point. And you cannot stay connected for very long, or your brain will seize.
So you can only zero on large events, something that left a large impression on the Memory. Once there, you can concentrate on smaller details; but you can't "remember" who killed Joe Q. Average, because the event didn't make a large enough impression. Even if it did, you'd be sore pressed in zeroing onto the memories of the actual murderer; and if he was the only one to know that he was indeed the murderer, connecting with any other memory will not help you.
[Answer]
**Concentration of memories determines clarity, accessibility, and importance.
Time spent in accessed memories moves slower.**
If you look at WW2, there are your oracles who could study it all their lives and have meaningful things to discern and discuss with fellow oracles. The pool of memories would be that immense. Your detective would have to search for vaguer trails acting in solitude, or with a team. He does not have historians from across the world curious about this cataclysmic event in human history. WW2 would. We could reach your mentioned objectivity after a process of historical research using this unique avenue. However, it would take time and many capable minds, not one of which could be an island.
Your other valve for how potent the power is would be its cost. Similar to other magic systems, as this system may be considered, the cost is a great place to balance its strength and usefulness. When you are roaming through memories, how long does it take to get there? Can your brain maneuver through the collective conciousness with enough detachment to do so efficiently, or does your reaction to everything you see along the way slow you? Perhaps processing the information left by the dead is a draining, costly thing.
Even your modern spy would take too long searching memories if their brain must process each thing in a substantial way. Then there is that issue of finding something which is so fresh to the world. It has not a large enough trail to be easily accessed or navigated, further exponentially reducing your efficiently at gleaming useful information. The longer you dig, the vaguer the trail, and the more you have to process to keep going further. One man can only process so much information in a certain frame of time.
[Answer]
**Oracles can only communicate clearly with specific people.**
Let’s imagine an Oracle A. If Oracle A has a specific trait 1, then A might be “spiritually closer” (or some other handwavium) to people who have this specific trait 1. Likewise, if they have a specific trait 2, then they’ll communicate best with people who have 2 (and 1).
This way, given enough traits or rare enough ones, you’ll cut down the number of people Oracle A can communicate with massively. So for a small event such as a murder where only a few people were involved, it’s unlikely to the point of impossibility that A will be able to recover information; however, for a massive event, A will have many witnesses they can draw from.
And who knows? Maybe you just have to find an Oracle B to get more information.
A side effect of this is that ancient history will be weaker, as less people were alive then. This could be either positive or negative.
[Answer]
Even though we witness events, we don't always know what exactly is happening. The simplest example of this is close up magic.
So even though an Oracle may see something, they may miss what is actually happening.
Secondly, memories are a perspective. A person's memory is what they think they have seen.
Lastly, people don't remember things as they happened even though they may have witnessed them and understood them thoroughly at the moment they occurred.
Maybe these flaws can make prevent the oracles from seeing everything and limit their powers in some sense
[Answer]
Have you read the [Dune series by Frank Herbert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise))? Especially Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune and God-Emperor of Dune touches on the subject of genetic memory, which bears a resemblance to your concept. The biggest difference is that Dune's genetic memory is limited to a single family line, and an individual would only know their parents until the time of conception.
The books establish three major obstacles for using such memory:
1. Gaining access is a dangerous procedure. Untrained people simply die in the process. It might also require certain genetics; the books touch on selective breeding to create what they call the Kwisatz Haderach, which is the first male who can do it.
2. There is a real danger of getting lost in the memories. Since an individual would have all memories of any ancestor until the conception of the next generation, it is easy to fall into a dream of reliving past lives, and lose the ability to differentiate between memory and reality.
3. Any especially dominant character from the past can take control of the individual. Think [dissociative identity disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder).
For your world, it sounds like only danger 2 and 3 would be applicable. But still, maybe your oracles was simply trained to only see the big picture and not delve too deep, in an effort to shield them from the worst of the dangers.
Also, if the full memory of all beings ever is accessible, how would you find any specific memory? It would be the equivalent to finding a specific strand of hay in a haystack. The oracles could be trained to only skim memories to get a sense of the big picture, and not delve too deep into any individual. This technique could also help against the aforementioned dangers.
[Answer]
## Information is only accessible through a link
Imagine that the internet existed without google and the only way to find content is navigating through hyperlinks. To clarify: its also like a library where you can only borrow a book if you provide either ISBN, title, author, etc.
So, oracle needs a link to the information and such link can be names, objects or places associated to the memory.
If you don't mind the potential for plot ideas there could also be specialized sorcerers that can set up obstructions like guardian entities, illusory perceptions or neuro-hazardous psychic traps at specific paths. Think of how government agencies can intercept searches for specific keywords or track visitors of certains websites.
[Answer]
When you contact the Oversoul, you initially don't get much of use. The Oversoul, while constructed out of human souls, is considering problems that humans cannot grasp.
Humans are constructed out of single cell, but the concerns of single cells are not really the concerns of the Human. If you imagine a cell being intelligent, it might be concerned about viruses, killer-T cells, internal decay, and the local biochemical environment. The Human is bothered that the light is taking too long to change.
The connection between these two is thin.
So contacting the Oversoul as a whole doesn't really do much for an Oracle, as the Oracle is roughly equivalent to a single cell in the Oversoul. The trick to making Oracular contact useful is a careful context rotation and projection to isolate a single soul.
Ie, you have to project the connection with the Oversoul down to a human level so you can interact with it and get human-level information on it.
The souls that make up the Oversoul still behave differently than independent human souls; they are part of a greater whole, and their purpose (like the cells of a multicellular organism, compared to single celled organism) and motivations remain very difficult to fathom. Still, at the single-soul level, you can get something.
Now, finding a particular soul is ridiculously hard and impractical.
You reach out, and you find a soul. You spend time getting that soul into focus, and viewing it separate from the oversoul. You start exchanging information, and understanding the language of that soul. Only then can you work out, piece by piece, what era, place and name that soul had in life.
If that soul has information you need, you can start communicating it. If not, you get to try again.
Finding one soul out of the trillions dead is impossible. But, finding any soul that died in WW2 is going to happen multiple times per year.
Assuming a trillion souls and 3 hours to connect to a new one and identify it sufficiently, 1000 Oracles working 10 hour days can get through a million souls/year, or 0.0001% of the Oversoul.
Over a century, 10k Oracles can contact 0.1% of all souls in the Oversoul. With 1 in 1000 souls contacted, you can have a really good sketch of history built up.
It gets even better if the Oracles can *record how to contact a soul* to make it more likely to repeat it. Then Oracle-indexes can be built up over time, and can be used to probe more deeply into historical events after they have been discovered.
This doesn't help with immediate history. Finding one specific dead person? It would literally take 10,000 Oracles a century to have a 1 in a 1000 chance of contacting that person.
This also leads to wonderful plot points. Some events are going to be extremely hard to find, and individual historical figures more-so. The Oracle-index of, say, Alexander the Great is going to be worth a lot. The Oracle-index of a major religious figure is going to be world-shaking.
If there are 10 major religious figures and 0.1% of the dead has been indexed, then the odds *any* of them are indexed is 1%. For most of them, close disciples are going to be accessible.
This also leads to another thing. If you are interacting with the souls in the Oversoul, do they change? And if they change, can you damage, destroy or harm them?
It would be common that people would claim to have the index of a major religious figure. And insane souls might even believe they *are* the major religious figure. So I would presume that major religions would claim that their founder's soul "transcended" and is not an *individual* soul in the Oversoul, and anyone claiming they have contacted them is a heretic, and souls that claim to be the figure are damaged by the adversary and must be purged.
[Answer]
## Your oracles can only access the past in real-time: If an event took ten years to unfold, it will take ten years' of oracle time to access.
Your situation is very similar (though more metaphysical) to the dilemma faced by real-life archivists and historians. There is a tremendous amount of material available that documents the past several decades, but virtually all of it came without an index. In the small institutional archive where I work we have, conservatively, a few thousand hours' worth of VHS tapes, reel-to-reel tapes, floppy disks, etc. (Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of slides and negatives.) A single videotape, for example, generally can't be digitized or viewed with sound faster than real-time. If we're lucky, there's a label on the tape with the exact date and subject matter, but often it will just say something like "1989 backup" or "Joe". Lacking infinite resources, this means that the vast majority of this material is destined to go un-reviewed.
For your world, perhaps the oracles can only "see" events unfold in the same amount of time that they actually took, or perhaps the bottleneck is in the transcription stage. Either way, your oracles' time is precious, and not likely to be spent tracking down where Joe Blow left his keys. Instead, the powers that be are going to spend this finite resource on answering the really big questions—those "big moments in history" that you mention. This will be easier, anyway, because the Oracles will have some idea of where to start looking and how to triangulate their search.
Some subordinate implications and possibilities of this approach:
* One of the chief skills that oracles can hone is "reading" visions quickly to find clues about whether they're in the right time/place and using those clues from multiple spots in the timeline to zero in on the most relevant events to view.
+ You've said that anyone can access the universal consciousness, but for most people it will mostly be so much noise.
+ Only the trained oracles (or very gifted amateurs) can cut through all the stuff that happened in the Bronze Age Aegean to find the true events behind the legend of King Minos and the Minotaur.
+ The faster and more accurately an oracle can perform this triangulation feat, the more successful they are.
* Questions about human events can be answered pretty quickly/easily, but getting answers to geological or evolutionary-type questions could easily take more than a human lifespan.
+ Oracling is a job, like any other, so if you want your oracles to spend more than the hours-per-day on a project you're going to have to give them an incentive to do so.
+ Conversely, you might need a way to slow down events that happen faster than human comprehension.
* Multiple oracles can be "stacked" on a question in order to speed up the process and/or provide multiple vantage points for viewing the historical moment (perhaps to achieve that slow-mo effect).
* You could leave open the possibility that oracles might be privately contracted. Your typical local PD isn't going to be able to afford the services of an oracle for every crime, but the occasional very high-profile case might warrant one's services. And an oracle might be called in to investigate that missing set of keys if [$137 million is riding on it](https://www.wired.com/story/crypto-exchange-ceo-dies-holding-only-key/).
+ If you *don't* want it to be used this way, you could pass laws against it or make skilled oracles so rare (and their time therefore so precious) that only governments can afford it. But in either case you're still going to have a question of rogue oracles looking to profit from their skill.
* Oracles are likely to have hobby projects, and will have "seen" lots of irrelevant material while searching out their targets. This opens the possibility for various character quirks for your oracles.
+ Some oracles might be like the stereotypical academic, with a passion for a particular topic or era, while others prefer to "leave it in the office".
+ Perhaps PTSD is an issue for oracles who must view, in real-time, things like wartime atrocities or extinction events.
+ You might need a code of ethics, e.g. for oracles who accidentally view private information when searching for a public event, or to discourage oracles from taking the "scenic route" to a target event.
] |
[Question]
[
## Some Context
I'm creating a universe where humanity has reached the stars. They've colonized a few star systems and, obviously, FTL drives are a common thing.
The part of the story I'm currently working on features a ship trying not to be captured by "space police". As a desperate move, they end up jumping into a nebula, but not before being damaged by the policemen. They can't jump away until repairs are complete, but they also can't stay very long inside the nebula - and the reason for this is what I want to know.
The conflict in this scene must be time-pressing, like "either we get out of here in x hours/days or we're screwed". The nebula is the bad guy here.
Maybe it's composition is toxic and, as soon as the ship's force field is down, the crew is doomed - or something like that. However, as soon as I took a better look at nebulae, I found out that a nebula's density is really low - something between 100 to 10.000 particles/cm³. According to my research, this amount is practically irrelevant. But is it enough to be dangerous?
## The Actual Question
The ship is stranded in a nebula. The force field is damaged and will fade... soon.
**Once the shields fail, what kind of danger is the crew in and how long do they have to get out?**
---
## Stuff you might want to know for a better answer
**Composition:** I don't really know what kinds of elements compose a nebula, so the ideal answer should enlighten me a bit about it and propose something that could be harmful to the crew. Remember that the whole point of this question is making nebulae the bad guys.
**Threat:** You've estabilished what it's made of, now tell me why is it bad. Is it a radioactive element? Corrosive to the ship's hull? Bad for human lungs? Give me something that is dangerous to the level of true concern. It has to be dreadful, but there must be enough time for the crew to try and figure out a way to solve this issue. Note that you can also choose ignore the force field's protection, if necessary.
**Time Sensitivity:** Like I said earlier, this scene has a time sensitivity to it, but it's all a matter of perspective. The ideal answer should be something capable of killing the poor castaways in a few hours after initial exposure ('cause the ship's shields integrity would be the countdown, the thing between them and death). But if you can find a way to do it in a few days, that's okay as well. I'm setting the maximum DEADline to a week.
**The VIP:** There's a genius inside this ship. In the narrative, she's an engineer that will help fix the ship's engine, but I will give you freedom to make her a doctor or a biologist or... something you need - if that helps keeping the crew alive for the time needed. Example: The shields are useless and everyone is already exposed in the moment they pop in the middle of the nebula. Knowing the effects of that particular element to the human body, Dr. Tina Awesome warns the crew to get into the vacuum suits to prevent further exposure - which will buy them a few days to make the needed repairs.
[Answer]
The density of a stellar nebula is likely to be much too low to pose any threat to a human-scaled spacecraft.
>
> They are very sparse. Typical densities are in the range of 100 to
> 10,000 particles per cm3.
>
>
>
These structures appear dense from a distance, but they are only difficult to see through because of their depth. Any particular "slice" of the nebula doesn't contain that much mass.
>
> If you were within a nebula, it is hard to say what it would look
> like. But nebulae are so large that the optical depth of the cloud
> would actually probably be quite high, and I would guess that it would
> look like you were surrounded by glowing green and red gas in the far
> distance - instead of space looking black and dark, it would be
> colored all over. But this would only be an effect caused by the fact
> that you are looking through so much gas - even if your spaceship were
> a thousand kilometers away, it probably wouldn't look much different
> if you were inside a nebula versus outside of it.
>
>
>
<https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/26326/how-dense-are-nebulae>
[Answer]
Hiding in a nebula is usually a bad idea. Space is transparent. Very, very, very, very transparent. A typical nebula is a little thicker than normal interstellar space but still a hard vacuum much thinner than any vacuum scientists on Earth can make, and thus very, very, very transparent. Nebulae look very bright and opaque in photographs because those are long exposure photos.
In order to hide in a nebula it has to be vastly denser than most nebulae. Maybe it is a nebula collapsing to form a solar system, in which case there might be clouds of dust and rocks that hide and also pound the ship.
Maybe they need to stay hidden in a dense cloud of space dust and space rocks within the collapsing proto stellar nebula until they think that the space police give up looking for them and go away.
And the slight gravitational attraction of their ship is attracting the space dust, so that eventually instead of a cloud of space dust there will be a big, ship-shaped clump of space dust revealing the position of the ship. And tiny sand grains, pebbles, rocks, and boulders are also being attracted to the ship and can damage or destroy it if they don't get out soon enough.
[Answer]
**The nebula is not the problem, the problem is inside the nebula because the nebula is actually a remnant of a [supernova](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova) like the [crab nebula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_Nebula) and it is hiding an unsociable [neutron star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star). You ship is currently there because nobody would think that anybody would park the ship there.**
Please look intensely at the neutron star page to understand that even on cosmic distances the power of a neutron star is so dangerous that it will fry electronics and bombard the crew with radiation. Your ship is so dangerously close that nobody search for it there (and the power output of the star will camouflage your ship perfectly) because it is deadly. Your crew must be in utter despair to even try such a maneuver.
As HDE 226868 in the comment is suspicious of the seriousness of neutron star radiation:
The crab pulsar has here on earth a [flux density](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_(unit)) of $2.4 \cdot 10^{-8} \, Wm^{-2}$ in the X-ray band. To kill a human in 36 hours we need a dose of 36 gray (Cecil Kelley who was killed after 35 hours, for purists 1 Gy = 1 Sv for X-rays), let's say it's a human with 100 kg and a skin area of 2 $m^2$.
A deadly dose of 36 gray means an energy of $36 \; Gy \cdot 100 \; kg = 3600\;J$.
To reach this threshold in 36 hours, we need a power of
$\frac{3600\; J}{36 \cdot 3600 \; s} = \frac{1}{36}W \approx 0.03 \; W $
The total power output of the crab pulsar is the flux density with the area of the surface sphere. The problem with a pulsar is that it is in effect a giant lighthouse, we assume that the ship is not in the beam. In the case of the crab pulsar [the background radiation is a factor of 2000 smaller than the main beam](http://www1.phys.vt.edu/~jhs/eta/references/thesis-Ch5.pdf):
Total power in X-ray band:
$ \frac{1}{2000} \cdot 2.4 \cdot 10^{-8} \, Wm^{-2} \cdot (4 \cdot \pi \cdot (2200 \cdot 3 \cdot 10^{16} \; m)^2) = 6.5 \cdot 10^{29} \; W
$
As our human has $2 \; m^2$ surface area, $0.03 \; W / 2 \; m^2 = 0.015 \; Wm^{-2}$ is sufficient.
So the deadly distance from the crab pulsar is:
$d = \sqrt{\frac{6.5 \cdot 10^{29} \; W}{4\pi \; 0.015 \; Wm^{-2}}} = 1.9 \cdot 10^{15} \; m \approx 0.2 \; ly \approx 12 \, 600 \; AU $
0.2 light years is far, *far* beyond our solar system and approximately one twelth of the distance from our sun to the next star, so I stand by "cosmic" distance. The beam is even worse, it can kill at a distance of 8 light years.
[Answer]
There's nothing especially dangerous about the nebula specifically, deep space will kill your crew in time, if their ship is damaged. They need to escape this nebula to get to somewhere they can do long-term repairs on their ship.
Deep space can kill you in many ways: radiation, leaking air, freezing to death after your reactor shuts down and the list goes on.
In this scenario they simply happen to be in a nebula, while the real killer is plain old space.
If you really must have the specific area they are in be the hazard, then i'd advise saying they simply jumped too close to a star, That sort of immense heat & radiation is bound to kill them in as many hours as the plot needs.
[Answer]
As stated by the other answers, space is empty. Really, really empty. Nebulae are marginally less empty, but from the perspective of someone inside one, they might as well be regular (empty) space with a nicer color palette.
That said, there can still be things inside a nebula that threaten your ship and crew. Rogue comets, asteroid fields, stars, planets and more can still be found inside of a nebula, which can act as more mundane dangers to your ship. ***yawn***
We don't want mundane dangers, that's what the rest of space is for. We want something unique. Something cool. Something exotic. Something... *dangerous*.
So let's do that. Nebulae are made up of a wide spread of tiny particles, single or small globs of molecules floating through space. These molecules can be anything, really, so long as it's moderately stable under the influence of icy cold and stellar radiation. Things like small flecks of iron or clouds of hydrogen exist here. Sure, they might ping off the ship's shields or cause a nasty short when they build up static electricity when they pass but relatively speaking, they're fairly safe. And those would be the things your crew had to deal with if they were lucky.
*They are not.*
The nebula they jumped into is the graveyard of a civilization. A long time ago, in a star-system deep within this nebula, this dead civilization mastered fire, then electricity and then the atom. They built great works on a huge scale before turning inward and focusing their efforts on nano-technology. A mistake here and an oversight there and now they were dealing with a grey goo scenario. Rather quickly, the entirety of their planetary mass was converted into more nano-machines, killing off anything and anyone on the planet.
Thankfully, the combination of gravity and a lack of actual driving intelligence stopped the nano-plague from reaching other planets and multiplying across the stars. That is, until their star went supernova. Most of the nanites were cooked into non-functionality but the rest were flung out into the nebula where they occasionally gobble up nearby atoms and build more of themselves, slowly converting the entire nebula into more nano-machines.
The good news is that thanks to the incredibly low density of the nebula and relatively low velocity of the nanites, it'll probably take a few trillion years for this to happen. The bad news is that a lovely chunk of raw materials just arrived in their feeding zone. The ship's minute, though noticable, gravitational pull and magnetic field will soon attract nearby nanites who will gladly eat through the hull to build more and more of themselves. And while one or two nanites aren't a problem, with this much raw material, there will soon be more than you can count.
The clock is ticking, better get that engine back online...
[Answer]
What if the nebula, despite being unimaginably thin, is still too dense for your extremely sensitive FTL drive, and most of the damage was done by plowing through against safety protocols?
Probably the space patrol doesn't want to follow you since their bigger ship would be affected even worse and you've detonated a missile or something to make it look like you died as expected, so they won't stick around waiting to capture you when you emerge.
Your VIP FTL physicist could then note that the rough trip into the nebula will have carved out a temporary corridor of safe space to travel precisely back along, but either the safe tunnel is an FTL effect that fades over time, or the nebula gasses are diffusing back into a really wide corridor.
Waiting too long would thus mean that the departure would do further and increasingly certain fatal damage to the ship, with the exact deadline being as vague and threatening as you like. With potential to push the deadline back by moving all the remaining armor to the front of the ship or other stupid engineering tricks like that.
(The option of taking hundreds of years to leave the nebula at sublight speeds is obviously not on the table)
[Answer]
# Electrostatic discharge
Particles from a nebula can charge the hull of a spaceship, especially if it's in moving [Citation needed.].
For example, you can [read in Quora](https://www.quora.com/How-is-static-electricity-buildup-dealt-with-in-space-without-significant-grounding) that static is a real concern in the ISS. If the spaceship gets charged it can be dangerous for the crew to get outside the hull to fix the damage produced by the attack.
Also with some sci-fi, massive amounts of static could produce: blindness in sensors, lack of communication radio, damage in external circuits, failure in weapons, batteries, thruster, life support system, and in the most severe cases death of crew produced electrics arcs inside the corridors...
Ah, just for curiosity. I've also read [Citation needed.] that gamma rays (that are always floating on the space) can also produce this effect, at a lower scale, without a nebula, just a radiative zone.
**How much time?** I would say at least a few days in a normal nebula in order to gather some charge. But it's your story, maybe the nebula was especially dense and that is they choose it to hide them. Maybe there was a pulsar (which produce gamma rays) near and that would help hiding the ship from sensors.
If you are looking for some information, read this question [Storms in space](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/90436).
# Friction
At higher speed (some percent of lightspeed?), friction becomes a huge problem travelling on nebulas.
Friction can damage the hull of a ship, make holes in it (remember that exist micrometres of a few centimetres travelling really quickly), produce static charge and even overheat the ship.
In space heat and cold are huge problems. A ship powerless can freeze because space is really cold, but an active ship can overheat. That is because in space you can't cold down nor heat stuff using [convection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection) with the atmosphere like in Earth we do. In space it's only available [thermal radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation).
In Earth, if a something is hotter or colder than the environment it will be cold down or heat up in order to archive the same temperature. In space your ship cold down always producing thermal radiation and never recover it (unless you are close to a star or doing massive friction). Here, in your problem, the friction (due to the speed) is supposed to be greater than the cold down.
Depending on your speed the damages or heat could take from weeks to hours, I don't know even if they are moving. You say that the ship is stranded, but I guess that is about the FTL drive and not the sublight drives.
[Answer]
The nebula contains [FOOF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioxygen_difluoride). Not much, not very much at all, but it doesn't take a lot *at all*. Drifting through a nebula with even a tiny amount of FOOF will cause incremental but extensive damage to the vessel, FOOF will react with almost everything. If the crew don't jump out of there post-haste the ship will be dissolved from around them.
[Answer]
## Probably not.
Nebulae are not as dense as you'd think. [This article](http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/%7Eryden/ast162_3/notes11.html) states that the density of your average nebula is only around 10,000 atoms per cubic meter (which is orders of magnitude less than earthly air). 10,000 may seem a lot for an average person, but on an atomic scale, 10,000 atoms is nearly nothing.
If you're going *extremely* fast, this could present a maintenance issue, because this is still much denser than intergalactic space, which can be as sparse as just one lonely atom per cubic meter. Nebulae are pretty big, and losses can add up.
### A Loophole
Being stranded **anywhere** in space is not good. Food supplies are finite, and even a large ship with few people will run out of supplies eventually. This is not isolated to the nebula but rather to anywhere far out in space, especially if your crew cannot communicate.
[Answer]
>
> Is it dangerous for a ship's crew to get stranded in a nebula?
>
>
>
Yes it is, if the ship has one of those clunky first-generation FTL drives that spews a certain exhaust byproduct even when they're idle.
**The material in the nebula interacts with your FTL drive's exhaust**
Your FTL engine, even when idling, produces a nasty byproduct (you pick: anti-matter, microscopic black holes, gravitational dipoles, colimated dark energy beams, polarized gravitons, proto-wormholes, etc). As a result:
**The ship's FTL drive needs large expanses of empty space to vent into**
For the same reason nuclear power plants on Earth are built near oceans, your ship must be operated in interstellar empty space. The drive can store a certain amount of exhaust, but after a while it must be vented into space, diluted into the vastness.
Unfortunately the low-density material in the nebula, compounded by the somewhat stationary position of the damaged ship, when exposed to the exhaust stuff, is just dense enough to start interacting and gravitating towards you, accelerating planet and star formation in your vicinity by several orders of magnitude.
Completely shutting down an FTL engine is not practical in such an environment. It takes years to shutdown a nuclear power-plant on Earth. An FTL drive would be much worse.
>
> There's a genius inside this ship.
>
>
>
They should have known not to go into a nebula. Perhaps the nasty exhaust only occurs when the FTL drive is damaged, and they didn't know it. Or the on-board genius knew it but was over-ruled by the rest of the crew. The genius' warnings can be a good opportunity to weave the technical explanation into the story and introduce the character's superior mental abilities.
[Answer]
1. fast moving particles.
2. Small hand sized rocks
3. Asteroids
These threats can be naturally present in the nebula or come from outer space. Maybe a giant meteoroid field is just happens to be passing through the area when they arrive.
In your situation the size of the particles you need depends on their mass. Sand moving at 20%-40% the speed of light would be dangerous. 60-80% would be catastrophic especially with out shields.
Small hand size rocks moving at 40k-50k mph would be terrible without shields. These rocks exist all over even within our solar system. This is one of many reason it has taken NASA and etc so long to develop a suitable hull. They still don't have anything that would handle a sustained bombardment.
Your shields would normally absorb or deflect them, but apparently your shields were damaged when fleeing the police.
Even if your clever scientist/engineer used the shields to put a bunch of matter together to form a rock shield, debris would eventually break through it.
If impacts with your shield generate heat then you could naturally fuse rocks together to get a make shift rock shield. If the process doesn't generate heat you could use a laser or etc to generate heat to allow the rocks to fuse together. However, with persistent bombardment your rock shield will eventually be destroyed.
1. You have make a rock shield
2. The shields are down
3. The ship has to be repaired before the rock shield is destroyed.
4. Every second/minute you wait risks a hole be blasted through the rock shield.
Space is vast and random there are a 1000's reason why you might enter a nebula or any part of space and find large moving fields of rocks, asteroids, or etc.
1. Gravity of nearby planets,suns,stars, or etc might be causing the rocks to clump together.
2. Two asteroids or any arrangement of matter could collide in sufficient quantity to start planet formation. Now tons of matter is being dragged towards the core of the new planet. You enter the nebula anywhere near this, and large quantities of matter will definitely be coming your way. Your engines are failing or power source needs repair and boom your ship is stranded there until repairs are made. Now you only have enough power to maintain your shields and **maybe** some really slow maneuvering.
3. Your plain unlucky and a giant fields of debris just happens to be coming your way.
4. Nearby explosion of nova or anything and debris from it is coming directly toward your nebula. (Even if its just 2 big rocks colliding at 30% speed of light. Say 10-100 miles in diameter).
[Answer]
**The nebula is full of fast-moving particles**
This particular nebula happens to be full of radioactively decaying heavy elements like uranium. As these elements break down, they release high-speed particles in all directions. You are essentially in a nuclear reactor.
These particles are constantly pinging off of your force field, draining its power. Soon the shields will go down. Not only does your crew risk exposure to the radiation which could cause genetic mutations and give them any of a bunch of frightening disorders, but those particles are also a danger to the hull. Because this ship has a force field, the hull is minimally reinforced. After your encounter with the police, your hull is pretty badly damaged already. A single fast-moving particle could punch a hole in the hull, damaging equipment, venting the atmosphere, and otherwise wrecking your ship. Of course, the resident genius knows this and has started dumping electrons out of the ship. Now the ship has a positive charge which should repel the slower particles that are draining the shields and keep them running a bit longer. If you want to keep the vip occupied, she could be busy getting rid of electrons or (this is a bit of a stretch) sending out repeated electromagnetic pulses to hopefully repel the faster-moving particles.
[Answer]
Being stranded in a nebula at rest (relative to the nebula at least) isn't dangerous in the least. Your problem isn't really with anything in the nebula, but that there are things at all in the nebula. See, when you're traveling through a nebula -- which solar winds push out of solar systems -- you're traveling between stars, which means you want to go fast. But in a starship, you don't come to a stop by default; there's barely any friction in space, so if you happen to try to go really fast, your ship is going to get worn down by friction.
See, the engine didn't cut out while you were in the nebula, leaving you adrift. It cut out when you were about to do your final burn to drop into a solar system, leaving you shooting through empty space, out of control. At a quarter the speed of light. In normal, empty space (which has roughly *one* atom per centimeter cubed) this isn't a huge deal; your unobtanium adaptive ablative shielding can handle it easily (its maximum capacity for atom impacts per second is well over double what you'd normally encounter in empty space). In a nebula, though, traveling at empty-space speeds, it gets worn down anywhere between a hundred and ten thousand times faster -- and you're heading straight for one.
The issue then becomes less "oh no we're stranded in a toxic environment", and more "oh no we're about to crash into the space equivalent of a brick wall". You may even have quite a while in the nebula itself before the shielding goes, but as fast as your ship is traveling, it won't slow to safe speeds until well after the ship has been reduced to a cloud of scrap metal with some interesting carbon stains where people used to be.
You need the engines back online so you can turn the ship around and slow down before that happens.
[Answer]
# Why this won't work
Hiding in a nebula just plain doesn't work. They're too transparent to hide anything from any scientifically plausible method of detection. See [Phil Plait talking about how nebulae look when you get close to them](https://youtu.be/utbZkesp81M). A nebula would only produce enough radiation to hide a ship over a very long range, which would probably be measured in terms of at the least light months, but more likely light years.
Unfortunately, if your crew are trying to hide from a pursuer who is light years away, there are some easier ways of avoiding detection that are going to end up being plot holes:
First, if they simply *stop emitting any concentrated radiation* (i.e. they turn off their damned radios and not use any high energy equipment, e.g. FTL drives, then they simply aren't going to be detectable at that kind of range. As far as we know, the highest resolution, best detection method available is to look for signs of the object you're trying to find in electromagnetic radiation images (e.g. emissions, reflections, or shadows caused by them blocking radiation coming from behind them). There are other plausible detection methods (e.g. gravity-based detection) but all of them are likely to have lower resolution limits than EM-based detection.
The limits of resolution of EM-based detection are [discussed in this answer on astronomy stack exchange](https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/24288/22636), and depend on the size of your detection base and the wavelength you're working in. The answer describes this in terms of using a mirror in a traditional telescope, but you can also use interferometry to get the same result using two smaller detectors and a connection between them. Plausibly, a pursuer who has time to stop and look in detail could send out probes to extend their interferometry base, which might let them use a D of say 1,000km. Searching for a non-emitting object means you're looking for either reflections (which you'd have to be lucky to line up correctly) or occlusion (which means you need something behind the object).
The shortest wavelength radiation that's likely to be behind the object and is strong enough to easily detect is the cosmic microwave background radiation, whose wavelength is ~1mm. This means the smallest plausible angular size which a pursuer could detect is around 1/1,000,000,000 radians, which approximately means that they can detect an object at a distance of around 1,000,000,000 times its size. If your ship is 100m long, and they're lucky enough to be looking at it from its broadside, the closest they can plausibly detect it from is a range of 100,000,000km.
Second, and perhaps more critically, if the pursuer really is multiple light years away, *all they actually have to do is not hanging around waiting for multiple years*, which is of course how long any EM radiation they emit will take to reach the pursuers.
# What will work
Fortunately, you don't need a nebula for your ship to hide in. There are a few other options that would work well:
* Just switch off the ship's systems. Your ship produces a variety of EM signals that make it relatively easy to detect to any nearby pursuer, but if you turn them off (preferably at a point in time when they can't see you, e.g. because you're temporarily behind them and they can't see you because they were using thrusters and the glare from the thrusters would hide you, and don't know where you're going to be, e.g. because you've just executed a change of direction) the pursuer won't be able to find you unless they're close (see above discussion of detection ranges). In this case your time limit is the fact that you've had to turn off *all* of your ship's systems (because chances are you're using some fancy power supply mechanism, e.g. fusion power, and that's bound to produce a lot of detectable emissions) and your air is slowly clogging up with CO2. Or maybe the direction you're heading in isn't safe and you'll need to change direction soon.
* Hide behind a convenient asteroid/piece of debris/etc. This isn't likely to work for long, because if the pursuer moves to a different vantage point they'll be able to see you. But if the repairs are going to be quick it might be enough.
* Hide in the atmosphere of a gas giant. These are much denser than nebulae and therefore provide much better protection against detection, but the density is your issue here: you'll need to maintain speed to prevent yourself falling into the planet, and the atmosphere will cause drag. You'll start heating up due to atmospheric warming, and you'll be burning up fuel. Perhaps the ship has an [ablative heat shield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_entry#Ablative), and when it all burns up the crew will be dead. Or perhaps they're already short on fuel. The deeper into the atmosphere you go, the worse it'll be, but the safer from detection you'll be.
[Answer]
# The nebula has reached peak density
The nebula is beginning to collapse into itself and form a star, the pull of the slowly increasing mass at the center of the collapse will eventually be able to prevent the spacecraft from escaping.
[Answer]
# They got in the wrong zone of the wrong nebula, at almost the wrong time.
The nebula is a type C emission nebula with secondary coherent discharges. The emission factor is what helps to hide the ship from FTL scanners (waves hand) somehow. The coherent discharge detail wasn't known at the time of jump, and is only discovered when inspecting the ionization and emission patterns of the nearby gases (or when noticing that the core star is actually a binary system), leading to a classical "WE'RE SO F\*CKED" moment and much finger-pointing.
The downside of this kind of nebula is that when the twin stars that are at the nebula's core are aligned *just so*, which, given their orbit, they do every (waves hand) some days or hours, [bad things are going to happen](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180516102310.htm). Or rather, the bad thing is going to happen where the ship is, instead of the other side of the nebula.
The shields will defend the ship against such an event, if it was driven by another ship - or even, for some (shortish) time, from a planetary defense battery. But this cannon here is powered by a *star*, and the pulses won't last milliseconds but *whole minutes*. Diluted as they will be, just remember that it's still enough to be detectable at five hundred light-years' distance; being somewhere inside the barrel of this gun might be survivable, or might not be. The crew obviously doesn't want to verify.
# Enters Tina Awesome
The ship cannot move, but it does have FTL missiles - they work by disappearing into hyperspace and dropping inside the enemy's shields. They are never used at any great distance because accuracy gets shot to Hell, but they would be able to pop a couple of light-days coreward.
If the warheads are reprogrammed for maximum dispersal instead of maximum yield on target, the explosions will disrupt a small part of the cosmic laser assembly through random ionization(\*), thereby carving a tiny sliver of incoherent, reasonably innocuous discharge inside the bolt that's coming their way.
Reprogramming, targeting and dispersal patterns are (waves hand) difficult, but dr. Tina Awesome is not any engineer - she's an ex weapon designer as well as the great-great-nephew of [Marylin vos Savant](http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-12-24), by way of a certain Scottish Starfleet engineer on her father's side.
(\*) something like this happens in Fred Hoyle's *The Black Cloud*.
[Answer]
# Too low density for concern
"found out that a nebula's density is really low - something between 100 to 10 000 particles/cm³"
The density of the space surrounding Earth's ISS in low orbit is about 10 000 000 particles/cm³
So your nebula is a thousand times less dense than the vacuum surrounding the ISS
.
.
For that matter, at 100 - 10 000/cm³, your nebula is about exactly the same density as the Earth Moon's surface 'atmosphere'.
] |
[Question]
[
**This question already has answers here**:
[Advantages of "Spider Mechs" over Tanks?](/questions/112144/advantages-of-spider-mechs-over-tanks)
(26 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
This is a highly contested issue on this site, and I have seen many different opinions on this topic. Are mechanical legged vehicles (or mechs) useful in combat in a near future scenario? If so where?
[Answer]
There's an interesting case for 'legged' vehicles that have wheels and treads rather than feet. DARPA's Ground Vehicle-X Technology program makes [an interesting case](https://www.slideshare.net/tomlindblad/gxvt-proproposerdaymaterialdistroa) for agile, fast, and lightweight ground vehicles.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/txVA1.jpg)
They make the case that our current approach of survivability through heavy armor has some problems. The first is that armor makes vehicles heavy and difficult to transport into the battlefield. If vehicles could be made light enough to load onto planes or helicopters, then they could be deployed into the battlefield much faster, which is huge. Vehicles are starting to become so heavy that they can no longer go offroad, which makes them vulnerable to IEDs. They also make the case that weapons are improving faster than armor is, so the advantage of armor is becoming less.
They claim the solution to this is to achieve survivability through mobility rather than more armor. A vehicle doesn't need much armor if it can avoid being hit, avoids detection, and avoids engagement. Extreme mobility enables the vehicle to access terrain that other vehicles cannot access making it possible to avoid detection and engagement. Putting the wheels on legs so that they can adapt to terrain is a great way to attain high mobility. They make the case that it's not unreasonable for a vehicle to duck or jump to avoid getting hit. This would have to be accomplished by putting the body on some form of legs so that we may move it around. In addition, it has even been suggested that jumping may be advantageous in urban combat, to jump over road blocks.
[Answer]
Almost certainly not. The problem that cannot be countered is the inherent mechanical inefficiency of using legs. The amount of complex engineering that would have to go into this process is not worth the benefits. From a physical standpoint, it is inherently inefficient. There are too many moving parts under a dynamic load, with a center of mass that is far too high.
Consider what the act of walking takes in comparison to a more conventional ground vehicle. Each time you lift the leg, you are wasting energy to fight gravity in order to physically lift that leg off the ground. You then have the issue of ground pressure when you put that foot down and shift weight on top of it. Wheels or especially treads will have a much lower ground pressure because the load is always balanced.
Put it this way, would you ever challenge a bicycle to a race on foot? They are inherently physically inefficient. Technology won't change this. Whatever technology that makes them possible would also make conventional ground and naval vehicles more effective. Just like the fact that even an extremely fast runner would be even faster on a bike.
You might counter that there are places you can't take a bicycle, like stairs, but those aren't places where you want to take heavy mechanized vehicles in the first place. No one drives tanks into truly mountainous terrain or dense forests, as even if it is physically possible to move them they would be too vulnerable for it to be worth it. If you take ground pressure into account, you're going to find more places you can't take your mechs but can take tanks than the other way around.
In addition to the inherent mechanical inefficiency, you have a vastly worse target profile. Relative to mechs, tanks are essentially lying down, giving the smallest possible target profile for their size. This is also reflected in the higher ground pressure of something like a mech compared to a tank, which means they are more likely to get stuck in soft ground or be less capable in the kinds of rough terrain that they might theoretically be better at.
I haven't even gotten to the worst problem, that of the square cube law. Humanoid shapes are effective at the scale of humans. So this means powered armor is somewhat plausible but mechs aren't.
EDIT: This isn't directly relevant to my earlier points, but I just found [this clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt7gGCYdcRY) about AT-AT speed and thought it was an interesting issue. While the official speed of an AT-AT is fast enough to actually be effective as a combat vehicle, there is almost certainly no way this is actually physically possible given the model we see.
[Answer]
## Yes!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/I5OR3.jpg)
This is a full functional John Deere walking tractor and tree harvester. On flat terrain (eg Hoth :)), wheels and treads may be more energy efficient, but in obstacle filled terrain, legged tanks may well be more useful. However, legs should be short and bent to keep the center of gravity low and the profile small, allowing the tank to not tip over and to take advantage of cover.
[Answer]
# Surely...
everyone here has seen the utterly terrifying dog-like robots the US military is working on?
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BT45s.png)
(Hilariously, they have more recently done stuff like *paint them yellow and pink* in a pathetic effort to tone down the "utterly terrifying" aspect.)
>
> Are mechanical legged vehicles (or mechs) useful in combat in a near future scenario?
>
>
>
It's probably the single most intense desire of the US ground military at the moment.
You've completely hit the nail on the head.
>
> If so where?
>
>
>
Every single region in which the US fights (ie, the overall planet other than I think Tasmania).
# 4 is easier than 2
4-legged death robots are incredibly easier to achieve than 2-legged ones.
Consider the case of Honda's totally amazing "Asimo" - while it's amazing (A) it can do nothing and (B) no matter how many decades they pour money in to it, it can do almost nothing else. Whereas, Boston Dynamics terror-dog makes huge advances every few months.
Four or six leg locomotion is incredibly easier than two (not easy, but easier). It's getting closer to being a solved problem.
[Answer]
**The top two answers are absolutely wrong!**
This debate is always the same. And always you have some dense smartasses wobbling up with their "nu-uh wheels and tracks are always better!", which is about on the level of toddlers.
Yes, you will NEVER see Star-Wars style walkers, because they're impractical. and you will almost certainly not see any walker vs tank combat ever, because tanks win that easily.
**Now, where WILL you see walkers?**
Simply any and everywhere where tanks are not viable.
* Urban combat (here small walkers, bigger than humans but still small enough for most urban openings and walkways. Aka you have a tank where you normally can't fit a tank.
* Mountainous terrain. Where tanks and generally any regular vehicles fail. Did you know that 21st century armies still have dedicated donkey handlers? [And guidelines for horses?](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/11640/u-s-special-operators-are-ready-to-ride-into-war-on-horseback-again) And what are horses but medieval walkers? So as soon as it becomes viable, they will be replaced (or at first supplemented) by walkers. However that as well will only happen within the narrow mission specifications they are used in today.
[Answer]
Nailing my colours to the mast, I'd say that the answer is no; in the near future, there is no real use of a combat mech that can't be (better) met by a wheel or tracked vehicle. I was going to point to the fact that there ARE no mechs currently in development by defence industries, and that this is a sector which would be all over such a design if there was a benefit to it, but then I did a little extra research and found out that there [is a Russian combat walker](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a22802198/russia-unveils-giant-combat-walker/) currently under development. I recommend you actually read the article as it covers a lot of the arguments for and against such a vehicle in a combat situation.
For my own part though, I've always been of a mind that walkers give you the same vulnerabilities that a human combatant has when it comes to legs; if you shoot at them and damage them, your mobility is screwed. Sure, they ride higher, giving the pilot better visibility, but that also comes at the cost of higher centre of gravity, meaning that balance is more of an issue for a vehicle you need to keep upright at all costs. The idea of walking over obstacles and the like that other vehicles can't get over does sound appealing, but then I came across another Russian invention...
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/1GWPY.jpg)
Meet the Sherp, a Russian ATV that is designed to go almost anywhere. If you look them up you can see that these things can pretty much cover any terrain, still have reasonable visibility, and the low pressure tires make short work of pretty much anything that the walker above could get over, probably more. Sure, the wheels are a vulnerability just like legs, but you can still move one of these on 3 wheels (probably) and as the tyres are low pressure, they can take more damage before becoming inoperable.
Mount a 50 cal on the top of this thing and you have an interesting weapons platform that to my mind is cheaper to build, easier to develop as we've been using a lot of this tech for a century already, and (perhaps most importantly) is going to be a lot faster.
This is the final point I'd make in the argument between the two platforms - there is going to be a maximum speed possible for the walker due to the fact that you have joints moving backwards and forwards, rather than building up solid angular momentum in the same way a wheel can. This means that the legs actually have to surge energy in an alternating sequence instead of just letting an engine apply it constantly. This makes legs more complex, harder to maintain and puts a limit on how fast they can go by comparison to a wheel, which is also more efficient.
So, for mine, I don't think that combat walkers will be seen on battlefields in the near future, but if they are the only reason I can think of is to break the morale of the enemy and instill fear in them when they see a combat mech running at them, chain guns pointed their way.
[Answer]
Yes, but probably not the things you see in Star Wars. The most useful legged transport would be over very rough terrain where wheeled vehicles would not be feasible, and they would probably use 6 or 8 legs like a spider. This would likely be in hilly, heavily wooded, or mountainous terrain. They could be carrying supplies. They also could incorporate wheels if needed, when they reached roads or terrain that would accommodate wheels, and then switch back and forth like a Transformer. The AI that would be needed is probably available now, so by the time that these legged transports are needed that would not be a problem. Power supplies are currently a problem for this concept. They would probably need to incorporate their own power replenishing sources, such as rolling out solar arrays before their batteries are depleted.
[Answer]
**Yes and no.** Depends on your definition of combat really.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) had the [LS3 Legged Squad Support System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legged_Squad_Support_System) project going for a while. The project is essentially the military version of Boston Dynamics' [BigDog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BigDog), and the goal was to serve as a mechanical pack mule for US infantry. The LS3 was used in combat exercises succesfully, and it served its purpose of resupplying units in placed where traditional vehicles had trouble reaching them. It performed admirably, was capable to follow soldiers through rough terrain, was capable to pick itself up when it fell. There was just one minor detail: it's **LOUD**. So loud in fact the USMC couldn't see themselves using it in battle.
In the end, the Achilles heel of BigDog was its gas-powered engine. Boston Dynamics also developed Spot, a lighter, silenter, electric-powered version of BigDog, but its carrying capacity wasn't sufficient. Fiction can help your case however. With the development of electric vehicles comes the development of battery technology, it's not hard to imagine that, in the near future, we'd have batteries good enough for a fully electric BigDog without sacrificing its capabilities.
Now here is where the yes and no applies.
As the name squad support system suggests, it is designed to carry equipment and supplies, like extra ammunition, heavy ordinance, medical supplies or whatever you deem useful to take in battle that you'd rather not carry yourself. While this can be used to support units in combat, this isn't quite a combat role.
Outside of that particular application, you could integrate support systems to it, like an antenna to serve as a walking comm link, or some kinda of radar or detection system to serve as a spotter for artillery or just to scout an area. Basically anything that you can bolt on a jeep, you could bolt on a BigDog and it would follow a squad just about anywhere.
You could even imagine a specialised version camouflaged as an actual dog and filled with spying equipment that you could send for reconnaissance as a less conspicuous alternative to a flying drone. And of course, in a pinch, you can always jury-rig it with explosives and kamikaze it against the nearest tank or entranched position.
Outside of combat it could be quite useful in disaster relief or rescue operations in mountains, forests, rubble, or basically anywhere where roads are impracticable (or anywhere without roads to begin with) as a much cheaper alternative to helicopters.
If you're looking for a more offensive role than that, don't. There isn't much of a use case for a mechanical mule with a canon. Anything it could do, a tank or UCAV could probably do better.
[Answer]
Nicholas Moran aka The Chieftain, former US Army tank commander and Wargaming America's historian, covered "Giant Stompy Things" (GST) vs tracked vehicles in [his Q&A #7](https://youtu.be/kDeOWVshgG8) at about the 10:47 mark.
His opinion was no, "mechs are stupidity inefficient designs" for reasons mostly covered in other answers but l'll reiterate. GSTs come out worse in height, weight, frontage, complexity, and ground pressure.
With any armored vehicle you want to get the most out of your weight. More bang per pound means more range, more speed, more maneuverability, less strain on the drivetrain, more capacity, and lower cost.
Modern armor are basically an armored box which makes them fairly compact. GSTs are not. All that extra surface area means more to armor which means more weight for the same volume or reducing the useful volume to compensate.
Modern armor have small frontal cross sections making them harder to hit. They concentrate their armor in the front; that's where they're likely to be shot at. GSTs have very large frontal cross sections making them easier to hit and requiring a greater percentage of its surface to be armored: more weight.
Ground pressure is a critical measure of the mobility of a vehicle, it's the vehicle's weight distributed over its contact with the ground. Riding a bicycle on sand illustrates this nicely. Tracks spread the weight of the vehicle over a large area consistently resulting in an 80 ton tank being able to go places much lighter wheeled vehicles cannot. GST must lift their feet off the ground increasing their ground pressure. This defeats the main touted benefit of a GST: mobility.
On a related note, a while back I [calculated the weight of a Star Wars AT-SE walker using ground pressure](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/73085). It came out heavy, but not unreasonable.
GST require multiple points of articulation per leg. Each must be powered. This is a maintenance nightmare, as well as a challenge to transmit power to all those joints. Those complex joints will all be exposed to incoming fire. All this means more weight. In contrast, modern tanks have an all-in-one engine/transmission power pack safely at the rear of the vehicle. Only the rear two wheels are powered. The tracks are relatively simple. Most maintenance can be done in the field.
The best way to protect a vehicle is for it not to be seen. Modern armor is low to the ground making it harder to spot. GSTs are tall making them easier to spot. Modern armor can hide behind terrain and take advantage of hull down positions to fight with only the turret exposed. GSTs can also use terrain, but being tall they will have less opportunities to do so.
What if you made a crawler, basically take a tank and replace the treads with stubby legs? This solves the surface area, frontal area, and height problems, but the ground pressure and complexity issues remain. It still has to lift its feet. Its legs still need extra motors and hydraulics adding weight and complexity.
Because these are essentially geometry issues, they remain no matter what sci-fi technologies you propose. Any advances in armor or power or propulsion or weaponry to make GSTs more feasible can be applied more efficiently to a tracked tank.
To sum up, for similar volume and protection, walkers are heavier, larger, taller, more complex, and less mobile than a modern tank.
[Answer]
Picture where an armed and armored horse would be useful in modern combat, and I think that will be 90% of your answer. Uneven yet solid terrain with good cover, likely for recon and small-scale engagements. Less useful than tracked vehicles where the ground is soft (mud, sand), probably get smoked in open terrain where wheels are faster than legs for the same mass (and missiles are faster yet).
Personally, I don't think we'll ever bother with legged *vehicles* or shooting platforms - there's a point past which legs don't scale very well (there's a reason elephants don't gallop). Instead, we'd build man-sized legged drones and 'bots for recon, support, and some close-in combat. Picture Boston Dynamics' Atlas or Spot, but armed.
[Answer]
**Yes, in a combat sport.**
Legged fighting machines are discussed so often because we find them so cool. So they will have a place in any scenario where coolness can take precedence over practicality. That won't be the battlefield, but it could certainly be a sports arena where we go to watch Pepsi Pummeler take on the Red Bull Brutalizer.
[Answer]
Two legs would be utterly pointless in ANY scenario I can imagine, inflexible, difficult to hide, single point of failure, ....
A spider tank could be fantastic. Redundancy, speed, power, all-terrain, etc.
A millipede-style tank might be even better:
I'm imagining Tiny, barely articulate legs with a single bend and very little internal control, maybe just a "Muscle" lever to operate the knee--all the hardware is safe inside the vehicle
* Under partial load you would only need a few legs and could be very quick and efficient.
* it could instantly scale to a full load by using more legs.
* tiny simple legs could be pulled into the body for safety
* New legs could be printed while moving to replace damaged ones.
* Would be amazingly sturdy and support any terrain
* Could probably walk upside-down on many surfaces due to the distributed footing and ability to apply opposing force.
* Very light "step", pressure per foot distributed over very large area.
* Very smooth travel.
* Could be adapted to nearly any vehicle. (You could probably put this kind of feet on a house and have something that could run down the freeway without disturbing the contents!)
Actually it would probably have a large load vs speed swing (Heavily loaded it would just be able to crawl) so maybe that house doesn't climb up on the freeway...but it would still look pretty cool..
[Answer]
Ghost in the Shell may have the right idea... [Tachikomas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachikoma) have four legs, but they also have wheels on the legs, which gives them some of the benefits of both. For level terrain, they roll like wheeled vehicles, bypassing the efficiency problems of walkers. For rough terrain, they can retract the wheels and gain the mobility advantage of walkers.
[Answer]
### It depends on the threat model
With drones and missiles becoming sufficiently smart and ubiquitous, heavy armor and a low profile will no longer be adequate protections for a manned ground vehicle. You'll need active defenses, at least *some* anti-air and electronic warfare capabilities and a versatile sensor and communications suite.
Even if you manage to make room for all of this (e.g. by replacing most of the crew with technology) in a traditional tank, positioning especially the defensive weapons in a way that doesn't restrict their arcs of effect or interfere with other systems is difficult, at least in my experience. This issue will be exacerbated if you need more than one offensive weapon for whatever reason.
For a vehicle favoring sensors, active defenses and utilizing a wide range of possible cover over heavy armor, the variable ground clearance and flexibility of legs (whether they're attached to feet or wheels) can be a major advantage.
Bonus points for a sectioned design that can take a penetrating hit to noncritical areas and remain somewhat operational.
(No, not humanoid. Funnily enough, aircraft-like designs - without the wings/rotors - seem to do well in simulations.)
### It depends on the tech level
Among the most often voiced concerns are complexity and energy efficiency, and they're 100% valid when talking about current day technology. However, complexity is relative, and what seems challenging today might be child's play in a couple of generations. And while e.g. the wheel is unlikely to significantly change in the future, mechanical legs and their control systems are *potentially* capable of feats that a car just can't replicate.
For example, imagine an AI that knew *exactly* where to step and how hard, could track any number of threats and optimize each movement to maximize cover against them, while moving across difficult terrain without slowing down. Put the same AI in a traditional vehicle and, well, 90% of its capabilites are wasted. But will we perfect a walker's balance, mobility and ease of repair before ground combat vehicles are made obsolete by some other technology? That's entirely up to the writer.
### It depends on the size
A roughly human-sized design is possible, although expensive, with current day technology and may be used to support infantry. More importantly though, if technology advances to the point where drones and anti-missile weapons are cheap and ubiquitous, you'll quickly find out that a lot of those weapons are also frighteningly effective against infantry (e.g. if you have lasers able to disrupt an incoming missile, permanently blinding enemy infantry will be trivial), so it stands to reason that soldiers will mostly be replaced by (or at least operate exclusively in or near) highly mobile vehicles. It's possible, whether for ethical reasons or because your AI just isn't quite good enough, that those will still be operated by humans, and to keep that human in one piece, they can't be much smaller than a current day tank (though probably much lighter).
Scaling up from there heavily depends on what technologies emerge in what order, and has diminishing returns (so no "land battleships", ever), but realistically, the limit is determined as much by doctrine as by physics. For example, in one of my settings, making the walkers larger made them *worse* at combat, but able to carry bigger reactors, computers and sensors and thus more of a force multiplier.
] |
[Question]
[
So, it's several hundred years in the future and the majority of humanity now live on artificial habitats, either clustered together into nation-sized groups or scattered individually across the solar system. Technology has advanced pretty far, and while we haven't figured out stuff like Alcubierre drives or artificial gravity; we do have reliable, powerful, fusion for ship drives capable of efficiently giving a ship several hundred km/s of delta-v.
Out of the depths of space comes an automated alien ship. It has spent centuries traveling from another star a hundred light years away; sent by a race of aliens that had just been taken over by their own version of the Third Reich when their astronomers reported that a little planet a hundred light years away had the perfect conditions for life. Being completely reasonable beings, they decided the most logical thing to do would be to send a ship to make sure that whatever is living on that planet never has the opportunity to develop into something that can threaten them.
So, it's a single automated alien warship vs. the collective military might of somewhere around 20-30 billion humans, most of whom live in space. The human ships are armed with kinetic kill missiles capable of hitting with the energy of a tactical nuke, cannon capable of firing heavy projectiles at several dozen km/s, Casaba howitzers, and lasers. For defense, they have defense grids of railguns, lasers and particle cannons for vaporizing incoming projectiles, as well as powerful magnetic shields for protection against radiation, particle beam weapons, and the vaporized debris from incoming projectiles. They have engines that use some undefined method of fusion to provide several hundred kilometers of delta-v at a fairly sedate acceleration, or throw themselves around at several g-s in an emergency. Pretty agile for something that masses over a hundred thousand tons.
This level of human technology is pretty impressive... in fact, it comes pretty close to the most advanced level of technology that we humans are capable of predicting within the bounds of hard science, and that's the problem. What technologies can I give the alien probe that would enable it to utterly outclass the human fleets, while remaining within the bounds of hard science fiction?
EDIT: To be clear, in order to be a threat, this alien ship has to be capable of dispatching hundreds, if not thousands of warships like the ones I've described, and then still have the capability destroy every habitat scattered across the solar system, and THEN still be able to wipe Earth itself clean of life. About the only limitations I'm putting on it are: No future fantasy (hard light shields, warp drives), and an upper limit on size of somewhere around a billion metric tons.
[Answer]
This might not be the answer you are looking for, as it doesn't result in lots of exciting space battles between the alien warship and the humans. However, if your aliens are interested in winning rather than putting on a show, then this is how a grown-up civilisation would wage an interstellar war. The warship's advanced alien technology is...
# Not slowing down
In order to cross a 100 light year distance within hundreds of years, the alien space ship has an average velocity of somewhere between 0.1c and 0.9c. If we take the lower bound of 0.1c, then as a rough order of magnitude estimate, every *kilogram* of the alien spaceship has as much kinetic energy as is released by a 100kt nuclear warhead.
The attack plan of the automated ship is simple. While it is still speeding through interstellar space, the warship would disgorge millions of small, independently targeted kill vehicles, ranging in mass from a few grams up to a tonne. These would lock onto the heat signature of everything emitting more than a gigawatt (which would include all the fusion drives, habitats and planetary colonies in the solar system). Using the same advanced drive technology that allowed them to accelerate the warship in the first place, these kill vehicles would use the occasional burst of engine power to maintain a collision course for their targets.
If they were looking in the right direction, Human astronomers may puzzle about why they are seeing millions of bursts of radiation, all coming from an expanding constellation in one corner of the sky. However before anyone has put together any serious plan of action, the swarm of vehicles has entered the solar system. Every habitat and ship that happened to not be occluded by a planetary body has been hit by a cloud of near-relativistic shrapnel. Every planet has been hit by hundreds of 100 megaton kinetic strikes, vaporising populations on one side of each planet, and levelling the other with the ensuing earthquakes and dust clouds. With careful timing and delaying the arrival of the munitions over a couple of days, there would be very little in the way of a hiding place. The human presence in the solar system would be decimated before space-navies even had a chance to react.
No strike is perfect, and it is likely that some lucky circumstances may allow a handful of ships and habitats to survive. However, human civilisation would be no more. Colonies would be wrecked, and those that managed to survive would face massive infrastructure failures. The survivors would quickly find themselves running low on food, fuel, propellant and medical supplies. Although it may be possible to rebuild, the solar system isn't going to be a threat to anyone for a very long time.
[Answer]
**von Neumann Machines**
aka Gray Goo, one of the more horrific potential apocalypses facing the humans race. Raw numbers are probably the strongest of force multipliers you could ask for, which means that unless you give this alien warship weapons and technology which just outclass the humans, which, given that humans have kinetic projectiles at sizeable fractions of *c* means you need the stuff you don't want, i.e. anti kinetic shields or dimensional drives.
So the solution is to give the alien ship a means to counter the numbers, and just have their automated ship made up of self-replicating robots (not even necessarily nanobots) and spends a decent chunk of time in the asteroid belt snagging asteroids and comets to use to create a fleet.
[Answer]
"The Three Body Problem" by Liu Cixin has several ideas for crazy advanced technology and I recommend reading it for the full details (it's also really good).
The two most applicable to you:
**multi-dimensional entities**
The ship is just the 3D projection of something that is actually an eleven-dimensional object. Among other things, that means its internal "volume" (or whatever the 11D term for that is) isn't x^3 but x^11 - if it is a cube of 10m each side, it isn't 1,000 m^3 inside, but 100,000,000,000 m^11
Plus, of course, it basically won't care much about things that hit it in 3D space. The same scaling factor would apply to damage, only in reverse.
**strong-interaction material**
The 2nd book in the series (I think) actually has a similar scene. An alien scout ship enters the solar system and the entire human armada goes to meet it - a show of force. The scout is small and unmanned. But its surface is strange. Then it accelerates and simply *flies through* every ship in the fleet, barely slowing down. Turns out it is made of a meta-material condensed towards the strong-interaction force being dominant. In essense, it is orders of magnitude more dense than metal, and any solid ordinary material is little more than a puff of air to it. It doesn't need weapons, it just flies straight through you, turning you to dust in the process.
It is similar to neutron matter, if you want.
---
In essence - look to the crazy outlandish ideas in modern physics. Many of these things have been theorized about - quantum materials, neutron matter, miniature black holes, etc. etc.
[Answer]
**Trojan horse**
The automatic warship limps into the system, obviously disabled, flying blind. The long dead corpses of its crew are still aboard. Earth recognizes its alien nature and realizes that it is a ghost ship. The military wants that alien tech! And the ship does have excellent and complex tech.
It is brought back to earth for study. As its creators expected, because that is what they would have done. Once on the surface the ship releases a prion-like polymeric bioweapon that acts on reduced carbon. This rapidly spreads across the surface, purging the earth of life.
The military in their spacecraft wonders why things have gotten so quiet. If they return to the surface to find out, they will find out.
[Answer]
With all due credit given to Roddenberry's masterpiece...
**Cloaking Field**
If the alien vessel can absorb all of the energies (including visible light) that our active sensors use, and if it can also store/conceal all of this collected energy plus its' own emitted energies from our passive sensors, then all of our weapons and maneuverability won't help.
Such an invisible vessel could stalk around our solar system, quietly cataloging every human habitation and major ship, only attacking each at their moment of greatest vulnerability.
The ship's computer has been patient enough to travel for hundreds of years just to reach us. There is no reason it has to hurry with our extermination now that it is here.
[Answer]
## The other idea's here are all good, but there isn't going to be a silver bullet.
A human civilization like you're describing is a *large*, *diverse* *ecosystem* of *adaptable self-replicating intelligent agents*. (And it may have access to it's own super-intelligent AI, or it may not, IDK.)
Even if you can get 99% fatalities in your first volley, the invader is going to need to hang around for decades hunting out that last 1% and responding to their every batsh\*t scheme.
Remember: 1% of a trillion is ten billion.
**The invader will want to be able to build more of itself.** If that's infeasible, then the invader will want to remain hidden as much as possible and let disposable probes that it *can* make more of do most of the dirty work.
**The invader will want to remain hidden.** How it does this is open-ended, and multiple levels of obfuscation are good. Information is power, so don't let your prey learn anything about you if you can help it.
**The invader will be clever and deceptive.** At some point the humans will understand they're under attack, and/or that there is an alien visitor. Information is power, so the more they misunderstand the situation the better.
## Specific technology:
**Some mechanism for venting heat quietly.** I don't know what kind of surveillance technology the humans have. A general purpose cloaking device is a good idea, and can help with different kinds of *active* detection. What's still needed is a way to not show up on conventional infrared telescopes. **Maybe the invader can vent heat as a neutrino beam pointed out of the solar system?**
**Ironically, defense is easy.** The weapons you list the humans having are all either easy to dodge (by always accelerating randomly) or can be defended against using defenses that you *also* list the humans having. **The invader can dodge or shrug off human attacks using human-level technology as long as it doesn't let itself get cornered by an overwhelming force simultaneously.**
**Offense is hard.** The best defense is a good offense, so if you're going to get in a fight with a human ship then you need a weapon it *can't* dodge or armor against. You're trying to avoid speculative science, so I can't think of any magic thing the humans don't already have, but **if the invader has more energy at its fingertips, and can vent heat faster, then it will win a laser fight eventually.**
## But how to start?
The opening volley should take out Earth completely, and ideally every other target-able population center as well. [I suggest item #3 here](https://qntm.org/destroy#sec3).
In the best case, at the same time you're seeding earth with micro black holes (because of course you won't send just *one*), you're also seeding the Sun. **I have no idea if stars are actually vulnerable to micro black holes, but let's assume they are.** It's going to take a while for the sun to get eaten, during which time it'll be cooking the entire solar system with extra radiation. This is actually a problem for you, because it's an opportunity for humans to escape to other stars. (If they haven't already done so, the extra radiation from the sun will let them set up solar sails that much easier.)
## Suggested timeline:
* First decade: Hide at the edges of the solar system doing reconnaissance.
* Six months to two years: Bio-weapons. They won't wipe out the humans, but they'll sure be distracting.
* D-day: Micro black holes arrive simultaneously at the Sun, the Earth, and as many other inhabited bodies as you have black holes to spare.
* Simultaneously: More traditional surprise attacks on as many other structures as you can target. Depending on the timeline for planets and stars to succumb to micro black holes, you should probably target Earth cities too.
* The next 100 years: Make more of yourself and hunt down all the survivors.
[Answer]
I would strongly recommend relaxing your rules for the aliens A LOT.
I will assume that you want to have some kind of narrative. To really make the alien alien, the other, I would give them future-fantasy devices. Not necessarily the most used in future fantasy, but offense and defense impossible by our current understanding of physics.
Examples: Short-Range Teleportation of the ship, Energy Apsorption, Terror/Rage inducing Fields and the like.
This way their technology reinforces their alienness and you can have a focused narrative with seemingly invulnerable and deadly invaders.
ADDITION AFTER THINKING ABOUT IT: If you do not want to take this path, maybe you could use a complete alien paradigm. Thats why I like @Willk's answer. It's not that the alien just have a bigger hammer to kill humans with small hammers. They have rats to kill the humans before they can use their hammer :)
Examples: Bio/Techno-Plague (As answered by Willk), Psychoactive Field Emitters, everything not related to maximizing energy impact (the dominant human paradigm in warfare)
Bottomline: Who wants powerful but ultimatly 'linear-stronger' (on the same tech tree as humans) alien invaders? Make them quasi-magic to incite awe and terror.
[Answer]
There is no need for the alien ship to do much at all.
This sort of existing armament ready to deploy means we're still in mutually antagonistic groups. Without outside threat there would not be this sort of armament.
The addition of an unknown ship shooting anything without warning would trigger a war and the probable destruction of humanity.
[Answer]
I'm going to focus on two kinds of weapon. Information and Energy weapons.
It arrives in a wave of relativistic shrapnel. The humans see it coming -- a bunch of blue-shifted drive plumes and Cherenkov radiation caused by relativistic matter moving through the interstellar medium.
Some humans hide, dodge, try to intercept. Hiding behind planets works reasonably well. Dodging doesn't. Interception runs into the problem that (a) enemy drive tech is way better, and (b) if you intercept too close the debris are as dangerous as the projectile.
Still, there is some success. 1% of humanity survives the initial attack, the economic collapse caused by the rest of humanity being destroyed, and the flotsam and jetsam flying around the solar system after it.
Humanity at least knows that the alien ship is hostile. The largest body of the enemy ship decelerates as more relativistic projectiles continue to bombard the system. For the rest of the war more relativistic "thunderbolts" arrive, directed by the enemy ship, at irregular intervals. Singularity powered craft with near limitless energy budgets constructed out of exotic chemistry held together with active magnetic fields.
That was the energy attack. Next comes the information attack.
The ship splits into two. One part starts self replicating and building up an industrial base (at dozens of seed-sites). The other starts hunting the remaining humans.
Lifeforms that are adapted to space and eat your habitats. Not grey goo, but custom-built pseudo-life, as dangerous as O2 emitting organisms where to early Earth life (as in, very).
Drones that spy on all movement and heat and communcations channels in the solar system. That break human communications security as if it wasn't there. That pattern match on human communications, replicate, and do a cross between a Chinese Room and a Deepfake to insert chaos into human communication systems.
Basilisk attacks on the human visual cortex that paralyze, kill, or induce specific behavior on (some) humans on sight.
Reasonably accurate predictor machines that model human future actions with high fidelity from tiny fragments of information.
This "information war" is intended to keep any remnants of humanity (a) under watch, and (b) ineffective and distracted. It knows it cannot manage a 100% cleansing of humans using these techniques, so *it doesn't try*. I mean, the death rates are horrifying, with 10%-50% of the remaining population of humans dying *every year*, but that is just to provide incentive. Instead, it uses humans themselves to find other humans and find information about humans, and gets them to band together.
Humans are *distracted* away from the von Neumann factories producing an industrial base for the aliens while they are vulnerable. They are convinced to focus on the singularity hunter-killer ships, who blatantly destroy human habitats and ships at seeming random and are extremely good at dodging.
30 billion humans drop to 300 million on first strike.
150 million are lost in the first year of the war.
Then the losses drop. 20 million, 10 million, 5 million, 15 million, 5 million, 2 million, 8 million, 30 million, 10 million, 5 million.
More and more humanity hides in its remaining refuges. Communications channels talking of rallying arrive, they send their best and brightest, and they never return.
Strange energy readings are picked up from the moons of Jupiter, together with communications stating that the humans there have managed to outfox the alien invasion and are rebuilding to strike back. Actually, area is quite sterile, and new ships arriving are escorted into meat grinders.
Then a few sterilization sweeps clean up 99.97% of the remaining humans. The remaining thousands live in a stealth habitat buried under Mars. They survive for a few centuries before the aliens disassembly of the planet digs up their habitat. They are then placed in museums as an example of yet another threat removed from the glorious Empire's worlds.
[Answer]
Not meant to be a top answer but as something to consider: what if it isnt superior technology but superior design?
The human ships are all efficient, they dont waste space and are build as compact and capable as possible. That makes turning easier and gives you a smaller profile to hit. Great atteibutes right?
But the aliens come with an absolutely enormous ship. It's armor can't stop the projectiles of the humans who can easily shoot holes and they can verify their shots coming out the other side. But no matter how much they shoot it the ship just doesnt stop functioning, and every time it escapes the battle it comes back repaired and ready in a relatively short time and on top of that it seems to adapt it's array of weapons and engine's each time. So how do they do it?
They use a hollow ship. Most of the hull is just that, a dead piece of bulkhead that looks functional but actually is nothing more than some armor designed to leave as small a hole when penetrated as possible. The size of the hull is used to radiate the heat generated and for obfuscation of what goes on inside the hull. A secondary and tertiary thinner hull are on the inside that can be rotated to make it look like the ship has more internals after it has been penetrated.
Along the inside of the ship several components can move around. The command module(s), weapons and engines can move around the inside, anchor themselves at several places and open up the modular hull to do any sensing, propulsing or firing they need to do, then move again in case of retalliatory fire to prevent damage. Then after the battle the ship moves to a few factories hidden in the kuiper belt that produce new hull modules for any damaged area's and weapons. The humans first need to find out what is happening and hope they can win the battle of attrition and chance, their hope being that they can kill enough command modules containing aliens to stop their ability to progress with the war.
[Answer]
Local singularity.
Deploy AI into the local system that is more advanced than whatever is present.
This frightening prospect is real even for people today.
Secondly, hallucinogenic weapons. For some reason never deployed even in the worst horrors of human war. LSD bombs.
[Answer]
**Asteroid Launcher**
The ship sneaks into the asteroid belt and starts manufacturing engines on the asteroids. When enough is made, it launches them at the Earth and/or other targets.
Sure the Earth forces can try and blow them up but that's not really going to help as it just changes a single shot round into a shotgun round.
Multiply that by thousands of asteroids all at the same time and Earth forces will be overwhelmed.
A single automated ship with manufacturing capabilities and enough time could launch a meteor swarm capable of taking out the Earth
[Answer]
# The Straight forward solution
I can't help but notice that your humans have incredibly slow railguns. You could potentially give your aliens railguns several magnitudes faster. This allows them to outclass individual engagements against humanities flagships.
Additionally, your humans don't have AI. that means that their thought can only be done at the speed of human thought. Maybe make your alien ship controlled by some living network that is able to intake, parse, interpret, and make counter-strategies to whatever humanity can throw at it. If you want to go really out there, you can make the ship either living itself, living material wrapped around a mechanical ship, or controlled by some biocomputer composed of quadrillions of neurons.
Adding on to that last point, perhaps you could have the ship constantly changing it's configuration.
If you want to borrow a page from another book, maybe have your ship nest itself in our asteroid belt (or a planetary ring, whatever) and build up its own small armada, turning it into a von Neumann probe. If it plays it's cards right, it could take out the weaker human settlements without anybody figuring out where the main probe is. Depending on how advanced you want to go, your ship could also make it's aliens inside of it, allowing them to settle in old human settlements.
Maybe your alien ship has a more advanced version of humanity's magnetic fields, such that all radiation misses it except for a few blips to let the ship know where it is. This shield is so large that it's small armada can hide inside of it, and the energy and matter from the exhaust is dispersed enough to be considered anomalous.
Perhaps your aliens have some manner to harvest antimatter. Your ship now, seeing that there are 11 planetoids in this system, prepares 11 antimatter bombs, and launches them in an intercept trajectory with each planetoid.
If the inside of your ship is pressurized (or if it isn't), then you now have diseases from the original planet. All the ship has to do is go into the atmosphere of one of humanity's planets and release these. The same goes for intentionally cultivated diseases.
Perhaps your alien ship could have the capacity to launch small planetoids (Pluto, Chiron, etc) through some kind of propulsion device (antimatter charge, turn itself into a tunnel-shaped railgun, etc). This object is has too much momentum for any of humanities technologies to do anything to it.
# The Really creative Solution
Your alien makes a persona with which to proselytize humanity into some new religion. Maybe it offers immortality in it's computer system. Maybe it offers the chance to go past the solar system super fast. Either way, for whatever promise that is made, the end effect has to 1) divide humanity into believers and non-believers. The believers would win in a fight because alien tech is cool, however the alien keeps it's best stuff completely hidden, leaving the believers faction incredibly decimated.
Your alien then uses the psychology of humanity, that it learned over the course of the war, to push them to exhaust all of their resources towards whatever plan it has for them. Some split will inevitably be caused within the believers, leading to whatever efforts have been made to come crumbling down. Eventually, humanity will be too small to effectively put up resistance, or your ship can say "It seems you weren't worthy after all," and all of humanity can be killed with minimal expenditure.
[Answer]
The automated alien ship contains a huge radioactive mass that sterilizes everything getting too close.
It emits dangerous levels of radiation even intact, but if humans perforate its capsule, it would only increase the amount being emitted and make things even more dangerous.
If humans attempt to use powerful explosives against the ship, the radioactive mass could either:
a) Scatter across the solar system, effectively poisoning it and making it uninhabitable for billions of years.
-or-
b) Fuse and explode with such a force that it obliterates the Sun and many of the planets and human settlements.
Such a ship meets all stated criteria:
* It's capable of dispatching thousands of advanced warships, as its radiation penetrates even the thickest feasible shields in current use at that time.
* It has the capability to destroy every habitat scattered across the solar system by simply getting close enough to lethally irradiate them.
* Can similarly wipe Earth itself clean of life.
* It needs no advanced technology beyond being able to contain and lug around a huge mass of radioactive material.
[Answer]
**Directed dark energy weapon.**
Similar in principle to a laser but made of dark energy. A rather trivial amount of dark energy would annihilate positive energy and or matter. Human civilization may not have sensors to detect it. And even if detectable, the attack is travelling at the speed of light. Combine this with @MadScientist answer and you'd annihilate vast portions of the solar system without a trace.
[Answer]
This problem isn't actually that hard. Some ideas that come to mind:
* Teleportation
* Gravity manipulation
* Cloaking, for visual, heat, and radar, etc, and both for the large vessel and any smaller bodies or persons that leave the vessel.
* Shapeshifting/Imitation. Imagine small fighting ships that can exactly mimic human vessels, fooling all our sensors, even the the human eye. Imagine a similar device for individual soldiers, letting them mimic people, down to medical checks and disection. *Maybe these devices are operated remotely*.
* Super-powers. Give individual solders skin-tight armor where each soldier has Iron-Man, Superman, or Goku-like power, or whatever else you want.
* Phase shifting. Allow the ship to slip into and out of an alternate dimension, so missiles, kinetic projectiles, and energy attacks sent against it just harmlessly pass through.
* Time manipulation. Not absolute time travel... just the ability to make small, limited adjustments to the flow of time. Think "Omega 13" from Galaxy Quest, or bullet time from the Matrix.
* Immortality. I'm thinking how Guardians work in the Destiny video games, where there's a separate entity that looks much like technology that can reconstruct the soldiers every time you kill one. The large ship could be your "Traveler".
* Perfect Battle AI. No matter what the humans do, the AI has the perfect counter-strategy already in operation.
One additional concept that has worked well for many others is taking things that right now must be large and making them small, take things that right now must be expensive (and rare), and making them cheap (and common), take things that right now need too much energy and finding ways to supply that energy or have them need less.
That was just a couple-minutes worth of thought. To me, the hard part is finding appropriate limits for the aliens. Otherwise, the aliens are *too strong*, and there's no struggle left from which to build an interesting story.
Now, you might say some of these ideas violate this requirement:
>
> "While remaining within the bounds of hard science fiction"
>
>
>
But I'll counter with:
>
> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
>
> *-- Arthur C Clarke*
>
>
>
Arthur C Clarke is about as "hard science fiction" as you can get. Remember, **you don't have to explain the technology.** It just is. If the humans in your story could explain how it worked, they could also perhaps copy, reproduce, or counter it.
[Answer]
Since it would be sufficiently difficult for the invaders to predict what human society would look like by the time that they arrived they need to create contingency plans in the unlikely event humans discovered the perfect counter to whatever attack plan they initially had.
Some suggestions come to mind:
**A giant universal constructor**, the alien ship is basically a giant 3D printer capable of producing anything as long as it can procure raw materials. Luckily there are plenty of asteroids and enemies that can be harvested for carbon that can then be molded into whatever automaton or weapons that is needed at the time.
**Alternatively your aliens could attempt to blow up the sun**, surely killing off most life on earth and significantly reducing the ability of any space stations that escape the initial blast to survive. Even if they do they will be hard pressed to ever be capable of posing any kind of significant threat in the future.
[Answer]
**Genetically-engineered bio-weapons capable of exterminating all life on Earth.**
They're super-advanced aliens, so the bio-weapon doesn't have to be based on anything possible as a result of nature, either, so you could have something like a bacteria-analog which forms biofilms, aggressively attacks and breaks down all other biological material it comes into contact with, has a cell wall composed of high molecular-density polymers to prevent it from being broken down by other microscopic life (and also probably results in the bioweapon releasing toxic waste products as a result of its metabolism producing these polymers), which can eat right through any form of plastic or rubber to allow it to break through biohazard seals, which is immune to all known antibiotics, and whose spores are capable of surviving anything short of a full-blown centrifuge.
The end result would be a slowly-but-inexorably expanding zone of black sludge that kills anything that comes into contact with it by dissolving their bodies into more of the black sludge.
[Answer]
Using advanced computers the ship can perturb trajectories of some asteroids to impact Earth. This would not need much energy because of the stochastic character of their movement: the better calculations you do on how and when to perturb them, the less energy you need.
] |
[Question]
[
I want to write a science fiction book on a planet mostly covered by ocean, but I also want to incorporate trains into my story. However, it seems that with advances in ship and plane technology, trains may become obsolete. So, my question is, what role could trains possibly play in a world mostly covered by water?(It is not all water, but roughly 85%)
P.S. This is my first question so I might have gotten this wrong.
[Answer]
from wikipedia: "About 71% of Earth's surface is covered with water, mostly by oceans." So take away a couple of continents, and you have 85%.
If only Europe existed, that would mean roughly 98% of the Earth covered in Oceans and there would still be trains in it.
ETA to address comments: trains in a world mostly covered with water would have the same viability/purpose as trains have in our world. Unless all your land masses are islands with only space for one village on them.
[Answer]
It largely depends on the size of the landmasses, as long as the islands are larger than coral atolls trains can be useful. Many small islands on Earth have or had trains despite people being able to walk across them in a few hours.
The [Channel Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_heritage_and_private_railways#Isle_of_Man) have short railways that follow the coastline between the main port and the one or two other towns on the islands. These are generally about 6-24km long.
Some [Caribbean islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_by_country#Caribbean) have or had railways as well. The smallest one being 12km on [St. Kitts](http://www.stkittsscenicrailway.com).
[Oceania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_by_country#Oceania) has island railways as well, largest obviously being in Australia and New Zealand. But there are several small railways, working and abandoned, on smaller islands.
So while trains would be seen as a relatively unimportant means of transportation compared to boats and planes, they would still be useful for transportation.
[Answer]
I think that a specific train is going to outmatch your planes and boats: The Vacuum train.
By creating a tunnel, which seems pretty necessary anyway, and putting a maglev train into it (maglev so it doesn't create friction with the surroundings), then sucking it as vacuum as you can you can make trains go at 7000km/h through them. That kind of beats plane's 900km/h.
Build these tunnels at one specific height from the surface with as little altitude change as possible, but anchor them to the sea-floor for stability. The water deeper below the sea surface is extremely uniform between around 0 to 4 degree's (celsius), this means you suffer far less from expansion/retraction of the tubes heating up and cooling down across the day, which is kind of important when your tube spans the sea's. Since you are already sucking it vacuum anyway, it's going to be designed to withstand the larger pressures around your chosen depth so the extra waterpressure doesn't seem too problematic for a spacefaring organisation. Power it with tidal-generators at the surface and you've got a clean, solid system.
Example of proposed rail systems in large oceans found here: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel>
[Answer]
You didn't specify how deep the water is. There was an early electric railway built in the tidal area of Brighton that ran with the rails under the sea and the cars above the surface:
<http://volkselectricrailway.co.uk/history/the-daddy-long-legs/>
It was very vulnerable to storms and the shifting of the coastline.
[Answer]
Trains are very efficient at moving things from one place to another - efficiency measured in amount of fuel required.
The limitations are that they require infrastructure (tracks) and they are most efficient the fewer stops they have (fewer points of embark/disembark).
So to make them viable in your story, the infrastructure needs to be cheap, fuel expensive, and having few points you need to connect or travel between. Building a separate transportation structure which does last mile delivery, and which can't easily replace trains will boost train usage.
The infrastructure is the difficult aspect of your water world, but if the world has shallow water between landmasses, trains on trestles over water will be faster and more efficient than boats.
So if you can design your world with shallow water, or peculiar landmasses that provide a place to put tracks (undersea ridges at continental plates - still below water, but shallow enough for tracks) then you may find that trains are a viable means of transportation of people and goods over large lakes and small oceans.
In these cases, though, ocean weather and waves become very important, and could result in some exciting scenes. Perhaps the trains may attach to the tracks more securely and are water shedding if not submarine, and perhaps the tracks are 10 meters above calm water so waves rarely reach the trains.
[Answer]
Yes, trains can work in a world with oceans. Like they do. Ho; hum. What is needed is awesomeness.
**I propose a train which runs on a short pontoon bridge that reassembles itself in front of the moving train.**
The schematic:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pvQWd.jpg)
1: Train rolls along short bridge floating on pontoons.
2: Rearmost segment rolls forward along sister segments.
3: Moving segment overtakes train.
4: Moving segment clips in front, ready to receive train. New rearmost segment detatches and begins to move forward.
These moving segments of pontoon bridge would have submerged rudders which would swing parallel to axis of travel for motion, perpendicular to axis of travel when the train is atop.
I have depicted this with 3 segments in the interest of simplicity. A bridge with more segments would be safer and also present the spectacle of multiple segments moving along each side of the bridge at any given time.
What advantage does this have over a boat, the skeptical might ask. This system uses a train, with all train awesomeness, and which rolls along tracks as trains are wont. It does not know anything untoward is going on below. And the self-extending pontoon bridge would be great for a steampunk-type anime where you did not have to actually build it.
[Answer]
You could have underwater trains. Think hyperloop and such. Since your world is covered in water you cna have underwater dome stations and maybe cities as well that juts out to the ocean surface. Makes for an interesting social hierarchy as well but that's outside of your question so yeah maybe toy around with the idea for underwater trains.
[Answer]
You didn't say your entire planet was underwater, so I assume there are landish areas.
Trains are *far and away* the most efficient way to move people fast.
Boats won't have speed much over 30 knots, Europe has tried with the ferries across the Baltic, Black, North and Irish seas.
If the sea is shallow, trains can cross it, as the Florida East Coast railway did to Key West.
The French have had no trouble running regular trains at 300 mph (500 mph). On a lark and with little preparation, Americans stuck jet engines on an old passenger car and shot it up to 200mph on some old track that was due for replacement.
The small size of your land area isn't a huge impediment, since railways struggle when they're *too* long. The Trans Siberian is an awkward operation, railways work better at 1000 miles long tops. Passenger railroads work better at 100-200 miles. That's why they work so well in Europe: countries are just the right size.
[Answer]
There is one potential problem that has not been mentioned in the other answers and that is the amount of available resources. You will need a lot of steel ([about 100 tons per kilometer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_profile) for the tracks alone). Compare this to a lightweight plane or a boat which can be mostly made of wood.
Now if most of your world is at low elevation and close to the coast, any mining operation will either be rather superficial or has to deal with large amounts of groundwater seeping in from the sea. Using modern pumps and a lot of work this should be a solvable problem, however metals will be more expensive and less readily available in your world. The same holds for coal, which will hamper any sort of industrial revolution until you are able to locate and drill for oil in the sea.
[Answer]
Trains are not made obsolete by boats and planes, they are made obsolete by cars and trucks. Use tunnels rather than bridges to connect your land masses, as all the longest tunnels use rail. (see [Channel tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel) and [Seikan tunnel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikan_Tunnel))
[Answer]
It may not fit, but what about a storm world with relentless winds and violent storms that prevent air travel and make travel using small vehicles dangerous. The rough water would also make ships dangerous and small boats impossible. You could use submarines, but trains would be more efficient.
A flat topography with few mountains to block prevailing winds could be the setting.
You could have small landmasses connected by isthmuses. cities would only be possible in the lee of rare mountains. Trains would connect those cities.
[Answer]
Trains require relatively flat terrain to operate most efficiently. That's because they haul huge weights with relatively little power, and so climbing gradients is relatively difficult.
Now, the sea surface is relatively flat, and its action on coastlines is often to level them, producing beaches, and in many places, shallow estuary-like areas. As ice ages come and go, the sea level changes so a common land pattern is a "raised beach" - relatively flat low-lying land a few metres above the current sea level. So seas can produce a range of terrain ideally adapted for efficient railway building.
Railways can run on or just inland from beaches, and crossing marshes, estuaries and shallow seas on causeways or bridges on stilts. Deeper water in sheltered areas may be bridged with pontoon bridges, though weather would destroy any built over deep oceans. Thus you can probably link island chains, with only a few miles between islands, with a railway running from one continent to another.
Historically, sea also tends to concentrate human populations along the shoreline - boats were a much easier form of travel than pre-railway land transport. Still works, though rail is faster if it goes where you're going. So most towns and cities were already built along the most convenient railway routes, making railway adoption easy.
[Answer]
A few examples from island nations:
Singapore's metro system has 200km of railway lines
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Rapid_Transit_(Singapore)>
The UK *invented* the railway and has an extensive domestic network. It is now possible to take the train to France via the channel tunnel on a Eurostar passenger train, or even take a car or truck across on board a Le Shuttle train. It was decided not to allow vehicle owners to drive through the channel tunnel, but they can drive onto the train and cross that way. I'm not sure of the reasons why this method was chosen, but I suspect accidents, breakdowns and disposal of exhaust fumes would be issues in such a long road tunnel. Freight trains have also been important in the UK, both as shuttles in the mining industry and for long distance travel, and routes through the channel tunnel connect the UK with the rest of Europe.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel>
Japan's Shinkansen was/is one of the most advanced trains in the world. The map on the linked page shows only the Shinkansen lines (not the extensive local railways or metro systems.) Note that all major islands are linked by Shinkansen, though Hokkaido looks underdeveloped compared to the rest of the country.
<https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2019.html>
More examples here
<http://mikes.railhistory.railfan.net/r008.html>
As castor says, the golden age of the railway was ended by motorised road transport, not boats. Prior to the invention of the motor vehicle, the railway was king.
[Answer]
For shallow water, an elevated track on pylons (either maglev or more conventional) would work quite well for crossing between landmasses.
For deep water..less so, but one concept that occurs would be something closer in principle to a real-world Land-Train.
Land Trains are essentially a conventional articulated truck with a particularly powerful cab and a daisy-chain of trailers behind them. They operate similarly to a train but don't use tracks to guide themselves.
I envision a system where you have an extremely powerful Tugboat pulling a series of barges on long-haul cargo trips.
The advantage over a more regular cargo ship is that it can operate in shallower water, can be split up at a port to unload without requiring specialised facilities and if something disastrous happens you only may only lose one of the barges rather than the whole payload.
Disadvantage is that its lower displacement and light/flexible nature makes it more vulnerable to extreme waves, so it might be more useful in calmer inland seas or on a planet with less tidal action.
[Answer]
Perhaps the planet has a backbone of landmass around its entire circumference. One of Saturn's moons, Lapetus, has an equatorial ridge of 20km tall mountains around 3/4 of its circumference.
If it was a connected ring you could imagine having an endless circle of trains encircling the planet.
[Answer]
Remember that the train powered by a locomotive was invented and first saw widespread use in... Britain, an island.
This gave the British a big economic advantage, as a train is a faster and much less expensive method of transportation, as compared to the alternative at that time... horse drawn wagons. Rails were less expensive to construct and could go more places than the other alternative at that time: canals with horse drawn barges.
So, yes, trains could play an important role in a planet that has even less landmass than earth... if the islands were large enough.
[Answer]
Some ideas:
* Possible on an ice covered planet (see [The Ice Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Compagnie_des_glaces)).
* It has been reported that burning penguins is a good fuel for a steamer.
* Metallic nodules at the bottom of the sea can be collected to build the rails.
* It is possible to make ice structures using some king of refrigerated ice made concrete (see [Pycrete](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete)).
] |
[Question]
[
## Premise
My world that has undergone a transformative breakthrough in biology and genetics. It's not just the ultra-rich who have it; rather, everyone is immortal. However, this world's understanding of economics is roughly that of Earth's. The public finance tools available to this world is also the same as Earth's. This creates a rather perplexing finance-related challenge for the society.
On Earth, it's not unheard of for countries to go into debt and take a long time to pay it off. Strictly theoretically speaking, countries don't ever have to pay off 100% of their debt. There are a few reasons for this, but one of the most chief of which is: **countries do not have a finite lifespan**.
**[** EDIT: As per the suggestions in the answers/comments, I might reconsider my word choice. Instead of saying countries have no **finite** lifespan, let's just say they have no **predetermined** lifespan, or even better a lifespan with no **upper ceiling** **]**
Creditor countries take this into consideration. Yet, the same does not hold true for Earthlings; most Earthlings are presumed to have a finite life span and cannot incur debt indefinitely without some form of punishment along the way.
Similarly, in my world, the immortals also do not have a finite lifespan; creditors get peace of mind that said immortal has all of eternity to pay up. This line of logic became the official policy in my world -- there is no explicit loan payment date.
Assume the immortals go into debt for the following financial incentives:
* Driving growth of investments: it would be risky, but ultimately more profitable to borrow money into debt in order to get higher returns from investments (real estate, stock market, ect)
* Inflation: assuming inflation increases over time; it's always going to be cheaper to pay off debt at a later date.
Given there are sufficient financial incentives for immortals to incur debt, and creditors allot an infinite amount of time to pay back the loan, everyone stands to make profit. It seems too good to be true... In such a scenario where money can be borrowed and spent indefinitely, the immortals could drive up inflation infinitely. The world doesn't want hyper inflation. Yet the world is also not budging on their ethos:
**Ethos:** **"you have eternity to pay back the loan."**
## Question
If there is no explicit due date, the immortals could abuse the world's ethos/policy as articulated above. Essentially, the question then becomes **why bother paying the loan back at all?** The immortals could say to their creditors: "I'll pay you back later." for all eternity.
**Assumptions:**
* the world ideally wants a functioning/healthy financial system (hyper-inflation is undesirable for this world)
* the percentage of the population in debt is anywhere from 80% to 99.99%
* over-population and other non-finance related notions are out of scope for this question
**Immortality Details**
* limb regrowth, starvation, disease, trauma
So as not to invalidate any existing answers, I will leave this as optional. To keep the logic used thus far as consistent as possible, we can assume these afflictions have minimal effects on the individuals. Assume immortals are impervious to all afflictions. Side Note: I originally considered a more humble form of immortality by which they have a full recovery in 48 hours or less, but I thought that could have a loop-hole where creditors could cut off a limb at regular intervals. Again, this isn't mandatory for the answer, but if the answerers feel so inclined to include a note about this, that's fine. However, I have included these details mostly in the interest of elevating the general discussion.
**Success Metric:** incentivize as many immortals as possible to make good on their loans without imposing a due date
**Keynes**: "In the long run, we're all dead."
**Immortal**: "Wrong."
[Answer]
Credit ratings should take care of this. Yes, an immortal might technically have eternity to pay off their loans - but nobody will want to lend any more money to an immortal who is currently millions of credits in debt. There may be other social ramifications as well; until you pay off your debt you may suffer from a general lack of privileges and/or respect.
As for dealing with inflation, this is one of the main purposes of interest. The reason why moneylenders generally require interest payments is because they want the *value* owed to remain the same even when the exact dollar amount does not; interest rates are based on expected inflation. As long as this value remains accurate, it will *not* benefit an immortal to wait longer to pay off their loan.
[Answer]
You're conflating the idea of always being in debt with not paying off individual notes. The US, for example, has been in debt for decades but you better believe that if you go redeem some savings bonds that they'll have your money. You just have to realize that on the back side they're reissuing another one. A person could have \$10k in credit card debt but as long as they're paying it every month, they're in good standing. On the other hand someone could have \$1k in credit card debt but if they don't ever pay it, they'll be in bad standing. It's easy to see in this example that aggregate debt levels aren't enough of a measure of someone's credit worthiness. The person's ability and willingness to service their debt is also very important.
In other words an immortal could always be in debt but as long as they continue to service all of their loans per the agreed upon terms then there's no reason why they couldn't take on new debt when the old debt is due to pay off the old debt.
[Answer]
In your world humans are immortal. But their institutions are not, bank included.
If you today walk down the street and search for a bank, do you find the Fugger or the Medici anywhere? They were among the biggest banks in late medieval time, and now they are gone.
Banks that always lend money and never get it back won't have any other way to get other money and go bankrupt. That means no more loans, as the entire business model of bank lending money goes down the drain. And even if banks would take the risk, they would promptly blacklist an immortal not paying back.
Therefore better pay your debts back to make more.
[Answer]
As recently as WW2, debt was considered a moral failure. An immortal should have no need for debt, and one who goes into debt is automatically a poor risk because they obviously don't know how to manage their finances.
Speaking from experience, debt of any sort is a kind of self imposed slavery. Living debt free is much more fun and it's much easier. An immortal is likely to learn this in the first lifetime
[Answer]
A payment due at some (specified) future date has a present-day worth. Calculating it requires either knowledge of the national or global interest rates until the payment is due, or an educated guess what the interest will be.
***Example:*** I promise to pay you £100 a year from now. The annual interest rate in the UK is 2%. Then I could take £98 out of my wallet today, put it into a bank account, and transfer the entire balance of the account to you when the year is over -- £100. So the future £100 payment is worth £98 today.
If you tack on many more years, the present-day worth of the future payment will be much lower.
***Example:*** I promise to pay you £100 a thousand years from now. The annual interest rate in the UK is 2% and I (foolishly) assume that it will average around that for the entire time. Then I could take £0.00000025 out of my wallet today, put it into a bank account, and transfer the entire balance of the account to you when the thousand years are over -- £100. So the future £100 payment is worth less than one pound today.
So an "IOU" due in the far future will not be worth the paper it is written on **today**.
And the same applies to an "IOU" with an unspecified date.
[Answer]
In our world, one of the subtle (?) social forces towards people paying their debts is the shame process whereby moral failing is ascribed, externally or internally, to people whom the dominant social actors believe to have taken more debt than appropriate for their social standing. In the last century, this has taken the shape of credit rating systems, but David Graeber's *Debt: The First 5'000 Years* shows other fascinating approaches from history. Once the moral failing has been ascribed, various rights or privileges can be denied, formally or informally, to "over-debted" people, nudging them towards paying them. Furthermore, even fear of falling into this category may nudge people towards limiting their debts.
Considering the reasons why such social forces arose, one would reasonably expect similar ideas could have been firmly in place in your world long before the development of immortality, and remained in place even as indefinite-term debts became commonplace.
[Answer]
Loans don't just extend indefinitely. Even for a country, a loan always has a specified duration - otherwise why would anyone ever lend someone money?
You're also wrong that countries do not have a finite lifespan. They absolutely do. The Roman Empire lasted for 1500 years, which I believe is the absolute longest lifespan there ever was. Most countries don't even remotely reach that age, especially modern ones. They aren't better at getting loans because they have long lifespans, they are better at getting loans because they have a much lower default risk thanks to the sheer total value circulating around.
Now of course this doesn't answer your question to incentivize as many immortals as possible to make good on their loans without imposing a due date - because that's, if I may be so bold, the wrong question. You absolutely have to impose a due date, always. Loans don't work any other way. You can pay back a loan with a new loan, but every loan by itself always has to end at some point, because banks aren't dumb.
Or, in other words, why do you need to incentivize the debitor to pay? It's simply not his call. A loan is a mutual agreement, and the debtee definitely has incentive to want their money back; so they'll make sure the loan contract has a due date or any other regulations they deem necessary.
What incentive do you have to pay for food instead of getting it for free? You don't, the other partner of the trade demands it.
---
As for the issue of inflation, that's not a problem of immortal species - all economies with fiat money and fractional reserves suffer from that. After all, to the debtee, a multi-generational dynasty is functionally no different from a long-living person. You have to solve that problem independently of immortality; with sound money or monetary policy.
[Answer]
You seem to assume that death of old age is the only reason that a loan could get defaulted on, or failed to pay. It isn't. There are a number of other reasons that a lending institute would take into consideration:
* death by various other means (accident, disease, suicide, etc.)
* moving beyond the legal systems reach (a country without the proper contracts)
* bancruptcy or otherwise disappearance of the credit institute
* the sun becoming a red giant
* heat death of the universe
The last two are there for chuckles but also to drive home a point: There is no such thing as eternity or immortality. There are just very, very long periods of time. And in a world that still has some chaos, on a long enough timespan, the probability of everything approaches one. Including the guy not paying back his debt.
The other more practical reason is that if nobody pays back their debts, the bank will run out of money to lend out. In todays banking system, there is a leverage factor, but the bank still needs to have some money in order to lend money (it's a couple %, depending on country). So if nobody ever pays it back, the whole business disappears. Which is why the **bank** has an incentive to collect and the best way to ensure that is to pass on the incentive - loans would be structured so that the immortals have an incentive to pay them back promptly. For example, interest could accumulate instead of being paid off.
[Answer]
Why not allow a due date..
Immortality also allows for a better repayment method. Infinite periods of slave repayment labor.
Instead of repo of property, debt recovery can allow for Immortals to pay off their debts by forced labor, of which it can extend to the end of time.
[Answer]
There is a simple answer.
A few other answers have suggested compounding debt, meaning that if you don't pay it then it just keeps getting worse. That lets things spiral out of control, but there is a simpler way to do it.
## The loan model
You borrow $100000 from me. You can pay back as much or as little of that that as you want whenever you want. You don't even have to pay it back, ever, if you don't want to, and I don't care if you do because I don't make money off of you repaying your loan; I make money off of you *not* paying your loan.
I charge you a yearly interest of $1000 until the loan is repayed.
That's it. Simple, easy to understand. You *must* pay me the interest yearly; that much is required. But there are no due dates for paying back the loan principle. If after 1000 years you still have not paid a single dollar back, that's fine, as I just made \$1000 dollars times 1000 years = $1 million off of you.
Perhaps even have it be a percentage of the remaining principle, which gives the loan taker even more incentive to pay it back...
You have been paying for 1000 years, and you realize you are out \$1 million for the \$100000 loan, 10-to-1. So you want to start paying back. You start by paying back \$20000 this year, so now you still owe me \$80000. If the interest is a percentage of principle, then you now owe me \$800 per year instead of \$1000, so you are immediately benefiting from paying back the loan.
I have a reason to loan, and I don't care if you ever repay or not. You may have a reason to borrow, and you also have incentive to repay... though it won't break you if you never do repay.
Adjust the yearly interest amount accordingly to make it work out. I just used 1%, but you could use anything reasonable.
## The ramifications
Some irresponsible people will never repay anything and will push themselves into poverty. As long as they can keep paying their interest, the system works. Banks probably will not loan to people who cannot pay at least the interest.
Once someone is so far in debt that their yearly salary is equal to their yearly interest payments plus the minimum amount of money needed to stay alive, then they are forever stuck in that exact situation as long as that debt-to-salary ratio is maintained. For this reason, there are probably laws for humanitarian reasons about not loaning to someone if it would put them in that situation. If there are no such laws, it could allow for a world with major poverty problems, possibly a good setting for a dystopian story.
There is also the possibility that you could become over-indebted, even with loan laws in place, if your salary changes. This would happen if you quit a job or were fired, among other things. If you are over-indebted, banks need some way to collect on their interest, and there are *so many ways* you could go with this...
* Government assistance (or church assistance, or whatever... some form of assistance)
* Imprisonment where you are forced to work off the debt under some prison-work system
* Slavery - The banks can work you beyond what normal humanitarian laws allow to get their worth back from you, though in a non-dystopian society only if part of the slave work compensation goes to the principle too to reduce the debt ratio
* And the list could go on; I'm not going to create a giant list
For those with maxed debts who are not over-indebted, the above things could be allowed as optional for the one in debt to get out.
## The patient, immortal way to get out of debt
Of course you can pay your debts back normally as long as you are not maxed out. But if your salary is only \$1 more than your debts, who wants to wait 10 million years to pay off a \$10 million debt? That would be sooo boring. Fortunately, that's not quite how it would work...
If interest is proportional to principle, every century you are $1 farther ahead... in 100 years of paying \$1/year to your principle, you now make \$2/year more than your debt, and 100 years later, \$4, and so on, so it would not really take 10 million years. It would be only ("only" used loosely) 10-100 thousand years (I just did a quick, rough estimate, not sure where in that range it is).
So anyone who is even remotely responsible could get out of debt if they were patient on an immortal scale even given \$1/year originally to do so. And those who are fiscally responsible will be loaning money to others more often than taking loans, so that their income will snowball and they will become rich over a long time span.
## Comparison to today
So the financial system would end up similar to how it is today. There would still be poor people at the bottom and rich people at the top.
Although debts are no big deal, and people will still incur them, the responsible are not likely to abuse this debt model since they will be better off and have a better life if they minimize their debts since that would increase their purchasing power in the immortal long term. Contrast to today when people don't mind taking out extra mortgages or equity loans for retirement because they have little incentive not to since there is an end in sight and the loan increases their purchasing power for the next few decades.
The poor people would likely be almost exclusively the financially irresponsible and impatient people. Those people are often poor today, yes, but the point is it would be almost exclusively them.
The people who get ahead and plan for the future and do more loaning than borrowing will all need someone to loan *to*. That might be to each other to a small degree when business situations arise, but that is not likely unless the business venture is a time-critical one.
But the people that are fine with breaking even, and to some extent the poor, will still be taking out loans. And as long as reproduction keeps happening there will always be new people that want to take those loans out. So this might be a big loan market, predation on the less fortunate, much like today.
[Answer]
As a creditor, I would impose at least two controls, and perhaps even a third:
* Most if not all loans will be secured loans. If you do not pay up by the agreed date, I'll take your stuff.
* Create a credit ratings agency that keeps track of your credit history and warns me that you are a risk of regularly defaulting on your loans.
* Lobby to introduce [Debtor's Prison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors%27_prison) for repeat defaulters. Have a nice time spending eternity locked up.
[Answer]
Storywise, I think a creative solution would be to segregate the power of banks from their loans. While in today's world we know that banks hold their intimidating financial power from the profit they make from their lending, perhaps in this world, they gain power differently. You state that all the banks need to follow the same rules, so lending can be equated to a public utility.
However, the loan itself can be considered secondary. Think of how major tech companies today make their money; lots of them run free services that the majority of people use, and make no direct profit from the user. However, they sell their *data* to advertisers to make massive profits.
How much data could an immortal human provide, I wonder?
Another thought I had would be that money lent to the person would somehow be tied back to the bank, but not the person. In a way, they would be at the behest of the bank in how they spend their money, or even their life. This would maintain the power dynamic where bankers hold an upper class in society, even though everyone is on the same footing.
I believe these solutions could help answer the question, because both of them provide incentives to pay off the loan: the first in that you would no longer have your data mined, which may be a much more serious thing when your life is not finite, and the second in that you would have to buy your freedom a la the Roman gladiators.
[Answer]
Compound interest will grow so much that even if he lives beyond the heat death of the universe the immortal won't be able to pay the debt. That's why he will try to pay: because if he doesn't the compound interest will guarantee that he will never take another loan again. If the society has debtor's prision with forced labor your immortal became an immortal indentured servant.
[Answer]
We take out loans for one basic reason - to get something that we want now, because we don't want to (or can't) wait to have them later. But loans aren't money for nothing. We're willing to pay more in the long run in order to not have to wait.
Lenders give out loans for one basic reason - in order to receive rent (interest) on the borrowed money. The fact that what they're lending out is the same thing as what they accept as rent payment is coincidental. They could be renting [cowry shells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money) for all it matters, as long as you pay rent and eventually return what you've borrowed so they can lend it out to someone else.
It's *possible* to rent something forever, paying rent every month until they end of time, but eventually you'll reach a point where you could have purchased the thing outright a dozen (or a million) times with the money you've spent on its rent. Most sensible people would rather stop paying rent eventually, so they buy the thing outright.
An immortal would make good on their loan for the same reason a mortal would - because they don't want to keep paying rent forever, and they don't want their stuff taken away for defaulting.
Related, the sort of immortal who would consider never making good on a loan is the same sort of mortal who would consider it.
[Answer]
The answer here boils down to one simple fact:
You can't make money if it is never paid back.
So lenders would NEVER EVER do what you are suggesting.
But this is your premise so let's do the gymnastics necessary to make this viable!
So, terms:
**You have an infinity to pay back the loan. If we do not get regular minum payments of X you cannot borrow anything else on the whole planet.**
If it's as much of a borrow economy as it appears, this will matter greatly...
I can see longer terms--but an infinity is ridic. The flipside might be that though the terms are infinity--they don't give out many loans. There might actually be an upper limit on the amount total that is allowed to be lent to everyone over the whole country. Because inflation.
This might be yearly, this might be overall. If people aren't paying back, the banks and lending insitutions can't lend out. **These people can be shamed publicly as a device.**
[Answer]
Honor, Pride and Fun reward systems
You've got some great answers providing financial incentives and negative feedback social deterrents. Here's reasons of a different sort.
Honor and pride
Your world experienced transformative evolution to the point of immortality. At this stage in species growth the intelligent beings will also have manipulated genetics to the point that intelligence levels have mostly eliminated undesirable human behaviors generally, including willingness to shirk a debt specifically. All have inherent honor and careful pride in any business dealings.
Fun Reward Systems
Competition can be healthy, so that trait is kept within the genetic transformation. There's going to be some spectacular rewards for those who repay a loan in full and achieve certain levels of creditworthiness. However that level is measured, you better believe there will be excitement and fun getting to the next level. When you become the first person in the neighborhood to be allowed to create the next newest species or build the only bridge to a new world and that is because, among other things, your creditworthiness level is higher than anyone else...needless to say, that's quite an incentive!
[Answer]
I challenge you to tell me why an immortal needs a loan in the first place.
My understanding of immortal is having no need for food, shelter, nor healthcare so what is the purpose of the loan?
Why go into debt if you can literally save every single dime at minimum wage to buy your wants in life.
Your society simply stops needing loans because everyone is able to live long enough to achieve their goals.
In fact, immortality undermines the basis of currency. You've totally uprooted society and new principles must be established.
[Answer]
Perhaps a more important question - why would a mortal (you know - like us in the real world) pay back a loan?
You're living for a limited amount of time, and someone has offered to provide you some money... if you don't pay it back before you die, there's no way for them to get it back and you finished your life with their money and there's literally nothing they can do to get it from you.
If you can avoid paying it back and avoid the negative consequences for long enough, you get away with it completely!
---
An immortal however can still have their legs broken, repeatedly, when they don't pay; and there's no limit on how long the creditor has to hunt them down.
[Answer]
# TL;DR
With a longer lifespan, it becomes more important to make good on your debts, not less.
# The Longer Version
## Death Due to Accident
No death due to age or disease doesn't equate to no death. A good actuary could calculate it, but removing these as a cause of death would simply raise the average age of death. I've seen estimates that the average age of death would ultimately stabilize as low as 800 years and as high as 2000 years, but I don't have the background to validate those. As a result, you wouldn't be able to push repayment out indefinitely, even if that's how credit worked.
## Reputation Becomes More Important
If your expected lifespan is 800 years, 8,000 years, or even 80,000 years, it becomes more (not less) important to pay off your debt. Poor financial decisions made at 200 may well damage your reputation sufficiently that people will be reluctant to lend you money 2,000 or 20,000 years later. And, after all, a credit rating is just quantified reputation in a specific area.
[Answer]
Very simply, those with a better credit rating are able to borrow more.
As loans are paid back as soon as possible regardless of how long may be available to do so an ever-increasing stream of credit is opened to the individual with the increase in their substance. While they could only borrow enough for a small car initially, their good history and equity enables them to borrow progressively larger amounts.
Of course, given the standard level of inflation and unlimited time it is probably smarter given enough time to think about it to save and invest rather than debt finance all things. The richest of all do this and it is much a thorn in the side of those choosing to smurf wealth by borrowing.
] |
[Question]
[
I asked a similar question earlier: [What would happen if electricity stopped working?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/33826/what-would-happen-if-electricity-stopped-working). But I was also thinking about what would happen if **magnets** stopped working. This question is very related to what things need magnetic fields to work. For example:
* compasses
* refrigerator magnets
*However*, the big problem would be the lack of electromagnets, which are used in:
* motors (therefore mass transit, cars, planes, boats...)
* heavy lifting (for construction)
* generators (hydroelectric, wind, ...)
Would there be any wide-spread implications of such a disaster?
[Answer]
We all die. Slow painful deaths.
if Magnetic fields quit working, the biggest problem is the one the Earth is producing to protect us from a bunch of solar radiation. Remember the [borealis](https://www.google.com/search?q=borealis&sa=X&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS603US603&espv=2&biw=1080&bih=1859&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ved=0ahUKEwjZ2b32xLvKAhVJx4MKHRvgD7QQsAQILw)? That is a visual reminder of the protection provided. It also helps keep our atmosphere from slowly being torn away by the solar winds.
Magnetic fields also are instrumental in generating the vast majority of our electricity. So we would probably mostly starve to death (large populations, not every single person) before we die of radiation poisoning or cancer.
[Answer]
If you're talking about ALL magnetism, the answer is pretty boring - everyone and everything immediately and literally falls apart.
Electrons are bound to the nuclei of atoms through the electromagnetic force, so without magnetism electrons would fly off.
Sharing of electrons is what binds different atoms together into molecules.
Protons would not push against each other, so larger atomic nuclei should be more stable. The strong and weak nuclear forces would still be in play, so I'm not exactly sure how they'd behave.
So without magnetism, all electrons go whizzing off, all molecules fall apart, and the nuclei of the approximately 10^50 atoms in the Earth all clump together, potentially forming a single atom with atomic number of somewhere around 10^51.
[Answer]
Electric force, magnetic force, and light is all one thing. Kill that and you shut down all electromagnetic radiation and the binding force that makes atoms and molecules.
In short, that's what happened to the *dark matter* that turns out to be far more common than our stuff. Somehow this little bit escaped that fate, so be careful!
Electromagnetism and the weak nuclear interaction are unified at high energy scales. The electoweak force breaks down and forms different phenomena in our regime. So maybe space can tunnel into a lower true vacuum state in which electromagnetism breaks down and is replaced by a plurality of different separate things.
## Interpretations of the Idea
The magnetic force in general is all one thing with the electric force and light. The two forces are literally one thing if seen in 4D spacetime: a pure electric field like the charge of an electron sitting in space will be seen to be partly a magnetic field to a moving observer. In fact, you can deduce magnetism must exist simply by applying relativistic effects to moving charges.
So you can't just say magnetism *in general* is gone and static electric forces are not, without seriously rewriting the universe to be based on Galileo's universal time as opposed to special relativity.
You would lose the electric force, and there go atoms, etc. as pointed out in other questions. I'm sorry to see that the question evolved to clarify in this direction!
A much less impossible situation ripe with plot potential is to leave the forces alone and just target permanent magnets. Magnetism exists and must exist if electric charges exist and move, or even if the don't move because they still have quantum spin and orbital angular momentum while being stationary!
Every electron is a magnet. Normally in bulk they cancel out, not only because of random orientations but because loose magnets will push each other into orientations to better cancel out. But it is some subtle quirks that allow for magnetic domains in permanent magnets. For *other* reasons it is energetically favorable for the unpaired electrons to line up. The potential energy this causes is more than paid for by savings elsewhere, and finding such circumstances in the crystalline arrangement of a metal grain is why you get magnetic domains and ferromagnetism.
So a plot device would be an alien weapon using nanotechnology or control over subtle fields we don't know about, or a natural phenomenon that changes the subtle interactions and prevents this situation from finding an energetically favorable solution. Magnetic domains in ordinary metals become unstable just as if it were heated above the curie point, and *magnets* no longer become a thing at our everyday environment, temperature, and pressure.
## Plot Potential
You can have a vague idea of "permanent magnets stop working" but lots of loopholes, special rules, and exceptions. If it's based on nanotech, you can have quarantine formulations that resist the attack. If a field of some kind you can find the *new* rules of energy levels and build technology that works under those new conditions.
Without exceptions and special pleading which is specific to the mechanisms you invent for the phenomenon, you still have the situation where common metal magnets fall off the 'fridge, but electromagnets still work… if you can manage to start a current flowing without using magnets, as explored in some of the other answers. And you might still have some exotic materials like ceramics that manage to still work or work very weakly.
[Answer]
Electricity generation would have to turn to other methods: Thermal, solar, chemical. So a global shift in power generation would need to take place ASAP since most power grids use spinning magnetic turbines (oil, coal, hydro or nuclear powered) to generate electricity.
Electric motors wouldn't work, so we'd basically have to return to steam engines or man(horse) power.
The earth's magnetic field protects us from deadly cosmic radiation, so we'd have to figure out how to protect ourselves.
If this is something that happened overnight, it would basically be an apocalypse-level event. Basically everything would stop. All manufacturing, all agriculture, all transport, all communication. There would be widespread panic and death.
Also, the ~~molecules~~ *atoms* of all of the noble gases (helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon) are all held together by electromagnetic attraction. So those element would cease to exist. (which also begs the question of if any matter would survive without magnetism I suppose. I'm not a chemist, so I'm not sure)
[Answer]
Since most everybody went the other way I will say assume there is some kinda magical change in how electrons in ferrometals interact with the world causing them to be unable to be magnetized. So Electromagnetism still works as a force but there is no way to make a permanent or electro magnets.
1) compasses stop for two reasons. We quickly remember stellar navigation.
2) electric motors and dynamos all stop working electricity goes out for everything but batteries, solar and [some] geothermal. Starters in gasoline cars no longer work. Most diesels are fine but before long the headlight go out. the trains still chug along but the switching is kaput.
3) Cancer and some warming from all the ionized particle no longer blocked by the earth's former magnet.
4) Speakers, headphones and whatnot no longer work but Victrolas still do. Flash drives still work hard drives and tape are all blank. Most flat screen will be fine but CRTs will not be able to focus or scan. credit cards will need to be typed in manually. Radios and phone work except for the speakers which don't. Microwaves, fridges and a lot of switches don't work any more. But most toaster are fine as your tablet. (if you have batteries, Solar, power cells or thermocouples for them)
We would be set back to the 19th for most things including agriculture and manufacturing. We would survive.
[Answer]
Well, if magnetism stopped working, magnetic induction would stop working.
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction>) So there would be no more electrical power except from solar cells and chemical recations. Basically society would be back to steam as a means of energy transportation.
[Answer]
A lot of people talk about how the earth's magnetic shield, or the fabric of the universe itself, would fall apart if there were no electromagnetic force.
However, let's examine the simple case of magnets not working. I don't mean electromagnetism, but just the magnets we use in society. Also, let's suppose the Earth's core remains magnetic, so we don't all die shortly thereafter.
So what happens?
1. All items held on refrigerators by magnets immediately fall to the floor.
2. compasses, stick/holding magents, electric motors, a fair number of electronics (which have magnetic parts), and electrical transmission (the power grid, which relies on transformers) would cease to work. Most if not all vehicles would stop running (airplanes and ships), while smaller boats and vehicles require electric starters. Though, it might be possible to mechanically turn a combustion engine to start; I don't understand those that well.
3. **We would have to re-write our understanding of physics**, because either we missed something big that we have to account for, or we fundamentally misunderstood electromagnetism. This might be a change like Einstein's relativity versus Newton's laws of mechanics. We would need toexplain why little magnets became no longer magnetic, but yet why the universe still holds together, and the planet's core was still magnetic.
4. Also, we would have to account for why the change suddenly happened, which was not predicted in our physical models either.
So not only would we be thrown into a non-industrial, non-electric, gas-and-steam era, we would also be set back about 250 years in physics.
[Answer]
Yup, no electrical generation, solar radiation, ...long list. I'll add to it with induction. Inductors in electrical equipment are actually simple coils of wire, which can store electricity in the form of a magnetic field. If you remove the power the field collapses back in to the inductor; generating, or at least regenerating, an electromagnetic field.
My point is, that solar cells aren't going to help you. Most electronic products use some induction to clean up the power entering the unit, or to produce different voltages such as the flyback transformer in an old TV, the HT coil on your car, or the main component in your stungun/taser.
[Answer]
Most of the people answering this question are very pedantic and don't understand the question at all.
Imagine a universe, and in this universe there was a substance, capable of generating a gravitational field that was comparable in strength to the magnetic field magnets have. Let's call it "gravinets". The humans there are exactly like us and make an entire technology base and society build around it. With enough gravinets everyone would be able to fly, it would be normal. The world would be colonized faster. We could fly to the moon. And then someone ask the question, what if gravinets didn't work. Well, we would have a world exactly like ours. Some pedantic people would say, we all would die, launched into space by the centrifugal force of the Earth. This fictional universe, has different fundamental forces. We are just changing one that "gravinets" don't exist. Earth still has a gravitational field strong enough to keep us in it, because of its mass. Just like there is a distinction between string and weak force. We just can't make antigravity, or artificial gravity. We would not die. Life would go on. Some species that depend of "antigravity" or directional gravitational fields would die. There would be no fying cars, etc..., but Earth's gravitational field would keep working. And we would to use primitive technology. we would have to sail ships, guided by strange things tied to strings. Things like magnets... Our extremely efficient gravitic engines would not work, we would have to find something else to power them. Maybe electromagnets...
But what if magnets stopped working?**When I Say stopped working, it is not like turning an electromagnet off, that it could be turned on again. I mean all magnets in the world would become useless lumps of matter and no other magnet could ever be made ever again. Electromagnetism as an universal law would be changed, so the universe would keep existing, but it wouldn't allow for the existence of magnets anymore.\*\*\*This isn't our universe anymore, its fundamental law has changed, we think them immutable because they never changed in the observable universe, but if they stopped working the way we think they should work, then they would not be immutable \* Magnets would stop existing, becoming inert lumps of matter. Electromagnetism as we know wouldn't work anymore. It would become impossible to make things with magnets. Electricity would be either nonexistent or be completely different. Maybe chemical batteries and lamps would still work. But magnets and electromagnets would not. And anything that depended on them. The same way that the "gravinets" don't work in our world, no matter how hard you vibrate them.\*\*Electricity would still exist, but it would either be extremely weak bioelectricity, or very high scale like lightning**
No compasses, because Earth electromagnetic field cannot be perceived by solids anymore. No radio, no computers, basically no modern technology as we know today. Some Species that depend on electromagnetic orientation to find north would die. Life would go on. Magnetism is magic, and magic doesn't exist. And no one would be blind, because light (in this scenario) is a particle. Our chemistry would be different. Maybe we would use steam engines. Or biotechnology mutated by radiation.
And then someone asks, what if radiation didn't exist...
[Answer]
From my understanding, I'd like to point at a few things. (bear with me)
If superstring theory is correct and all, magnetism could never stop existing. It's just how string theory says the universe should work.
But if we let magnetism stop, you might want to note that we have 4 forces in the universe:
**1.** Gravitational Force
**2.** Electro**magnetic** Force
**3.** Strong Force
**4.** Weak Force
You might not have heard of the last 2, so I will briefly explain.
Inside an atom, all of the protons are grouped at the center. Also, they have positive charges. Putting that in mind, electromagnetic forces should push them apart, like when you try to stick two magnets together from the positive side, they repel. But strong force counters this and holds the nucleus together (and is *stronger*).
Weak force is a weak atomic force that causes radiation. It is usually overpowered by other forces.
So when we remove electromagnetic forces (magnetic = electric), a few things should happen. First of all, electrons (-) and protons (+) should say *hasta la viesta* because + and - attract due to electromagnetic force. But now that's gone, so oh well.
You'd have some major radiation due to all of these electrons flying everywhere, which should kill you (that's somewhat what radiation is).
You'd have, I think, protons still sticking together and neutrons in there as well. The catch though is that they will be more dense with little to stop them from getting denser.
You might not even have neutrons at all: neutrons form from electrons and protons forced together, which has more mass and neutral charge. But what holds together neutrons? I think that'd be electromagnetism, which is gone.
However, neutrons may still exist due to gravitational pull inside of massively dense objects like neutron stars.
I do believe that at this point, if most of what I have said is true, then matter wouldn't exist with atoms. However, if matter does stay in some deranged way, then you might come to realization that it doesn't affect the main pillars of physics too badly. Relativity relies, indeed, on the speed of light, yes, but other than that, it should still *work*. Quantum Theory should also work, it would just affect some of our calculations and such. And chaos theory should still be itself, as chaos theory, and generally it should prove to work 'normally', whatever that's supposed to mean. If I'm wrong about this, do excuse my understanding because it is not *extremely* thorough.
Interestingly enough, I'd like to point out that light relies on electromagnetism to work the way it does and that without it, light may not even exist. In fact, electromagnetic radiation may not exist. Unless the universe comes up with a substitute, as I will discuss.
Without light, what do we have? *"I think, therefore I am"* -Descartes
Without light, you can't observe the universe in a fundamental way. Yes, we have the blind, but this is different. In a way, quantum theory's uncertainty principle relies on this idea of what we know and what we don't. Being unable to observe the universe in one of the main ways that **life** does, the uncertainty principle puts some majorly weird quantum mechanics into the world. For example, you might place a cup on a table, but without being able to observe the cup, it may be anywhere. (even off of the Earth or further) (Related to the problem of something going through two doors when you don't look)
But besides that, we have string theory. Essentially, the universe is an orchestra, with a set of notes to play. The universe may play any notes in any order to produce anything, but there is a limit. It only gets *some* notes to use. That is, it creates the 4 forces named at the beginning and **only** those forces. It creates matter as we know it, but it is limited to only certain elements, certain types of matter. The grand orchestra of the universe has its rules, according to string theory.
But when the universe decides to stop with electromagnetism, it means it full stop on certain notes, or chords, or whatever. This means the effect will be catastrophic. From what I understand, your end spells no beginning as far as new notes for the universe's orchestra.
What this means is that many of the universe's fundamental properties simply disappear altogether, related to electromagnetism in a direct way or not.
So the effect is a lot stranger than first appears.
As a side note, the 4 forces contain symmetry, something that would no longer exist without magnetism, which may have its own effects on the universe.
] |
[Question]
[
So here's the scenario. I have two rather large and evenly matched empires: one led by human knight sorcerers with bloodline based magic and another by dragons, who are fairly similar to the dragons found in Dungeon and Dragons as far as capabilities are concerned, but aren't colour coded for your convenience in determining their ethics. I want the status quo to be a cold War, with both sides deeply distrustful of each other, but neither keen on the idea of a full blown war.
Here's a little overview of both groups' political and military structures. It's a bit wordy, but I wanted some context for reference.
First, the human knight sorcerers:
>
> The knight sorcerers rule a feudal state with an emperor who grants authority
> to his vassals down the pyramid of lords and ladies of decreasing importance. So,
> several local nobles would owe allegiance to a single regional lord. Several
> regional lords would owe allegiance to the king and those kings would owe
> allegiance to the emperor.
>
>
> Law and general government structure is fairly uniform across the empire. While
> local lords hold a large amount of power, abuse of it tends to end badly for the
> lord in question. And while not a democracy, all citizens do have some basic
> rights (no imprisonment without trial and such). Personal freedom has its limits,
> since all citizens normally belong to a specific lord's domain by birth, but it's
> an era of licenced movement and loose grips. As long as your paperwork and
> taxes are in order, things tend to go smoothly.
>
>
> Local militias are well organised and a centrally controled army serves the
> emperor directly. Their job is to deal with any situation that's too serious for
> a local lord and his militia to deal with on their own. Military technology-wise,
> pikes and crossbows are extremely common. But primitive firearms, cannons and
> use of fantastical beasts also occur. Cannons are far more common in the regular
> army, but fantastical beasts such as griffins, [wogs](https://intothewonder.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/uncanny-georgia-the-wog/) and hydras are more
> frequently used by local militias.
>
>
>
And now the dragons:
>
> The dragons are ruled by a dragon empress and her family. The empress is an
> absolute ruler, but a fairly pragmatic and wise one. Male dragons each have their
> own lands and humans that belong to them. They can do what they wish with both,
> but poor management tends to get them in the empress's bad books. Getting in
> trouble with the empress tends to result in said dragon's authority and position
> being taken from him and granted to another dragon who's managed to curry favour
> through good results and managing things well. Female dragons don't own lands, so
> instead tend to take a strong interest in subjects other than ruling. They
> tend to hold positions like alliance brokers, priestesses, spymasters and
> scientists.
>
>
> A major reason for this is a male dragon can sire half-dragons and spawn whole
> lines of dragon-blooded servants, while female dragons can not. These dragon
> bloods are considered from a legal point of view to be *partly the dragon in
> question* whose blood run through their veins. This grants them considerably more
> rights and privileges than normal humans. But it also means that their actions tend to
> reflect more the dragons' "favour the Empress" culture. As a result, a strong
> sense of blood loyalty is found among dragon bloods, knowing that if they do
> well, it will be their closest relatives that will likely reap the benefits. It is
> also why most of the dragon empire's high ranking positions are held by dragon-
> bloods. Dragons are relatively few in number, but trust blood to get things done.
>
>
> Humans living in dragon lands, by contrast, have no legal rights or protections
> and their dragon overlords can do what they want with them. Also while it's
> considered bad form to harm another dragon's humans. It's typically something the
> offender would fix by paying a fine or doing the aggrieved dragon a favour.
>
>
> Due to how the dragon empire is structured local law varies greatly, and all
> armies belong to a specific dragon. Dragons themselves exercise considerable
> martial might and some are tactical geniuses, with some of the older half-dragons
> not being far behind. Elite dragon-blood regiments tend to be common among the
> more martially gifted and older dragons, though the human based part of the
> armies tends to have poorer training and worse equipment than the knight
> sorcerers' forces. This is due, in part, to a less centralised and weaker
> infrastructure. Cannons and other firearms are pretty rare as a result.
>
>
>
**What ways might I keep these two empires from trying to start a war with each other?**
[Answer]
Distance - the intervening mountain range, swamp, or near barren grasslands make logistics of open war extremely impractical
Attitude - it just isn't worth the trouble unless they bother us first
Internal politics - cold wars can be more about how the ruling class uses them to influence their own people than external politics. Maybe the distrust is mostly or entirely an excuse to say things like "pay your taxes or the dragons will get us!"
Excessive cost - alternatively, the border is close and boiling with tensions, but the empire is scared about massive loss of life from dragons (which would qualify individually as weapons of mass destruction, easily), whereas the dragons are concerned about the risk of losing even one of their few number of true dragons in open war.
[Answer]
One means to keeping a cold war going is the two antagonistic sides having the means of mutually assured destruction. These two empires could go to full-out war with each, but in the end, at best, one side will win. At worst, continued stale mate. With an "unlimited" supply of cheap soldiers (the serfs on the human side and humans on the dragon side) wars would break out as often as the elites did not truly feel the consequences.
Now if both sides knew that full-out war would guarantee their own society's utter destruction, they would sit in a cold war status, jockeying for dominance in other arenas to better their positions.
There is no better example of how to keep a cold war going than the [events from the 1950's to 1988](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_in_the_Cold_War). One side just ended up collapsing because it could not keep up with the other.
[Answer]
One way would be to introduce a third party. It's neutral towards both the dragons and the knights, and it wouldn't stand a chance if it went to war with either of them.
But if both the dragons and the knights believe this third party could easily overrun them if they went to war, even if they are the winners, that would be a strong motive not go to war. Note that this third party doesn't actually have to be strong enough, or even have the desire to war -- all what needs to happen is that the dragons and knights believe they'll lose out to the third party once they defeat the dragons/knights, as any war between them will mean heavy losses on both sides.
[Answer]
## Mutually Assured Destruction
Yes, it worked for Earth, it should work for your world.
The main difference is that the means for destruction are asymmetric in your case.
I'll assume for the question that both sides have significant defenses against each other's armies and capabilities, so that a conventional military strike at any vital point is unlikely to succeed.
The dragons could however launch a series of night raids to literally scorch the earth, burning the humans fields, orchards and lightly guarded livestock. This would destroy an entire harvest and plunge the humans into famine that will bring the empire down. There just aren't enough skilled soldiers to defend effectively against this. A handful of militia archers at each village is not going to make a difference to this.
The inability to destroy the food supply during winter (when it is in well-defended storage buildings) is not critical as winter is terrible for warfare anyway. With limited mobility and supplies, an attacking human army would be easy prey for the dragons, whose flight gives them the power to strike anywhere.
The sorcerers have some devastating magic ritual they could perform that would seriously harm, but not disable the dragons. Perhaps they could make human women infertile to dragons or kill all the dragon bloods. This would disrupt the social order of the dragons and probably a rebellion by their human subjects if the dragonbloods die.
Both attacks leave the other side able to retaliate and no reason to hold back. Both would also require extensive development to protect against, which would be visible and risk triggering a pre-emptive attack. This way the war stays cold.
[Answer]
***Cold* War**
Magic when used on a large scale could have the side effect of drawing heat from the world. Maybe this is how magic works, or it could just be an accidental byproduct; either works. An all-out war would result in the mass deployment of weaponised magic by both sides, and plunge the world into a new ice age that directly kills off large swathes of the population and destroys both kingdoms' economic base. Presumably both sides found this out the hard way, when hostilities were abruptly cancelled by an unexpected winter.
[Answer]
The cold war between west and soviets was never full blown hot war - it came as result of defeating a common enemy and divvying up the spoils of that war. You could just basically copy that as the origin for why they even share a border in the first place.
Have the current situation be the result of being former allies who destroyed a kingdom in the middle - kingdom of lizard people or whatever, that's not important - just make them be so horrible that neither side wants to appear as being as horrible as they were and so mass executions, burnt ground tactics and such are not viewed favorably by either side - also you could have there be other semi-independent city-states scattered on the border between the two build on the ashes of the lizard people who would be totally extinct now - or at least thought to be. Then the two cold war sides would try to influence those states to join them and not the other side, they would fund shadow wars and provide military assistance and such, but stay technically out of it. Both sides would have to be engaged in this - Both sides would posses weaponry/army to wipe out any city in the middle grounds too, but will rarely do full invasions or attempts at such and in case another side does one, the resistance is not supported openly by the other.
You could also just make the magical powers be dependent on the distance to some magical object or home temple, further making it less feasible to attack either side full blown, so instead proxy skirmishes are done on the states that live between the two.
I mean, you already basically could just label the Dragons as the red menace. That kolkhoz peons basically have no rights whatsoever just underlines that and that there are special people who have more rights(communist party members or dragonkin, who can get rid of common folk at will) - and that passports are easily acquired and can be used to move between states in the west but not so easily into the border states or for moving from one major block to another.
[Answer]
The Question I found myself asking is: "What is the motivation for not destroying the other party?"
The mutually assured destruction aspect was already mentioned by other posters, so I'll skip this.
Another reason a party won't go to war could be that they don't have the troops to succeed. The dragons could think that the human magic is enough to destroy them while in reality the humans are very sure that they'll be wiped in a full out war, keeping up the illusion of power through magic, planned misinformation and other trickery. (Russia used to have inflatible tanks to trick satellite spionage)
Also, the humans could also have taken dragon eggs hostage. Direct descendants of the queen/empress. Their magic used to keep the eggs in a stasis where they neither hatch nor die.
The dragons may fear an uprising of half-dragons and humans, unsure if the magical abilities of their slaves and underlings may be enough to start a dangerous revolution.
As dwllama mentioned, cost is a very important factor of war. Troops, supporting the society and morale of citizens.
Hope this helps you.
[Answer]
Give them *personal* reasons to hate each other, but *political* reasons to avoid conflict.
Fights between parities ("wars") are, generally speaking, fought over limited resources - whether that's iron, water, or grazing land, one country has something the other country wants so they invade. So just make it so that the two countries use entirely different resources, and have no interest in the others land. At the same time, give them some sort of personal benefit - for instance, any time a dragon eats a sorcerer or a sorcerer kills a dragon, they get stronger.
That gives them incentive to keep the war going (because they want it to be socially acceptable to kill each other), but at the same time keeps it from getting hot - because wars are expensive for everyone, not just the frontline combatants, and they don't want to be paying out money to fund a war that will give someone else the benefit.
With this set up, you get lots of rhetoric about how much each side hates each other, riling up the population, followed by raids of a single individual with a small band of helpers to hunt down one of their opposite number, but no large scale fights.
Peace is impossible, because individuals are not going to stop the hunting and killing, not when they get so much benefit from it. A full blown war however would be disastrous for the emperor, because it will cripple him economically, while dramatically boosting the power of his nobles - almost certainly resulting in a coup. Therefore, cold war!
[Answer]
To answer the question
*What ways might I keep these two empires from trying to start a war with each other?*
Put a third party in it, which threatens to annihilate both dragons AND humans.
Much like the elves and dwarves of Lord of the rings, both of them has a huge [grudge](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/20940/why-dont-elves-like-dwarves) on each other, yet they allied during the attack of the orcs in the movie [Battle of the Five armies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit:_The_Battle_of_the_Five_Armies). Heck, some elves where killed by the dwarves too.
[Answer]
## Humans constantly improve warfighting skills. Dragons don't.
Humans use tools to fight. And since they are the very definition of an arms race, the tools get better every year.
Whereas dragons mainly fight with their God-given sharp and burny parts, and don't arms-race with silly gadgets.
Just at extremes, a dragon would be able to achieve a total wipe-out of a first-string Roman legion. But a modern junior-varsity force, such as Estonia's army with its MAPATs, Javelins and radar-guided AA guns... or Turkey's G-class frigates with SM-1MR missiles, could exterminate the dragons by pushing buttons.
All this to say, it is inevitable that there'll be a point where the knights are able to hit the dragons hard enough to make the dragons think twice. That is not yet license to kill dragons; a dragon fight would still exact a heavy toll, and of course the knights remain totally vulnerable to countervalue damage e.g. against undefended villages. So either party will pay a heavy price for fighting.
At that point, each side could destroy the other, but the price they'd pay is not worth it. Neither side would have any opportunity for a debilitating "first strike" as would occur in nuclear war, as the knights are too dispersed, and the dragons are too many.
The knights may have reached a "live and let live" philosophy of "no reason to attack the dragons if they aren't attacking us". The dragons clearly have that philosophy already, since humans survived the period when the dragons could crush them.
Against this balance of terror, you also have trade. If knights and dragons have cause or ability to do business with each other, nothing stops war like trade. That's a big part of why America has so many trade agreements.
[Answer]
**The Wastes: A Testament to the Madness of War**
The war has not always been cold. Indeed, once upon a time, a knight-sorcerers led army met a dragon-led army in the middle of contended lush plains, to the East of Jericho.
Wait, you say, there's no such plains to the East of Jericho! It's a barren wasteland where all living die and wither!
And you'd be right. It's said that the dragons and their progeny were so powerful, laying such devastation in the human army, that the knight-sorcerers had no recourse but to execute a terrible circle spell, drawing a star from the sky and crashing it onto the battlefield. The dragon army died. So did the knight-sorcerers army. And the knight-sorcerers themselves. And the magic-infused wind which blew outward from the battlefield burnt and stripped all the land for miles upon miles, killing all, razing hills and towns.
---
Dragons can be killed, but not by half-measure. The only known way is causing a star (*hint: meteor*) to fall from the sky, and unfortunately this tends to kill quite a bit more than the dragon.
Used on land, it creates a wasteland. Been there, done that. And nobody's really sure that if it was invoked again, the next time it would raze an even larger area.
Used on water, it's posited that it would create a giant wave which would raze the coasts on both side of the sea. Tests throwing a big rock in a lake certainly suggest so.
The Dragons could wipe out the knight-sorcerers' kingdom, but not without a few knots of knight-sorcerers sacrificing themselves to invoke falling stars here and there.
The knight-sorcerers could sacrifice a few fanatics of them to invoke falling stars here and there, razing the Dragon's capital, or their royal line, but they'd never be able to kill *all* Dragons, and that'd leave the human kingdom open to retaliation. Cities would burn.
So the two skirmish, but take really good care not to escalate things too far.
---
*Plot hook: a few fanatic knight-sorcerer or a mad Dragon have decided that they're ready to accept the cost, and will attack... sending their own side scrambling to prevent it from happening and forcing a squad of knight-sorcerers to cooperate with a Dragon and its brood.*
[Answer]
**How did the real cold war stay cold?
With the fear of nuclear weapons.**
As mentioned before me, mutually assured destruction is a wonderful reason for this, and will be most convincing to readers, as it has real precedent.
You should think in advance if you eventually want the war to turn hot. At that point you either have to
**a) Make someone disregard the mutually assured destruction.**
or
**b) Make something change so that m.a.d. no longer applies.**
a) has the problem that then the whole world is inevitably screwed and the story you can tell from that point onwards is constrained by the fact that everyone is dead.
b) is better (in my opinion) since it constrains you less. However this must be carefully crafted. I don't want to write your story for you but I'd probably create some rare tools or artifacts that can be used to inflict unimaginable destruction and horrors, but which somehow grow old and are discovered to have lost their power over time...
[Answer]
Every feudal state, ever: "The knight sorcerers rule a feudal state."
England, Spain, France, etc. : "The dragons are ruled by a dragon empress and her family"
Jews, aka : "Female dragons don't own lands; they tend to hold positions like alliance brokers, priestesses, spymasters and scientists."
I don't see how this can be a cold war because as written, the dragons could destroy the world if they wanted to but it doesn't sound like humans can. There would need to be a case of **mutually assured commerce**. And it sounds like the 'female dragons' have that covered just like they always do.
] |
[Question]
[
Eureka! Our hero just discovered the secret of time travel, but what to do with it? "I know!", he says. "I will travel back in time as far as I can and hand them a modern firearm. They will learn how it works, and they will be technologically superior and dominate the world with me as their leader!"
At least, that's the idea.
# The Time Machine
The Time Machine is a rough prototype, so it is best not to travel back and forth too often. In fact, once jumped back in time enough, it's possible that you can't ever jump back forward. As a result, the hero cannot just continuously jump back and forth in time to transport a lot of modern equipment. He has one chance, and one chance only.
Furthermore, the Time Machine is able to travel through time and, contrary to the name, space. The Time Machine can pick any past date, time and location, and the Time Machine would bring the hero there. It is not perfectly accurate though, so you might end a year sooner or later, or somewhere within a kilometer of the target.
# The Hero
Our Hero is a scientist, but not a brilliant engineer. While he does have rudimentary knowledge of firearms, he cannot perfectly describe what every single component of the gun does, nor how it is produced. He might be able to explain that a striker works by using a spring to propel a metal stick against the primer, which explodes, in turn ignites the powder and thus propels the bullet forward.
He is also not a chemist. He doesn't know how modern smokeless powder is made, but he did look up how old black powder was made and he is reasonably certain he could explain the process, if necessary.
Speaking of explanations and speaking about things, our Hero is also a gifted linguist and able to speak any language, old and new, to a good enough degree that he could express even more technical concepts to native speakers.
# The Goal
Our Hero wants to bring any modern firearm - a pistol, an automatic rifle, a shotgun, etc. - as well as a reasonable amount of appropriate ammo - with him into the past. Our Hero wagers that he would have the biggest chance of success of dominating the world if he would travel in time further back. As such, our Hero wants to pick a gun that even a rather old - by whatever comparison - civilization could reproduce in a good enough quality.
One can assume that the Hero is patient, so if the good people of that time require a year or two to understand the firearms, that is acceptable too, as long as it results in them being able to make the firearm afterwards.
The required time is also not very important. Equipping an army takes time, and our hero knows that. So if arming an entire army with firearms takes several months or even years, so be it.
We can further assume that our Hero brings enough Gold with him - a currency that is universally accepted anywhere - should the need to pay someone arise.
# The Task
* Which firearm should our Hero bring with him, and why?
* How far back in time could he go, before even the simplest modern firearm would be so technologically outlandish, that not even the most skilled scientists and engineers of the time would be able to reproduce it?
[Answer]
Unless he's an expert metallurgist the biggest issue you're going to have isn't in terms of producing the parts; anyone with a drill and a hand file (or some rocks that will serve the purpose) and enough patience can make a gun from a solid block of appropriate metal and therein lies the problem. Modern weapons require modern alloys, many of which are proprietary products that the character cannot know the recipe for. Furthermore the fineness of measurement necessary to make them if the recipe is known has only existed for a few decades, some of these alloys require measurements in the parts per million.
All is not lost however, you can take some weapons that are currently antiques back a lot farther than you'd think. Assuming your character knows how to make reliable gunpowder that is. You could take a [Culverin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culverin) back to 3300BC [Anatolia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolia) and be able to reproduce it in local [bronze](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze).
[Answer]
**Bring the Tools, not the Weapons**
The hard part here is getting the precision tooling you will need done right. Rifling a barrel and pressing ammunition is pretty darn hard without the right equipment, but all the tools needed to set up a fire-arms and munitions workshop take up surprisingly little space.
Since he has enough wealth in the 21st century to acquire significant amounts of gold and build a time-machine, I'm assuming he's fairly wealthy. Although he lacks mechanical engineering skills himself, he could prepare for his mission by hiring proper engineers to modify hobbyist gun making kits to rely on non-electrical power sources such as foot-pedals or a water wheel, and help him design weapons to the specifications of the alloys that will be available to him in the past.
Before he goes back, he should then run tests making his own home-made bronze, gun powder, ignition caps, etc. to test his ability to make sound weapons from what will be local resources.
**The Time & Place**
For this I'd suggest going to Ancient Athens at ~600 BCE.
While most historical guns were made of cast iron or steel, bronze is actually a fairly good material for making firearms, because it can be caste without being brittle. A revolutionary era bronze cannon was half the weight of the cast iron cannons of the time. Steel did not really get good enough to outperform bronze as a gun-making material until the 1800s, so your time traveler should head back to a civilization that is proficient in bronze working before gunpowder was first invented. This means that in the you will have a good material to work with and be able to control the means of producing and distributing the ammo so that even if another nation reverse engineers your gun, they won't have the means to make the ammo.
While 600 BCE was technically after the Bronze Age collapse, bronze was still widely used at this time since Athens re-established the trade routes that made bronze possible again. While bronze was not their preferred alloy in weapon/armor making as it was in the Mycenean Period, it was still prominently used in their artwork; so, there still would have been a large number of skilled bronze craftsmen.
The biggest reason to pick Athens though over an older, true bronze age civilization is that bronze age civilizations were pretty exclusively ruled by nobilities or theocracies such that you could never gain a position of power among the people as an outsider. No matter how good your tech is, you would never be more than the ruler's slave. In Ancient Greece, money could buy political power. You could raise your self up to be a general, and use the influence of your conquests to eventually usurp or at least strongly control the democracy.
Athens also has a relatively large population in a small place with lots of allied city states. This gives you the manpower you need to expand far.
**The Currency**
You may want to exchange most of your gold for silver before you go. At today's market value, gold has an 80:1 exchange rate with silver, but in ancient Greece, the exchange rate would be anywhere from about 13:1 to 1:3 just depending. Silver (and not gold) was the standard currency in ancient Athens and the preferred coinage for international trade on the Mediterranean (4.3g was worth 1 day's labor). Greeks specifically did not like being payed in gold due to efforts by Persia to devalue their silver coinage by intentionally fixing the exchange rate of gold and silver to prefer their coinage at the 13:1 ratio, even though gold was considered less valuable than silver in Greece. So, definitely bring some gold for any materials you need to buy from Persian merchants, but silver is the way to go for local labor and materials.
**The Weapon he Makes**
To dominate the ancient world, your weapon needs a few qualities that not all historical firearms could achieve. While older firearms like culivans, muskets, and arquebuses offer some specific advantages over bows and crossbows that made them successful in their own hay day, their advantages are not significant enough to really make them "world domination" weapons. Instead, your minimum firearm should be something that is so much better than older weapons that even archery cultures like the Ancient Cretans, Persians, or Parthians would be at a distinct disadvantage since these cultures could arguably out range war most early gunpowder armies.
First, it will need to be able to kill through the shields and armor of the time period you go back to. This significantly limits the effectiveness of most shotguns and low caliber firearms since available resources will likely not be able to achieve the muzzle velocity and armor penetration of modern munitions. Before the invention of more complex gunpowders like guncotton, nearly all firearms were .45cal or larger for this reason.
Secondly, it will need range. To have a true tactical advantage, you will need to be able to shoot down enemy archers, slingers, and crossbowmen before they can start shooting at you. Most muskets are only target accurate at 100m and area accurate up to 300m (similar to ancient bows). More primitive firearms like early culverins and fire lances were only target accurate within a few paces making them no more accurate than an untrained archer. Even though they had a theoretical range of 600m they were not even considered area accurate at these sorts of distances. The feature that really made guns hands-down better than of bows and crossbows was the invention of riffling. Even primitive rifles could give you target accuracy in the 700-1800m range.
Third, you will need a enough rate of fire that your armies will get in many shots before your enemies can close range enough to take away your advantages. Automatic firing systems might be too complicated to reproduce since you may not be able to produce high precision parts, but revolvers can be made to relatively low tolerances. Also, if individual bullets prove to be too much work to make, a removable revolver cylinder like that found on the Colt Paterson would allow one to pre-pack cylinders to more or less the same effect as having clips of bullets.
The hardest part is going to be primer caps. While your time traveler may struggle to make these himself, all the chemicals required to make a primitive Mercury Fulminate (mercury, potassium nitrate, green vitriol, and ethanol) have all been known about and used since ancient times; so, an ancient apothecary with a little bit of guidance could probably solve this problem. If not, a sort of flint-lock mechanism could be employed, though it may be a bit less convenient/reliable.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/quP0k.png)
The final weapon will likely resemble the Whitworth Rifle as suggests UIDAlexD in terms of accuracy, calbre, and muzzle velocity. The addition of a revolver cylinder may slightly reduce the weapon's accuracy, but you'd still be way outranging bows, and the increased rate of fire would more than be worth it.
[Answer]
Firearms require a social and industrial ecosystem to exist. Modern weapons with metal cartridges could not exist before the development of deep draw dies and the skilled workers to use them. Even as late as the 1860's (American Civil War) cartridges were paper cylinders holding the powder and the ball, but now you need a cheap source of paper (and preferably waxed paper to protect the contents).
This process is "rinse and repeat" in any age, gunpowder was described as early as the 9th century AD and the very first primitive firearms appeared shortly thereafter. Improvements in the formulation of gunpowder required improvements in metallurgy and manufacturing to take advantage of them (the etymology of "barrel" is exactly what you think: the early gun barrels were made is the same manner as wooden barrels...).
>
> The first firearms were made at a time when metallurgy was not advanced enough to cast tubes capable of withstanding the explosive forces of early cannons, so the pipe (often built from staves of metal) needed to be braced periodically along its length for reinforcement, producing an appearance somewhat reminiscent of storage barrels being stacked together, hence the English name.[1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OKtSj.png)
>
>
>
For all practical purposes, an arquebus or other matchlock weapon is probably within the skillsets of trained workers as far back as the late 1300's or early 1400's
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OKtSj.png)
*Hand Gonne in the 1300's*
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YThlj.png)
*Matchlock firearm*
However, even jumping forward a few centuries with a matchlock isn't going to do the mad scientist much good. The production of gunpowder and firearms is essentially the domain of a few skilled craftsmen, the economy isn't going to support the large scale production of firearms and the tactics needed to *effectively* use firearms also needs to be developed, along with the logistical infrastructure to support firearms (imagine transporting tons of gunpowder across Europe in the 1300's...). Indeed, these sorts of firearms require a specific set of tactics (sometimes known as "Pike and shot") to allow the gunners to be effective against mounted cavalry.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/C7dbp.jpg)
*Pike and shot army*
So in isolation, the knowledge of advanced firearms alone isn't going to do much good. There must be an economy with enough capacity to produce the firearms, gunpowder, skilled craftsmen, transport (carts, horses, special containers to limit fire and explosion risks), sergeants and officers to develop and train troops in the right tactics...Your mad scientist will need to bring an immense illustrated library and probably an entire team of expert instructors in many different fields in order to make real changes to history.
[Answer]
Nothing.
No modern firearm or ammunition will pass for an ancient one. Every speck of metal and every chemical trace will make it stand out as not belonging. Worse no one is reproducing modern firearms or ammunition prior to the ~1800's and metal lathes, chemistry, and precision measurement.
Basically if they can make a firearm, they are already making said firearms. If you want to advance technology you need to come in with the specialized knowledge involved you can't just hand them something and say make this, because the answer will be "how?" especially if chemistry is involved and it almost always is.
[Answer]
# Springfield Model 1861
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFNRQ.png)
As long as you go to a place where people have no problem creating iron swords and equipment you should be able to get them to create a (initially probably unrifled) version of this gun that works with a minimum of tools.
At first your engineers (let's assume you go to India at 100 BCE and start your conquest from there <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_metallurgy_in_the_Indian_subcontinent#Iron> and elephants hate being shot at by guns) will probably turn out something more akin to the Brown Bess rifle <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Bess>. But this is fine! You are taking the Springfield muzzle loader because it was one of the last muzzle loaders in use, so it contains all the useful features that you'd like to eventually be implemented, but even a poor copy will be very functional.
I highly recommend using minié balls as soon as possible for ammunition. These are cheap to produce and very powerful, and will have no problem punching through any shields (think the shields of the Roman empire) or horses (think Parthian horsemen). The rate of fire will be approximately 3 RPM, which means that archers will actually have a rate of fire advantage over you, and might even have an accuracy advantage too while you are still using unrifled muskets. However this brings me to the most important advantage of using muskets over bows:
## "No" training required
While you are still using the brown bess version, an individual musketman would probably be at a disadvantage to say, a trained Parthian horse archer. However, training a soldier to use a musket takes weeks, training a soldier to wield a bow takes years, not to mention the costs associated with horses and the logistics required to field them.
Your greatest advantage will therefore be the size of the armies you can field. With massed musket fire, no enemy troops will be able to get close to you. Nonetheless, issuing a detachable bayonet to every troop will be highly recommended since it allows them to hold the line while the second (and optionally third) lines keep up their withering fire.
To sustain such large armies, you'll need to bring 2 additional items:
* A handbook on medicine and hygiene: before the 20th century (and even during it), most casualties in armies were caused by disease. Without hygiene, and proper training of your officers about where to setup camp and how to guarantee a proper water supply, your army might quickly have plenty of guns, but not enough people to use them!
* A book on constructing a field kitchen: The field kitchen allowed armies to cook the meals for soldiers, thereby severely reducing the amount of time spend by soldiers on foraging and cooking their food, and therefore massively increasing how far your army can move in a day. You will need to move quickly to giving other empires the time to copy your firearm design and field their own versions.
[Answer]
The problem with reproducing modern firearms in pre-industrial civilizations would be:
* steel of inadequate quality
* lack of precision tools
* lack of an industry capable of manufacturing smokeless gunpowder.
* severely limited possibilities for economics of scale.
The cause why people in the middle ages didn't make cartridge-based automatic firearms wasn't because the idea didn't occur to them. The reason why many inventions weren't "discovered" much sooner was that they lacked the economical and industrial base to manufacture them efficiently and economically.
Actually, some repeating firearm designs already emerged around the 16th-17th century, but they were so impractical that repeaters didn't get useful and widespread until the late 19th century. Those early designs were so expensive to make and so difficult to maintain, that they never saw widespread use.
Even if, with a lot of handwaving and a lot of luck you managed to [replicate](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/10610/262) a modern firearm in a pre-industrial age, it would be of questionable quality and reliability, and as cartridges have to be manufactured at an extremely high level of precision, you would basically require the most experienced master jeweler to manufacture each and every cartridge by hand, possibly requiring most of a day just to make a single one. And then you would have a "modern" firearm of extremely poor reliability with a high likelihood to jam, break, or explode in your face after every shot, with ammunition so expensive that for the cost to make one full magazine you could hire a whole army of mercenaries.
This is why those early repeaters, made many centuries before repeating firearms became commonplace, didn't have cartridges. They had a reservoir of loose gunpowder and loose lead balls, and an intricate clockwork mechanism driven by a had-crank which performed the motions of loading a traditional muzzle-loader. Yes, they had, for their time, an amazing and unparalleled rate of fire! Still, they were too expensive and too difficult to maintain to see any widespread use. Every single part needed to be made individually, and you couldn't use spare parts from one gun to repair another one. An army requires weapons they can maintain and repair in the field, you can't drag your kingdom's most experienced master smith and his whole workshop with you wherever you go. And even if you do, he alone couldn't maintain the guns of a whole army of tens of thousands. This was one of the reasons why the Girandoli air rifle [failed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhCx0b2ZC4Q) so miserably. I recommend to watch the linked video, because it explains well why extremely powerful but expensive and complicated weapon systems often fail against less powerful but cheaper mass produced ones. For a complex piece of equipment you need a complex infrastructure to keep it in working order. You can't just put it into a soldier's hands and hope you've done all the work.
So, the highest level of weapons technology you could ever hope to replicate (and use in an effective and efficient way) in pre-industrial times, would be **muskets with Minié balls, and cap-and-ball revolvers**. They became obsolete 150 years ago, and even they would be just on the very verge of possibility. Anything newer, you can forget about it. But even these Minié rifles would be much more effective than what your opponents would field, giving you great advantage.
[Answer]
He should bring back a replica firearm from a historical period as close as possible to the one he's trying to dominate. The precision manufacturing and metallurgy and chemistry of the time will fundamentally limit reproduction, so picking something that could already nearly be made will help tremendously.
Note that he still has his work cut out for him. Despite outward appearances, guns don't always mean you win. It takes training. In particular, training entire militaries is a very time consuming task that may require multiple lifetimes to achieve.
For a cinemagraphic depiction of this, consider the first part of *The Last Samaurai*. Fighting against trained warriors when you are unfamiliar with the tactics regarding how to use a weapon, nor the strategies which let you leverage it, can go spectacularly wrong.
[Answer]
I'm going to do two frame challenges: firearms are not the best way to do this and the hero can't achieve his goal.
First of all, as others have stated, **modern** firearms are made with modern tools and modern materials, which simply won't be available to the hero back whenever he wants to go (presuming he wants to go back when modern firearms would have a big enough impact). Non-modern firearms or knowledge about them can indeed be useful, and the hero could very conceivably introduce gunpowder and cannons to the early middle ages, rendering most (if not all) castles of that age VERY vulnerable to your army. The problem here is that your army so far consists of the hero and his cannon.
You see, your hero is still just a peasant, even if he possesses some magical stick that can kill at a distance even through armor, or some cart that can hurt a castle. His best bet is to hire some blacksmith to build the parts, produce the gunpowder himself and sell the weapons, which can turn him into a very wealthy merchant very quickly, but you're putting these advanced weapons in the hands of anyone who can pay for them (and who will eventually oppose you when you want to conquer them along with the whole world). Still, we might be on to something.
Since your hero needs to hire/get **his own** army (arming a noble's servants is actually a good deal, but doesn't make **the hero** the ruler of the world), he'll need either noble blood (good luck with that), a huge wealth or a noble title (acquired, not inherited). The last two can actually be achieved in a similar fashion: bring back something other than firearms, some knowledge or technique (or even better, multiple ones) that allow you to mass produce or somehow acquire something of value which he can sell for huge wealth, or that he can sell the secret itself in exchange for nobility and vassals. A wide array of techniques and knowledge works best, for example faster, ocean-faring ships to support your trading empire (plus they will help a lot later on with your conquest), irrigation techniques (you will eventually become a ruler, and you need to keep your empire fed), and just a general understanding of logistics, law, ethics, anything that helps your empire last until you conquer the whole world. Which brings us to our final problem (and second frame challenge).
**Your hero can't conquer the whole world in his lifetime.** The world is simply too big to conquer with the general level of technology that your hero needs to encounter to make modern firearms game-changing enough to even give him a shot at conquest. I would even argue that the world is too big to conquer with any pre-nuclear technology.
One option would be to reduce the size of the world. Build a bunker, detonate enough nuclear warheads to kill all life on Earth, and now "the world" is your bunker, where your hero can rule until his probably very early death.
[Answer]
**A MkI Gatling Gun**
If it'll fit inside your time machine, a Gatling Gun and as much ammo as you can fit. The crank version invented in 1861, you may remember its effect against pre-gunpowder armies from "The Last Samura." Provided your Hero knows what fulminate of mercury is. Now I know what you're all thinking, "That's almost impossible for anyone to make! You'd need jewelers to make the cartridges and assembly!" My answer is, "why yes, yes you would." Your hero's problem is any gun less technologically advanced than a Springfield rifle is going to be less effective than a bow and arrow. There's a reason firearms were around for hundreds of years and considered gimmick weapons as much as anything else. You'd need to turn them out in their thousands and have ammunition by the ton before your army would be superior to what it was before you turned up! That kind of investment is simply impossible for most ancient civilizations. Too many people not farming or herding or doing any of the other things you need to do to keep people alive.
A Gatling gun, on the other hand, is a comparatively minor investment in resources. Couple dozen blacksmiths and jewelers for the fine work of springs and cartridges and everything else is relatively simple. A battery of 6 divided into 2-gun sections can cover about 2280 meters of battlefield (effective range of 918 meters, leave room for overlapping fire). A pike phalanx of the Macedonian variety has about 1 square meter of space per soldier before they tighten up still further at close range. Other mass-infantry formations tend to stick to 1 square meter for each man. So (and forgive my math, I'm a history major after all!) each section can cover a frontage of about 2280 block-infantry, which'll likely be at least 8 men deep, and maybe as many as 16. In other words, a section can fire at 20,000ish men in formations so dense you almost can't miss. Probably less than 20,000 as individual units need space to maneuver, but the point is you'd need relatively few to cover an entire ancient battlefield. Enemy infantry is effectively doomed. Too lightly armored and they're torn to shreds at maximum range, and the more armor you pile on the slower they go, and the fewer of them your enemy can field against you.
Against Mass Cavalry the odds become tougher. Cavalry charged (and I'm using Napoleonic numbers here because we have the tactical manuals which give precise measurements. I assume an armored cataphract would be a bit slower, but this is a good top-end speed) at about 20kph, so 5.5 meters per second or thereabouts. That's a little less than 3 minutes to go from "maximum range" to "stabbing your gunners." A single Gatling can pump out 200 rounds per minute, so lets say 500 rounds before the cav get yah. Maybe less, since your gunners are unlikely to stand to their pieces when the cavalry is close! But even so, that's enough weight of fire to break up all but the most determined cavalry.
The other big PRO for gatling guns is that, because they're relatively large and you need few of them, is that your enemies are MUCH less likely to figure them out. Easy for a foe to steal a musket, or buy one from a shady supply soldier or get one from a deserter. But Gatling guns are much harder to just walk off with. Plus they become "prestige" weapons for your king/emperor/Hero, which is always a plus.
You also get the psychological impact of literally mowing down ranks of the enemy in ridiculously short amounts of time. in 5 minutes your 6-gun battery will have fired about 12,000 rounds at the enemy. Even if only a quarter of your rounds hit (likely, maybe even too high, because of a whole host of factors I won't get into) that's hundreds or thousands of the enemy dead and wounded. Many at a range they weren't even expecting danger. Despite the bloody toll of many ancient battles, actual COMBAT deaths (as opposed to massacred-while-running-away deaths) were generally few. If you kill a couple thousand enemy while they're still 450 meters away (outside maximum bowshot) the whole army may well break under the pressure, leaving your forces to mop up. Best bring a good amount of light cavalry with you!
A small but important upside to a Gatling Gun is that, once you know how to do that, you can also make things like siege Cannon with a little bit of experimentation. Or standard muskets/rifles, but as I've mentioned before I think those aren't really useful in societies where 95-98% of the population has to farm or else there's a famine.
The downside, apart from your hero needing to lug your demo piece to the first king he comes across, is that they eat up ammo at a ferocious rate. Which in turn means you still need a lot of materials. For instance 40 cartridges (which you'd 100% want to recover after a battle) take a pound of brass. If you have 12 guns and each one carries just 5 minutes of ammo, that's 300lbs of brass alone. A lot, but still MUCH less than the material cost you'd incur for equipping 1,000 men with flintlocks. Which again, wouldn't be as useful as 1,000 men with any number of different types of bow/crossbow.
Of course, what would likely end up winning your hero the war wouldn't be the firearm he brought back, but his insistence on basic sanitation. But teaching a civilization to wash their hands and piss downstream is less fun than superior firepower!
[Answer]
If your time traveler is trying to alter history by introducing "modern" firearms long before their time, his best bet would be an external hammer break-action shotgun (single or double), with brass cartridges loaded with black powder. The cartridges should be a mix of birdshot, buckshot, and "pumpkin ball" slug loads. Fixed chokes, no tighter than "improved modified", recommended. That's enough to demonstrate the effect of choke on a shot column (especially if one barrel is cylinder and the other improved modified), but not so tight as to cause trouble with the round ball loads.
If he's got any chemistry knowledge at all, he can make primers that will work, brass was a known and worked metal even in ancient times, and black powder shotguns can be made with pretty primitive steel (or even bronze) for the barrel and lockwork.
With a source of cartridges, a competent smith from 1600 (possibly as far back as 1500) could build a shotgun that could fire modern cartridges. It wouldn't be a nice to fire as a modern one (heavier, for one thing), but it would work. Once they have working firearms, the advancement can begin -- they'll be effectively up to 1860 technology as soon as they can make cartridges and that gun.
[Answer]
Why is he bringing a gun to duplicate? He should be bringing books! The gun would only be to demonstrate what the objective is, it need not be copied.
[Answer]
I'm going to disagree with some of the naysayers and point out that as soon as gunpowder is discovered, they have all the technology they need to make any manual action gun. Revolvers, bolt action, lever action, break action or pump action long guns are all possible.
Some posters have pointed out that pre-modern metallurgy is not up to our standards. I agree. But you don't need it to be. You can simply use thicker chambers, and remember, black powder produces much less pressure than modern smokeless powder.
Some have pointed out that pre-modern machining is nowhere near as good as modern machining. Again, I agree. And again, with manual action guns you don't absolutely need it to be. Semiautomatic or automatic guns need machined precise to the micron because they work together. Every part has to work together precisely or the whole thing won't work. Manual action guns on the other hand have much looser tolerances. Tighter tolerances are still nice, but loose ones are not dealbreakers.
The key is to not just bring back a gun or blueprints for a gun, but also the recipe for fulminated mercury so you can make cartridges.
[Answer]
Making firearms may not work out but just go back further. The Greek shields and 20' spears allowed them to dominate the world. A Roman general said getting through 3 layers of spear points to be able to start fighting Greeks was the hardest battles he fought. Greek fire won naval battles. The Romans interlocking shields won for them. The Indian's using elephants as a shooting platform dominated war in its sphere. The Chinese cross bow allowed one Chinese emperer to overcome all his rivals and unite China. The Mongul's horses dominated the plains. Just changing some tactics and fighting skills allowed Shaka Zulu to dominate southern Africa. The first chariots gave an incredible advantage. Catapaults and trebuckets changed war throughout europe and the known civilized world. Hot air baloons made observation and communications leap forward. The various armor changed and evolved. The long bow had it's own influence. Compound bows would allow distance and accuracy seldom available throughout history.
If you go back before these inventions, you can apply all of them at once and be virtually invincible. Now you just need to learn ancient Sumarian. Going back before written language would again be a HUGE advantage to the first warlord to use it for communications.
] |
[Question]
[
**Edit:** (September 18 2021) So far there are are many good answers that address why a group of guard monsters or unaffiliated group of humans might have a finite aggro range.
However these answers are unsatisfactory, because they do not attempt to explain the example where the heroes can attack a castle and clear it room-by-room, without having to fight all the guards at once.
In this case the guard groups are affiliated with each other. In reality I would expect a command structure with a plan for what to do in case they are attacked. I would not expect them to stand idle while the heroes murder their colleagues at the other end of the room, and wait for their turn at the slaughter.
---
Often in video games (and to a lesser extent tabletop games) the enemies have finite aggro ranges. That means for example, even on a featureless flat plain, the Man-Eating Troll will ignore the heroes before they come within 60 feet. Only then does the troll attack and try to man-eat the heroes. If the heroes later retreat to outside the aggro range, the troll forgets they exist and returns to its original position or patrol route.
In practice this is to allow adventures where the heroes take on a much larger force by fighting them in small groups. For example to take over a castle, first they fight the soldiers at the Gate House. Then they fight the soldiers at Ramparts East. Then Ramparts West. Then the Guard Tower. . . and so on until every room of the castle is cleared separately, and the final encounter is with the king and his royal bodyguards.
This requires great suspension of disbelief, since attacking the gatehouse should realistically alert all the troops in the castle, either by raising the alarm or the noise of fighting drawing soldiers from elsewhere. Soon our heroes will find all the soldiers in the castle on top of them.
An even sillier example -- in large rooms our heroes can often fight and kill the Manticores at the entrance without drawing the attention of the Basilisks at the exit. Even though the heroes can see the Basilisks, the monsters are either unaware or indifferent to the heroes, since their aggro range is smaller than the room.
From a world-building perspective, what would explain this strange behaviour? The goal is to keep as much of this strange video-game features while making as few changes to the real world as possible.
For example we could declare that all the monsters and enemy troops are in fact golems that are powered by crystals hidden below the floor. They simply fall down dead if they stray too far from their spawn points. This also explains why they fight to the death. They are non sentient and so lack a self-preservation instinct.
However this solution falls down in that (a) it is is a radical departure from the real world and (b) it does not explain why the golems are so common, when they are less effective at defending the castle than living beings, and presumably more difficult to acquire.
So what is the optimal tradeoff between modifying the real world as little as possible to produce as much strange video-game logic as possible?
[Answer]
So, drawing on a few real-world examples
## Too much hassle
It is just too much hassle to pursue the adventurers past a certain point. If you never gave up doing something because you realized it would be too much effort for too little reward, you may throw a stone at this argument. However, this is a very successful tactic for price increase, especially in services. Do a minor stealthy price increase in your service - most customers will not do anything because the hassle of changing service providers or calling customer service to haggle / take the charge out of the bill is too much hassle
## Violation of orders
A slightly more specific version of the possibility above: the enemy character is posted to guard a post or patrol a route. They have orders to not get further from X meters from the post of the route without authorization of a superior. They see the group and engage in combat. The group of adventurers retreat past the point they're authorized to go. So the enemy decides to not pursue them further because it doesn't justify violating their orders or asking authorization from their superior.
## Bystander effect
Related to the fighting happening in the same room. It is a [well-documented phenomenon in humans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect), it could very well happen with monsters. Or maybe getting rid of the pesky manticores is exactly what the basilisks wanted but lacked firepower to do...
## Limited aggro range = limited sensory range
Animals can see, hear, smell and feel things we can't. We can see, hear, smell and feel things some animals can't. Maybe your monsters have limited range and they literally *don't* perceive the fight happening in the other side of the room
[Answer]
In real life aggression is always justified by removal of a perceived threat, with saving energies being always tell priority.
Bees and wasps won't chase you for miles and miles, Canadian geese will desist from hitting you, and so on and so on, as soon as you don't represent a threat anymore.
And even in human behavior, there is always a chance that an attack on a side is a lure to leave another side uncovered or less covered.
[Answer]
**The perceptual range of these enemies is limited.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/TFqnF.jpg)
[source](https://www.dogtrainingnation.com/dog-behavior-2/my-dog-is-afraid-of-passing-cars/)
Last winter I was walking my dog around the block. It was night. On the street over she got scared. She wanted to turn around. She set her feet. She has been down this street thousands of times.
I looked down the street. Nothing and no-one. No sounds. No trucks.
And scared dog. We turned around. There was no reason we had to go down that street. I know she can hear things and smell things that I can't. What if she was right?
The next day that street was fine for walking.
---
My perceptual range is not great; at least not compared to a dog. Your video game enemies are like me except less good looking. They just cannot see or hear very well, and have essentially no sense of smell. The palace guards have a lifetime of rock concerts and jackhammer use dulling their hearing, plus they went lake swimming last weekend and their ears are still plugged. Their vision is not great either, between the syphilis and the shrooms. Your assorted bugbears and black puddings are likewise limited in perceptual range.
[Answer]
Finite aggro ranges could be considered a natural extension of the end-stage development of an evil fascist organisation.
Isolation and compartmentalisation of wider society is the first step towards instigating a fascist dictatorship. The unity of the people must first be undermined and replaced with feelings of distrust in one another, fear of the unknown and faith in authority. This pattern persists within the evil organisation by design so that the workers never unify and rebel against their evil overlords, and instead continue to obey orders without question.
Compartmentalisation is a key feature of most modern security and information policies. The effect of compartmentalisation is that each evil NPC peon is assigned an exclusive area which they are responsible for defending, Eg. a 30 yard zone, outside of which they stop chasing you and ignore any threats. They are not rewarded for addressing threats outside of their designated zone and may be punished personally for a security breach within their remit.
There may be another 30 yard zone at the far end of the room which is currently being raided by adventurers, but that is effectively another department within the organisation and so it doesn't matter in the slightest to our peon who is occupied within his own department. He could run to help his colleagues but there is no incentive to do so and he will be in trouble with his superiors if he leaves his block and it is subsequently invaded. - Remember the leaders of this evil organisation are themselves entirely selfish and myopic in their focus, and this influences workplace culture accordingly.
The Boss mob of the dungeon is bound in a similar way to their lower peons. They could instruct all their underlings to charge together and attack the adventurers at the entrance of the dungeon the moment they step inside, but they would be disregarding the security policy handed down from their own superiors. If the Boss mob leaves his zone, or instructs his underlings to do so in contradiction to HR and security policies, he would be held personally responsible for the outcome of events. Fear of the unknown and obedience to their superiors keeps them in line.
It is also worth noting that members of any organisation need to feel like they are doing the right thing; that they are 'the good guys'. If the average peon knew the extent of their corporations activities in the outside world they would realise that they are not, in actuality, the entirely righteous and benevolent philanthropists which they claim to be. Compartmentalisation within the organisation means that each peon knows only what he needs to do his job. Therefore if he is killed or captured it is unlikely that he will divulge any key items or information to the adventurers. For the same reason the Boss will not engage the adventurers prematurely - if he should be killed then he is likely to divulge helpful items or info to the party, and this is a risk that should not be taken except when absolutely necessary (i.e. when a threat has entered their delineated 30-yard aggro zone.)
[Answer]
### The monsters have reasons and purpose
Some of the monsters are probably guards, and don't want to stray too far from what they're guarding, because that would leave it unguarded.
Similarly, some of the monsters might be hanging around their home/nest/property, and are only concerned with the adventurer, because they see him as a thread to that.
Perhaps some of the monsters have tasks to accomplish where they are, and are therefore reluctant to drop that task just to chase adventurers.
Perhaps some of them are just lazy, and don't want to run too far, because then they'd have to walk back.
Think of all the moments in your own very real day and how difficult it would really be for someone to get you to drop what you're doing and chase them in any of those moments.
If you want to make the reasons for a limited aggro range realistic, then make them diverse and varied, and think of a different realistic reason for each case. Don't assume that antagonizing adventurers is the monsters' whole reason for being.
[Answer]
**Biologically hardwired**
Humans quickly attribute human emotions and logic to non-human creatures and even things. This is called anthropomorphism. Yet most don't work like us. We can make them not working like us to an extreme.
Some examples of different behaviour is plenty. We see showing teeth often as smiling, while for many creatures it's aggression. A woman wouldn't eat their husband after sex, while some do (sometimes) for immediate nutrition and better survival. We see others get hurt and want to assist or do something with the threat, while some creatures just run or do simply nothing about it.
We think creatures would immediately be get aggressive when they spot us. But that is human logic. Creatures 'guarding' caves can just have loyalty to these few at the entrance, recognising them as important. The rest simply isn't. The heroes are also a special case. They are unusually strong and skilled, but this isn't recognised by the creatures. Even if the creatures a little ways away are attacked and killed, they are secure in their own strength. They have been strong compared to all other threats so far, so their own group doesn't see the danger. They stay put at their fruitful location.
If the heroes run away out of their aggro range, they see that as a win. They lick their wounds and possibly mourn their dead. They only recognise their win, seeing their victory as proof they don't need to do anything when the heroes are closing in on their aggro range again.
You can use these behaviours in both smart as well as dumb creatures. Culture, religion, instincts and more can make them act the same, or completely different. It just depends on your requirements. Just like in real life you see differences and similarities even within the same creatures. From spawn rate → some same fish with or without many predators can make them spawn more, smaller and quicker, or less, slower and bigger. To size and loyalty to a group → size of a pride of lions and how well they stay together.
The guards can see the attack as a small group, which doesn't need immediate attention. It isn't a siege or something. Besides, their military structure tells them to guard that wall and not to rush down. The small group should get cleaned up by their peers, or get stopped when they get to stronger guards deeper in the palace. Their honor even prevents them. It is the fight of those guards. Only if the enemy gets on their territory they need to rush and defend their piece.
[Answer]
My first thought was a variation of your "Robots with energy crystals below the floor" thing, though one that fits better into a "natural" fantasy world:
## Magical creatures need magic, which flows in leylines or gathers in pools
These monsters are stronger than animals in our world would be. This obviously requires them to have more energy available. They also never eat (unless they eat a hero), so where do they get the energy to exist and breathe fire? It must be magic!
Now some worlds have magic just everywhere, in a diffuse field that anyone can access everywhere. That would allow magical creatures to roam freely. In your world however, magic either flows in leylines or acts like a liquid that collects in the deepest parts of... well, magic doesn't really flow over the ground. It gathers in divots of the etherical field (or somesuch babble).
A monster can't exist for a long time outside of such a pool of magic / away from a crossing of leylines. Anything outside its personal pool (or that of its pack) is not a threat unless it moves close enough to be seen as interested in this pool.
Hero walks past the monster with enough distance between them? Oh, he doesn't want to steal my magic pool that I need to live. Why should I leave my pool, risking that someone else takes it away from me, to chase down someone who is no threat to me?
Hero comes too close though? Clearly this creature wants my magic pool, otherwise it would not come close to my fangs, claws and fire breath. My only options are to fight, kill it and keep my life-sustaining pool, or be driven out of my pool and starve to death if I don't find another one soon enough!
Basically, the monsters have no drive to chase the hero for food because they're sustained by magic. And they don't see him as a threat unless he seems to be interested in their personal small location where magic is strong.
[Answer]
# Westworld style
Just replace:
>
> For example we could declare that all the monsters and enemy troops are in fact golems that are powered by crystals hidden below the floor.
>
>
>
With:
>
> The enemies are robots, built for the pleasure of the patrons who like this kind of fight.
>
>
>
# The gods decreed so
There is a very popular webcomic called The Order of the Stick, which is all based in Dungeons and Dragons. In this epic story, the gods created monsters for the sole purpose of serving as XP sources for heroes. The sentient monsters do not like this fact one bit, but even though they have free will, they must still abide by the rules of the world. It's kinda like the laws of physics for them.
[Answer]
**Monsters**
With monsters, it's seems sensible that you could treat these like you would animals, just ones with extra powers and maybe slightly more intelligence.
Take a lumbering man-eating troll posted at a cave. You could argue that it is unlikely to run far towards humans it sees from a great distance. Why would it? The humans can almost certainly see it and are almost certainly faster. Surely that would be wasting energy catching prey that would easily get away if it wanted. Why do that when there is a ready food supply that seems very content in approaching its home quite willingly?
Further, if this location were indeed its "territory", it might not want to venture far for fear of its claim on that territory being threatened by some other creature (human, troll or otherwise), even without explicitly being given orders to guard anything.
For a mixture of monsters in a location, there may be some reason that it's beneficial for them to coexist without them necessarily having any kind of allegiance or devotedness to each other. So if you attack a Manticore, there is no real reason that a Basilisk feels the need to intervene as long as you don't enter its own personal space.
**Humans**
Personally I think this one is harder to answer. It could be that their masters foster a certain mentality that causes this.
Maybe they have very strict instructions and they're frightened to leave a limited range for any reason for fear of reprisal, instead training themselves to ignore anything going on in other parts of the castle that doesn't concern them. Perhaps infighting between guards or run ins between human guards and the monstrous ones is commonplace and thus they don't jump to the conclusion that the commotion is the result of an intruder until they see otherwise, ignoring it because they're more focused on themselves. And speaking of being focused on oneself, they may be far from fanatical over aiding their masters and take a "That over there's not my job, I'll only get involved if I have to" approach to their duties.
[Answer]
A part of it can be territoriality - why does the Manticores not attack the Basilisks? Because they have established which side of the room is for which species. Plenty of animals exhibit this behaviour pattern which informs both intraspecies (this area, and any females or prey in it, is mine, so don't come here unless you want to fight me for it) or interspecies (detecting a dangerous predator by scent markings or spoor) activities.
For the mixes of monsters to coexist closely packed in dungeons or whatever some similar stand off is needed. Of course that leaves open the question of what all these large predators threatening enough for experienced adventures to have trouble and closely packed together will find eat in a dungeon where the bottom of the food pyramid consists of probably nothing apart from scraps of mold, mosses and fungi and generally extremely limited access to fresh water supplies.
[Answer]
**Distances are compressed**
If you walk around Skyrim or a similar game, you may notice that distances don't quite make sense. There might be a city that takes you a minute to walk across. In other games, there might be a city that just consists of a castle and two vendors. This is usually because of gameplay concerns; walking past a dozen blocks of housing just to get from point A to point B isn't particularly interesting, and there's no need to have a blacksmith that specializes in barrel hoops in the game unless making barrels is a gameplay element.
So, that creates a question: are the cities actually that small, or is the game simply ignoring the boring bits? If it's the second one, then you have a solution; when you fight a group of guards, and see a second group just standing around, that's because they're really a five minute run away. Similarly, the Basilisks on the other side of the cavern are on the other side of the cavern, it's just that the cavern isn't the size of a garage, but the size of an football stadium.
[Answer]
What is exactly the purpose of this question?
Some examples you brought up are so ridiculous that no matter how you justify them, they will still remain unbelievable, as long as we are speaking about real humans or animals. At the same time, in real life, chasing away the danger is far more common than chasing until you kill or get killed, so toned-down version of what you want will have no "video-game weirdness" at all. As I'm understanding it, you want weird and wacky things to happen but also make them believable and those are on the opposite ends of the same scale.
In an understaffed fortress, a melee guard would stare at you from the gate after you kill his friend until you leave his field of vision and then he returns to his patrol, because he doesn't know how many friends you have and what will happen to him, if he doesn't continue to watch his back. Chasing into the darkness after a mysterious stranger who just murdered a trained warrior with no effort and leaving the safety of the fortress walls, would mean certain death. Even when they don't move at all, as you say, it's impossible for a human being to watch a murder and not react in any way. If they, for whatever reason, are not willing to fight you, they will watch you closely and hide as soon as they see you approaching. And if they will still fight you, because leaving their post will lead to fate worse than death, they would still call for help and ready their weapons before you even look at them.
Personally, the least realistic part of that scenario is that guards don't carry a range weapon with them to shoot you while you are busy fighting others, since the point of gates and walls is to stay inside and keep others out, and melee weapons are useless until the opponent breach that defense. Without range weapons, the opponent is not locked out, you are locked in. And with realistic ranged weapons at hand, you better have a very good reason why they are not using them. Since they don't have any more man to spare to chase and capture you, there might be a good possibility that they have no ammunition as well. But again, if you put so much effort into making it realistic, it's no longer "wacky, video-game moment", your guard becomes a real human, frozen with fear, left without means of defending himself and at the mercy of a man who just murdered his friend and is probably coming for him next.
The animals are no different. Just look at a bird defending its nest or an elephant defending its young, hippo defending it's water hole. If they dare to charge and chase off the attacker, they will either land a hit or stop after few seconds and return to that thing they were defending. Even predators that could potentially eat a human won't bother, if they are already well fed. Your basilisk might observe the fight from the distance and hiss because it's defending its side of the room, might try to join but is being bound by a spell or a chain, might not perceive you as a threat, because manticore fights are a regular thing and the basilisk was never bothered by them, since manticore always wins. But in all of those scenarios, it's not strange, video-game logic, it's regular, real life logic.
] |
[Question]
[
## Background
It's a nice spring day on May 23, 2016. You sit outside with a radio and tune in to the news. In the middle of hearing the station talk about [insert politician here], you hear a large burst of static. Simultaneously, every television set and radio on Earth has the same burst of static. After a few seconds, the static fades away and 7 billion people hear an unfamiliar voice.
"We are representatives of the species *qponvuiphzpoi*, from what you call the Rigel star system. We have a material, Unobtanium, which has an infinite energy density, allowing for faster-than-light travel and unlimited, clean energy. However, the human race needs to prove that it is ready for this technology. Your species is engaged in perpetual warfare, and you kill your neighbors senselessly. To prove that you are ready, you must cease all warfare within one Earth year, or else we will leave and see if you are ready 10,000 years from now. We will be watching."
TL;DR- you can get Unobtanium if you stop all wars.
Would we be able to stop fighting in time? This is especially complicated in the Middle-East, where conflicts have been going on for centuries. This is magnified by the fact that much of their economy is based on oil, which the Unobtanium would make obsolete.
---
The aliens will use this definition of war:
>
> A state of armed conflict between different nations or states.
>
>
>
I'll expand that to include the definition of a civil war:
>
> A war between citizens of the same country.
>
>
>
In unclear cases, assume that the aliens have their own judgment. If most people think it's a war or civil war, the aliens also do (no using this as a loophole). The definition of war isn't the point of the question.
Syria = War
ISIS = War
Gang violence ≠ War
Assume that the aliens have some sort of cutoff switch for the Unobtanium, at least initially, to make sure that humans keep their promises for a while.
[Answer]
**No, the fighting will not stop.**
There are a couple of big problems here:
**Who gets the Unobtanium?** Does every single person on earth get it? Will the aliens give this (potentially dangerous) technology to groups like ISIS, simply because they stopped fighting for a short time? It seems doubtful. But even if the aliens promise to give it to everyone, some, due to their world-views, are likely to distrust this promise and believe that this gift will put them in an even more disadvantaged position.
**The gift of Unobtanium creates losers.** As you point out, oil-rich countries will decline in status. But also, technologically advanced nations will be better able to exploit the technology than others. This will increase the relative power of the west compared to less developed nations, so these less developed nations may not want it to happen.
**Unobtanium does not advance everyone's ends.** Some people are fighting for apocalyptic religious reasons, for example. Do they care about space travel and cheap energy? Even in less extreme examples, people tend to be fighting because they care about some issue *very deeply*. Quite a lot of those fighting are likely to care about their cause more than the benefit of Unobtanium. Some might hope for a strategic pause in fighting to get the benefit. But others will try to take advantage of any such pause.
**Not everyone will believe the promise.** The existence of aliens, particularly aliens that are much more advanced than us, conflicts with *a lot* of people's belief systems. People have a demonstrable ability to disbelieve things even when there is overwhelming evidence (see the moon landing, for example). Therefore, a significant number of people will end up thinking this is an elaborate hoax. In this context, the call to stop fighting will be greeted with great suspicion.
There are just too many reasons for the fighting to continue. Also, there is the obvious point that **war already is causing grievous harm to humanity**, yet people think it is worth it and do it anyway. The failure to receive Unobtanium slightly increases the harm caused by war, but doesn't change the basic calculus.
[Answer]
>
> Would we be able to stop fighting in time?
>
>
>
There is one possibility I can think of: **Total annihilation of all but one nation (or just all of them).** One year is more than enough time for any nuclear super power to instigate a global Holocaust that reduces humanity to only a few hundred million people barely scraping by. Although there will be gang wars and various factions fighting for the few remaining resources, these are not states by the given definition. Hence, survivors get to have unobtanium!
And so, almost poetically, the best way to end all wars is to create a war to end all wars.
[Answer]
## Short Answer
**No!**
## Longer Answer
**Never in a million years!**
No matter what, you will always have fighting on Earth. If you don't mind me quoting a little scripture, “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion." D&C 121:39. During nearly all of human history there has been war. It's just human nature. And it doesn't help that you will always have those people who just like to start fights, or those crazy murderous people.
[Answer]
The problem with most wars is that they are caused by reasons much more important to the belligerents than energy shortage and not being able to travel faster than light.
Like, who gets Israel / Palestine? The threat of death / serious injury and displacement from their homes and destruction to their property hasn't been enough to deter them from war, why would this unobtainium?
[Answer]
No. Also, that unobtanium is even more dangerous to us than nuclear weapons. Please go away!
The fundamental problem is human nature. Consider this. Two more or less equal nations or other large groups are competing over a resource. Do they share it equally? Or do they fight, destroy half of it, and eventually the winner claims two thirds of what is left?
Unfortunately in the second scenario the leaders of the winning group will have increased their status with respect to the losing group, and that is how status is judged. In relative not absolute terms. Intellectually we try to deal with that, but our underlying animal nature does not work so rationally.
Alternative to those aliens, please set up a peace authority in orbit and vaporise any heavy weaponry and any armies or similar groups engaged in aggressive hostilities. A few thousand years of ruthlessly enforced peace might improve us. Don't expect us to love you for doing this!
[Answer]
No. Suppose you ended all current wars, what would happen?
There are scumbags out there who would demand concessions for not going to war. If you don't cave in there will be war, if you do there will be more demanding more concessions and you'll end up in a situation where they can't all be met.
[Answer]
There's a Twilight Zone Episode devoted to this very question called "**[A Small Talent for War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Small_Talent_for_War)**."
>
> An ambassador (John Glover) from an alien race arrives, claiming that
> his race had genetically engineered the people of Earth. He tells the
> quarrelsome members of the United Nations Security Council that his
> race is displeased over Earth's "small talent for war", having failed
> to produce the potential that the aliens had nurtured. When the alien
> ambassador announces that his fleet will destroy Earth, the Security
> Council earns a 24-hour reprieve to prove Earth's worth. With survival
> at stake, the Security Council negotiates, and the General Assembly
> acclaims, an accord for lasting global peace and presents it to the
> alien ambassador.
>
>
>
[SPOILERS]
>
> The global peace agreement brings great humour to the emissary. The
> aliens were, in fact, seeking a greater talent for war, as they had
> genetically seeded thousands of planets to breed warriors to fight for
> them across the galaxy. Humanity's "small talent" for war (crude
> weapons, petty bickering over borders) is not significant enough to be
> of any use to them, and he laughingly states that — worst of all
> — the people of Earth long for peace. As the ambassador calls
> down his fleet to destroy the Earth, he thanks the Security Council
> for an amusing day and their "delightful sense of the absurd", and his
> parting comment is "...as one of your fine Earth actors, Edmund Gwenn,
> once said, '*Dying is easy, comedy is hard.*'".
>
>
>
I do think humans could find enough common ground to create peace. I'm not sure that we could maintain it though. Eventually someone's passions, religions, or principals would cause them to try to impose their will on others. When that happens people can choose to permit the imposition or fight back. Usually we choose to fight.
[Answer]
## Yes, but not in a year
The only solution within a year is the war to end all wars scenario that's already been covered, so let's look at the long term solution.
It's going to be nasty, it's going to be bloody, but I think it could be done in a minimum of two, maybe three generations. If every country, every government, decides this is the way forward (yeah right, like that could happen).
The first thing is a change in cultural attitudes. Going to war is considered a dramatic and romantic thing to do. War is glorified in the media. **This must end.** War must be depicted as nasty, bloody, a nightmare to all concerned, and unacceptable under any circumstances. Historical film, books, poetry and documents including religious texts that glorify war must be expunged, **as must any leaders, speakers or others who don't get with the program.**
Nationalism and the concept of national borders must be broken down and a universal language introduced. Free movement of peoples is critical to this plan.
Global free education, free healthcare and basic income is required. All must be equal, free movement of people should become irrelevant as all places are equal (I'm moving somewhere with better weather), but if any regional power tries any repressive behaviour, the locals can just up and move away.
People will fight this, I don't understand why, but people fight tooth and nail against the world being made a better place. There are going to be messy revolutions springing up all over the place for at least a generation.
**Freedom of speech will need to be suppressed** (don't like that one do you). Any incitement to war must be crushed, any mention of the things people like to go to war about (nationalism for example) must be suppressed.
What all this is leading on to is creating a global monoculture where everyone is educated, nobody lives in crushing poverty, everyone's basic needs are covered and **everyone has more to lose than gain by going to war**. Slowly the concept of war as a viable option will fade.
---
I know what I've said here is controversial, I'm not pretending to be nice, if you want to change the world slowly you can be nice, but we're trying to change the world fast. In a situation where you have to change an attitude that's held steady for thousands of years then you're going to upset a lot of people. To start with you're going to upset the kind of people who don't believe that it's government's job to change attitudes from the top down. The people as a whole aren't going to suddenly all decide that they're never going to go to war again. There are too many people romanticising it. Too many people believing in rewards in the next world if they die because of it. To clear that *quickly* needs top down change with heavy handed enforcement. You need to stop the current generation telling the next generation that it's a good thing. That might require a lot of people to disappear if they really won't shut up.
A few governments will have to be overthrown, a lot of people are going to die. Some of those governments will have been elected by the will of the people, but it's the will of the people that we're fundamentally trying to change.
[Answer]
It is not possible. There will always be people who will be against the obtaining of unobtainium; and all they need do to squelch the deal is to organize, however poorly, and declare war on any government, terrorist-style. It only takes one lone wolf, one bomb, one shooting. No peace, no unobtanium.
[Answer]
# No.
**Do they care about Unobtanium?**
Nope. A lot of conflicts have nothing to do with acquiring energy or FTL travel. Water, religion, occupation, even plain & simple pride, etc. are primary causes of war. Do they even have TV and Radio? Not in the jungles of Colombia. Not in the back of beyond in Burma. **For the wars to be ended, it would require a state intervention**, which leads us to the next problem.
**Vastness of War**
War is not one thing, much like cancer is not 'one' type. There are wars over all sorts of tensions. There are even Buddhist monks slaughtering Muslims in Mayanmar as we speak due to being outnumbered socially. There are wars in Central African Republic, Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, etc. Even Russia has bullied its way around in recent years. **The conflicts are too wide-spread** for a state-driven eradication or peace treaty in one year.
**No Single Solution**
In almost every case, there will be two sides who have extreme belief that the correct "end" to the war would be annihilation or reversal of beliefs or altered borders in their favor. How does intervention decide which side should be taken? Rarely are there middle solutions that both sides would accept.
**Many Don't Want Unobtainium - Economy**
Do you think Doha would be happy if everyone in the world had unlimited clean energy? How then will they buy food for the people of Qatar in the first few years. All of the energy-sector jobs would be cut. In renewables alone, [almost 7 million people](http://tcktcktck.org/2014/05/report-renewable-energy-jobs-top-6-5-million-globally/) work in that sector. Way more than that in the total energy sector (sorry I can't find a number).
**Many Don't want Unobtanium - Environment**
It would devastate our planet. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Libya, etc. would use free energy to pump vast amounts of desal water to green their deserts and have agriculture. Countries such as Madagascar and Indonesia would us unlimited energy to more rapidly clear cut trees for sale. The spread of mankind's destruction, particularly in rapidly growing under-developed countries, will likely increase.
[Answer]
## TL;DR: No.
We can never completely rid ourselves of the roots.
## Long answer:
There is a certain tendency in man to hurt others. Call it what you will; it has had many names, such as "the call of the void", "original sin", and "*massa damnata*".
Even if we were to eliminate the current disputes, bigotry, and religious jihads in which it is currently expressed, **the urge to hurt others would remain.** All that would change is that we would find some other cause to fight for.
For example, say that an entire ethnicity suddenly disappeared. Would that solve racism? Heck no! It might help for a few days, but then all the former racists would find a new target for their hatred.
>
> So long as there are men, there will be wars.
>
>
> - Albert Einstein
>
>
>
[Answer]
## Yes, but not without a wee hiccup
At day 350,our leaders unleash a massive nuclear holocaust. By day 365, second strikes are complete, and the survivors, having achieved the level of peace that can only be achieved in bunkers while waiting for salvation by an outside force, can use the wonders of unobtainium to rebuild!
[Answer]
I would guess that the leaders of The United States, Russia, and possibly China and North Korea would decide to launch nuclear missiles at all of the territory controlled by Boko Haram and ISIS. Iran would suffer great economic loss, and might decide to start a war with the country that inflicted the most damage.
Israel could be drawn into a conflict with Iran, which would require the US to come to their aid. This could mark the beginning of a nuclear war with Israel and the US fighting Iran and Russia. China would wisely stay out of the fight, as the other countries fight. Russia, Israel, Iran, and the US are destroyed. This briefly destroys China's economy, and they face the threat of a revolution. Fortunately for them, the year comes to an end, and China fixes its economy through the new technology. It becomes the largest economic power in the world. Talks of a one world government arise, now that ISIS has been destroyed.
[Answer]
The quickest way to end all wars is to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. I am thinking multiple strategic nukes and mass burials. Leave no trace. Make it as it was before the UK+US stole Palestine and illegally gave it to European Jews.
] |
[Question]
[
Imagine a society (medieval, but that isn't very important here) that has approved slavery. You can trade, buy, sell and hire slaves at will in the market.
## Introduction
Slaves are usually "harvested" from indigenous villages that are attacked and conquered by the kingdom. Also, but not so common, people can sell their sons or even themselves to be slaves, usually if they are extremely poor (at least their new owners will usually take care of them, otherwise they will lose money). Another way to get slaves is during a war, war prisoners sometimes aren't returned to their homes after a war and they become slaves of the victorious empire, even this may happen with civilians in war zones.
## The idea: Sell prisoners.
The thing that I want to add is the possibility of buying prisoners as slaves. This will have 2 main advantages:
* The government will spend less money on prisons.
* The slave market will have cheaper prices due a new and constant flow of slaves to the market (wars and indigenous villages aren't so common).
And finally, it may be a bit interesting.
It's quite understandable and obvious that slaves can be released. An owner can at will give freedom to its slaves, he just needs to sign a little contract that states the freedom of the person. Sometimes slaves perform deals with they masters if they work hard and without causing problems during X years they get freedom.
## The problem
If you can buy prisoners as slaves and you can get them free at will, you can, as a rich person, member of a rich family, assassins/thief guild, etc, perform a criminal activity, be jailed, be bought by a friend, and finally be released by him.
Basically, **the law won't be any problem for rich or illegal organizations.**
**How can I prevent this problem but allow the sale of prisoners?**
Even not allowing slaves to be set free by their masters it still being the same. You can be bought by a friend, family or guild and keep your life as normal. I don't want that.
## Not much necessary to know
In this world, there is magic, some magic (usually healing magic) need life forces of victims to be performed. I want to let mages buy cheap prisoners and use them as life-force batteries to power they healing services in rich hospitals. I was thinking in prisoners because they are actually criminals, not just "slaved persons", so mages wouldn't annoy about kill them to fuel their magic, also, they may be cheaper.
A solution could be to not buy the prisoner, just its life-force. A mage visits a prison, ask for some life-force, pay the price, guards transfer the prisoner to a special room, and there part of its life is taken away from him to a jar by the mage. **Simple, easy and effective.** But I don't like much the idea. I would like the idea of buy prisoners as assets, not just their life essence.
[Answer]
Make owners responsible for their slaves. This is a replacement for imprisonment. So there would be a sentence length. Using their lifeforce reduces the sentence length. But otherwise, their period of enslavement is determined by the original judging entity. Purchasers cannot reduce it arbitrarily. Further, because they are responsible for crimes that their slaves may commit, this means that if a slave commits another crime, the purchaser also goes to jail. Eventually the slave runs out of friends and family members.
This allows for slaves to be bought for lifeforce. This reduces their sentence. The healers administrate that part. Slaves may also be bought for labor. But then the owner becomes responsible for the slave. Hostile owners will hire guards, etc. Friendly owners might try to do this, but then they are subject to arrest when they fail to restrict their slave.
You can further reinforce this with some arbitrary restrictions. For example, slaves may not be allowed outside on their own after dark. Break that and the slave goes back to jail for resale. The owner loses whatever investment was made to free the slave.
Other potential rules:
* Slaves can't talk to free women, even their mothers, sisters, and daughters.
* Slaves can't speak back to free people.
* Slaves can't strike free people.
* Slaves may not be allowed to drink alcohol.
* Slaves may not be allowed to drink from free fountains.
[Answer]
### It used to be commonplace
The question show a misconception about pre-modern societies. They were not modern societies in which people dressed funny and had a handful of unusual laws; they were profoundly alien. As it is said, [*the past is a foreign country*](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/L._P._Hartley).
* First of all, in pre-modern societies they had no concept of imprisonment as a form of punishment. Misdeeds were of only two kinds: most of them incurred some sort of fine, or price, to be paid; the others called for the capital punishment.
What exactly qualified for capital punishment varied from place to place and from time to time. Murder was a capital crime in the classical world, but not so much in the early Germanic Middle Ages, where it called for payment of a man-price, or [weregild](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weregild). On the other hand, all pre-Renaissance penal codes were very harsh on adultery and other forms of domestic treason.
* Enslavement was a form of *capital* punishment.
The Romans called it [*capitis deminutio maxima*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitis_deminutio), the greatest diminishment of the head. In early Rome, it involved selling the convict across the border, *trans Tiberim*, on the other side of the river Tiber. In more civilized times, it involved usually making the convict a slave of their punishment, *servus poenae*, and selling them to work in a mine, *damnatio ad metalla*.
The point is that it was a *capital* punishment. (*Capital* from *caput*, head.) The person was legally dead. Their wealth was either confiscated or passed to their heirs. They could not come back from the dead, and enslavement was assimilated with death, *servitus morti adsimulatur*.
Even if they were miraculously set free (which was usually not possible, because they were *branded* before being sold, and branded slaves could not be manumitted), they had no family, no relations. Wait, a modern person will say, but this was a legal fiction; *of course* their natural family would recognize them. Nope, not so; the past is a foreign country, and the Romans tooks family very seriously, and would never welcome an unrelated former convict.
* Were the Romans the only one to practice penal slavery?
No, not at all.
In early medieval Hungary,
>
> Freemen could be sold into slavery for numerous crimes. Any common woman (*plebeia*) caught in adultery would be sold 'without the hope of freedom' (*sine spe libertatis*), and the same fate awaited a common man caught in the same sin.
>
>
> (Cameron Sutt, *Slavery in Árpád-era Hungary in a Comparative Context*, BRILL, 2015, ISBN 9789004301580)
>
>
>
In some western European countries, early Germanic penal codes had similar provisions.
In medieval China they sold the convicts far away, in the poor provinces at the margins of the empire.
The early modern English [sold them across the ocean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_transportation#Transportation_as_a_commercial_transaction), in America.
* But what about the rich? And their goons?
The rich were rich anyway. The rules did not apply to them. A rich Roman (or a rich Chinese) could never be enslaved or God forbid! executed; the worst of the worst was exile (which implied loss of property) but this was exceedingly rare, the usual maximum punishment for a rich criminal being relegation (sort of like exile, but without complete loss of property).
And their goons? Well, rich people did not stay rich by spending money on slaves which they intended to manumit immediately, not to mention that it would have been against social *decorum* to do that; and in a pre-modern society, loss of face (or, as they called in Europe, dishonour) was to be avoided at all costs.
[Answer]
All prisoners are property of the Government during their sentence. The "owners" don't buy them, just hire them for long periods.
In a medieval society, because sentences need to be really harsh, you need to use those slaves only for the most dangerous jobs, like rowing ships, working in mines, etc. If not, people will commit crimes and then ran away during their slavery time, because the Government has almost no security forces and just by traveling 100 km nobody knows you.
[Answer]
## Face Branding
Just [brand each prisoner's face](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_branding#Marking_the_rightless) so no one ever gets the wrong idea about them being free. Funny enough, this was used for the purpose of slaves in our own history. I want to point out one group specifically which were [branded by the Roman Catholic church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_branding#As_punishment).
>
> In the 16th century, German Anabaptists were branded with a cross on their foreheads for refusing to recant their faith and join the Roman Catholic church.
>
>
>
For some reason if your cringing at the thought, branding another place that is clearly visible would be possible. Think hands, neck, ankles.
---
**Edit:** It was pointed out in the comments I should put in a bit more detail, so I will answer your question directly.
>
> Basically, the law won't be any problem for rich or illegal organizations.
> How can I prevent this problem but allow the sale of prisoners?
>
>
>
We cannot prevent all criminals from gaining back their old life but we can prevent them from rebuilding anything public facing. Not to mention, ostracizing people is a strong punishment in itself.
The easiest way to ostracize someone is to make them different from everyone else in a bad way. In the Southern states of the USA there were slaves, but every one had a single feature that made them different; a black skin color. Just by looking at a person in the south you could guess who was or was not a slave. This is a powerful force as all of society is enforcing your slavery.
Now you need the same solution, but applicable to any person without undue cost. This requires a clear marking that no one can ignore, removing body parts and permanent disfiguration are the easiest solutions. removing body parts may damage their ability to contribute so that is out. disfiguration only works on easily seen parts of the body and hiding your whole face is hard in society.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/RRY9H.jpg)
This man was a Siberian convict of Russia. Without even knowing that, having those marks on his face clearly sets him apart from most people. He will never get away from the past even if he was set free.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/x49Am.jpg)
If you would rather go with the amputation method [Iran recently made a machine that does it for you](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9831727/Iran-unveils-finger-amputating-machine-for-use-on-thieves.html). Losing a finger for your crime is a clear disfiguration for the purpose of this question.
[Answer]
>
> Basically, the law won't be any problem for rich or illegal organizations.
>
>
> How can I prevent this problem but allow the sale of prisoners?
>
>
>
I think you could solve or mitigate this problem by thinking over who owns a newly-convicted prisoner by default.
In cases where it's the government of the day, they may have some good reason to not sell a criminal kingpin out of jail. There are some parallels between this and modern parole.
On the other hand, you could set up the system so that, for example, the surviving family of a murder victim decides if, and at what price, the convicted murderer can be "bailed out" of jail and into slavery. There may still be problems of duress, but at least they might be interesting ones.
On the final hand, "the law isn't a problem for the rich" isn't exactly unique to your situation.
[Answer]
# There is no such thing as personal property
The kingdom is an absolutist monarchy, along the lines of Pharaonic Egypt, Imperial China, or Achaemenid Persia. The king 'owns' everything in the country. If you have money or power, then you can pay the God-king for his material favors, or they could be granted to you as a divine boon.
But, there is no concept of 'ownership' at all. Everything that is, belongs to the God-king; the best anyone else can hope for is the right of possession (which could of course be revoked by the king at any time).
In this way, slaves are the property of the king, as is everything; but right merchants, guilds, lords and sundry can pay the king for the right to tell these slaves what to do.
[Answer]
Just back off the concept that buyers can **always** buy a prisoner. If your rich guy commits a crime, he becomes a prisoner that cannot be bought.
Or you put restrictions on who can buy him; nobody that *knows* him. Or the government authorizes certain hard labor camps (mining, farming, gladiators) to buy such prisoners, and nobody else. And confiscate all his property and money while you are at it, so even if some friend could by subterfuge find a way to buy him out of slavery, the rich guy isn't rich anymore and cannot pay his friend back, because he has nothing.
There are many ways out of your dilemma, just do not assume the rules have to be simple or fair. You are allowing legal ***slavery*** for god's sake.
[Answer]
Just like in real life, you could use [parole officers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probation_officer) to ensure the prisoners are being subjected to the punishments your government believes they should receive. Although real-life parole officers are more focused on the prisoner's background and activities outside of prison, your parole officers will be more focused on the buyer.
---
Before making the purchase, the buyer must agree to uphold whatever punishments/type of work/treatment that the prisoner should receive, and how long they will remain a prisoner(assuming it isn't for life). Upon buying a prisoner destined for slavery, the buyer must register themselves(if it's their first time) and the prisoner with the nearest parole officer/parole office. These officers will typically be part of your government's normal police/military jurisdictions.
After registering, the buyer will be subjected to periodic, and ideally random, inspections of the prisoner-turned-slave's working conditions. If the parole officer is suspicious that the buyer is not adhering to the conditions they agreed to before the purchase, the officer can issue warnings and set up more thorough, and again random, investigations.
Should the buyer be found beyond a reasonable doubt to be treating the slaves better/worse than they should, then the slave may be taken away from the buyer without compensation. Repeated or particularly egregious offenses, such as killing, maiming, or releasing them, could result in a complete ban from further purchases.
[Answer]
Assign slaves to buyers randomly.
If your friend is sent to jail then you can buy all means request a slave. And the slave will be any one of the hundred prisoners taken in the last year or a slave from other means, maybe even one being sold back to the government. Unless you want to buy all of the slaves on the market you are pretty much out of luck.
If they did buy their freedom like a lottery then they will be punished financially and the government will be among those reaping the benefits of the mass slave buying.
[Answer]
A combination of two practices:
**Exponential purchase price increases** for repeat offenders
and
**Enslavement of ex-owners of repeat offenders** who must be purchsed before their ex-slaves can be purchased
Example:
John breaks the law and is imprisoned. John's friend/family/illegal-organization-colleague, Joe, buys John and lets John loose. John breaks the law again and is imprisoned. Joe is also imprisoned as the owner of a repeat offender, and so cannot buy John again as Joe is himself imprisoned. Also, John cannot be purchased until Joe has already been purchased. Jack is a friend/family/illegal-organization-colleague of Joe, and buys Joe and turns him loose. Now Joe has the opportunity to buy John, but John's purchase price has doubled as a repeat offender. He does so, anyway, though with much more hesitation this time, for obvious reasons. John breaks the law again, is imprisoned again. Joe is imprisoned as his owner, again. And Jack is also imprisoned as the owner of repeat offender Joe. This time Johns purchase price is 4 times what it was the first time, Joe's is double what it was the first time, and Jack must be purchased before Joe can be, and Joe must be purchased before John can be. So John's "effective" price is now 7 times what it was originally, not just 4 times.
In very short order, even super rich families and organizations will stop attempting to purchase John for the purpose of setting him free. And this setup would act to deliberately target and dismantle organized crime, specifically.
[Answer]
You can ask them to serve you for an amount of time base on their crime level. For example, if they are killers, so if the rich guy wants to buy them, they must serve him 5 years before released and cannot be sold in that time.
[Answer]
The rich are never enslaved for ordinary crimes. They just pay the fine. Slavery is only a way to raise money to pay back the damage you did to society.
In some cases you may make the punishment loss of all your worldly goods AND being sold into slavery. The king may do this for treason. The church for heresy.
You need to decide if there is a limit. E.g. is it a new life, and you will not ever be free again, or is it more like an indentured servant? If it's for the rest of your life, then face marking as mentioned in other answers is the way to go. Otherwise, if it's only for a set period of time, you may brand them with something that has the last year of their servitude. This prevents owners from keeping them past their release date. It also marks them as escaped slaves if they are seen in the wrong place with a future year stamp. And it may eliminate repeat offenders: If you have a previous conviction (brand) then you are just executed, or sent to a short term terminal mine. (See how the Spanish treated the natives of Peru mining silver. 1493 book again.)
(In the U.S. they originally tried bringing poor people from England to work as indentured servants, but they died too fast from malaria. Many Africans have partial immunity to malaria. There was good reason to put those plantation mansions on top of a hill, away from the swamps with wide open yards beside them. See 1493, Uncovering the World Columbus Created.)
<https://www.amazon.ca/1493-Uncovering-World-Columbus-Created-ebook/dp/B004G606EY>
[Answer]
**OPTION 1: ONCE A SLAVE, ALWAYS A SLAVE**
One simple change can fix this; make it illegal to declare a slave 'free'. If a master tries to set a slave free, the slave becomes property of the government, which then sells them to the highest bidder. The master might even face legal charges punishable with fines, mandatory "psyche evaluation", or maybe even outright enslavement for 'negligence' and 'failure to ensure his slaves know their place'.
**OPTION 2: YOU DON'T**
The rich are already really good at wiggling out of punishments in our own society: this just offers another way to do it.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm writing a story set in the mid-2000s USA where a small police agency, for some reason, uses police vehicles from the early 1970s to the early '80s. They have the mechanics, the money, and the parts supply to keep them in tip-top shape, but I was curious if this could be feasible in terms of capability.
Now, I know you can't outrun Mr. Motorola, but could such vehicles perform their intended law enforcement function in a modern world adequately? I'm talking Dodge Monacos and Polaras, the Pontiac LeMans, Plymouth Furies and Belvederes. Maybe even an ex-CHP Ford Mustang or two.
A few things I would be doing in the story is upgrading the vehicle's police electronics--all would have modern two-way radios, Panasonic Toughbooks for the officers, and GPS location tracking.
So, how would a 1970s land yacht perform in traffic and patrol duties today? Could it work, or are Mopar squads just too old?
[Answer]
## That's really not a problem
Keep in mind, for lack of full-size sedans, many police agencies are *already* going to full-size, truck-chassis SUVs, which are *heavier* than 1970s sedans. And handle *worse* since they are built on a truck chassis. (assuming both vehicles have received modern performance suspension tuning: the factory has bumped the truck suspension as far as it can, and the police force is fitting the best modern, performance aftermarket suspensions available.
Modernizing the engines is also not a problem. Modern engines are very high-performance, and can be retrofitted into older cars.
Keeping the engines up is really not a problem. A few modern engines will bolt right up to older chassis.
Let's take your Pontiac Lemans, e.g. the fourth generation (1973-77). That is a [GM A-platform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_A_platform_(1936)), meaning it had commonality with Chevelle, Malibu, etc. Rest assured we could do the same exercise on the B-platform or the C-platform.
## Keeping up with the powertrains
The Lemans was already on a shared platform with cars from every other GM make - Chevy, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, even the GMC Sprint (an El Camino rebadging). And they put Chevy engines in some of those, so matching up the engine mounts is really not a problem.
Some of them took a Chevy small-block (302, 327, 350, 400). Those have always had their engine mounts the same shape and in the same places. That line was morphed into the LT-1 and LS-1 series, and I can tell you positively that the engine mounts did not move. I haven't bolted up an LS-3 or LS-7 but I have no reason to think they moved them. **So an LS-7 engine will bolt right up to a Chevy Malibu or Impala police cruiser**, as well as others of the A- B- C- platforms with an easy engine mount swap. All this stuff is readily available on the aftermarket, in better materials, no less.
Some of the truck engines could go over too, but since you said "CHP" I assume **we have to pass smog**. Needless to say the LS-7 package will pass 1979 smog numbers. The swap is allowed so long as it's complete and keeps the donor engine's emission system intact; and is equal or newer model year and class (car > light truck). It'll need a one-time inspection by CARB to affirm it was done correctly.
I don't know whether the same applies to the Mustang (whether a modern 4.6 will bolt into a '73 Mustang) but these are not hard problems for a customizer.
## We'll have to keep the whole powertrain intact, actually.
The engine-transmission package is going to be pulled from the donor car **fully dressed** complete with engine computer, all sensors, even the fuel pump and parts of the dash. The engine will NOT be separated from the transmission!
The engine-transmission package will have no idea it's not in a 2015 Camaro.
The reason is that in a 2020 era car, the entire powertrain package works as a team. The PCM (Powertrain Control Module) tells the transmission when to shift, and the PCM manages the fuel injection through the "power transient" during that shift. That's done to hit the extremely agressive NZLEV smog numbers. (ironically Detroit's big V-8s were the first engines to meet the optional NZLEV standards, who would've expected that??) Even the throttle is "drive-by-wire" on some cars; again so the PCM has advance notice of the "power transient". Never over-injecting fuel is good for engine wear. That's why modern engines last longer.
## Performance.
One problem when comparing 1970s horsepower numbers to 1990s+ is that in the 1970s, the horsepower was based on the engine dynamometer figures - bare engine in a load cell, not even a tranny attached. However in the modern age, horsepower is full chassis "at the wheels" power turned in on a chassis dyno. That means a *modern* 300hp engine is actually quite a bit more powerful than a "classic" 300hp engine.
Speaking of that... for what it's worth, the 1973-77 LeMans was notable in that it shared its front suspension with the F-body Camaro/Firebird. There are plenty of aftermarket suspension upgrades for that!
## Contrast with...
The problem is that police cruisers need a lot of physical room. They can't be crammed into a Prius. As full-size sedans (Caprice, Crown Vic) have left the market, police have been forced into full sized SUVs like the Yukon. Well, the Yukon is built on the same chassis as the C1500 pickup truck, which itself has been "change-resistant" because pickup truck buyers do not like change. So it's a truck. It's gonna be doing like doing a police chase in a pickup truck. Granted it has all the performance tuning the modern age can give it, but still a truck. *Not significantly better than what the modern age can give a 70s LeMans with a tuned Camaro front end*.
However the LeMans has a much lower center of gravity and lower weight overall. (plus quite good forward-back balance with the lighter LS series engines in it).
>
> Now, I know you can't outrun Mr. Motorola, but could such vehicles perform their intended law enforcement function in a modern world adequately? I'm talking Dodge Monacos and Polaras, the Pontiac LeMans, Plymouth Furies and Belvederes. Maybe even an ex-CHP Ford Mustang or two.
>
>
>
I feel confident that they could, yes.
>
> A few things I would be doing in the story is upgrading the vehicle's police electronics--all would have modern two-way radios, Panasonic Toughbooks for the officers, and GPS location tracking.
>
>
>
Since you *must* bring over the PCM (Powertrain Control Module), you *have the option* to bring over the BCM (Body Control Module) also. That brings you as many of the modern creature comforts as you please to install, from OnStar to Siri to maps-in-the-dash. If it came in the donor car, you can bring it over.
>
> So, how would a 1970's land yacht perform in traffic and patrol duties today? Could it work, or are Mopar squads just too old?
>
>
>
*implying a Yukon isn't a land yacht*
What else are they going to drive??? The best thing on the market is the last of the 2010s Crown Vics. Other than that, what most forces are going for is truck-derived SUVs because they need the space.
[Answer]
### Yes. But...
**Beware the anti knock additive in petrol.**
Leaded gasoline was removed from most of the world between the 1970s and today. (It caused horrible health, developmental, and possibly even [behavioural problems](https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/)).
Running a 1970s car on normal modern fuel will damage the engine. [Additives](https://www.supercheapauto.com.au/p/nulon-nulon-pro-strength-octane-booster-500ml/561572.html?cgid=SCA0107070201#start=18) will need to be added to the fuel, which are available at most car shops.
**Beware stronger airbags**
1970s airbags in several countries were made under the assumption that passengers weren't wearing seatbelts, and the airbag needed to apply a much larger force to stop a head hitting the windscreen. When seltbelt laws came into effect, these airbags were too powerful, and overpowered airbag deployment is responsible for [over a hundred deaths](https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/153/3/219/80361).
**Beware losing a high speed chase to a soccer mum in a Toyota Camry**
Modern economy cars can outperform old muscle cars.
A 1970 Chevrolet 454 Corvette can do 0-100kmph in 7.0 seconds.
A 1970 Mustang can do it in 6.2.
A 2020 Toyota Camry can do it in 5.8 seconds.
[Answer]
# Maybe, depending on crime
The fixation with muscle cars seems to indicate an American setting. Depending on where in the USA they are to be used, the vehicles may or may not be appropriate for fighting crime.
If they are chasing perps in Centralia, Pennsylvania (population: 5), or otherwise any place where the worst threats they have to deal with are domestic violence and truancy, then yeah, those cars can do the job.
If they are participating in [the first thing that comes to mind when you mention American police and cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_chase#In_reality), though, they are in trouble. While muscle cars can pack a considerable amount of horsepower for their weight, the lack of modern features such as anti-lock braking systems and (for many models) hydraulic or electric steering makes them much less agile compared to modern cars.
You mentioned Pontiac LeMans. It was a seminal design, which eventually spawned the GTO series. About the first generation GTO, [Wikipedia says](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_GTO):
>
> Most contemporary road tests by the automotive press such as Car Life criticized the slow steering, particularly without power steering, and inadequate drum brakes, which were identical to those of the normal Tempest.
>
>
>
Finally, sometimes a small, modern compact car can do things that high-performance cars can't. This is completely idiotic but here is [a Top Gear video of a Corvette failing to keep up with a Ford Fiesta inside a shopping mall](https://youtu.be/OFi1A-yJz4Q). The Fiesta seems more agile in tight spots. The same program also jokingly mentioned [potential military capabilities for the Fiesta](https://youtu.be/6QtQNFES5F8); I don't think a GTO would handle being dropped in the ocean. I think among old cars, only amphibious ones and the VW Beetle would be able to reach the shore like that.
---
That said, those cars would be very environment unfriendly. Where I come from we say that regular cars have a mileage, but the kind of car you want to use have a "gallonage" (as in, "how many gallons does it take to drive a mile with this one?") (also we use metric measures instead).
---
If you are willing to get the best value for your money, may I suggest an old Toyota Hilux instead? Since with such old cars your only possible maneuver against perps would be ramming them anyway, you will save lots of taxpayer money in maintenance as [the old Hilux is almost as indestructible as an old Nokia phone](https://topgear.fandom.com/wiki/The_Indestructible_Hilux):
>
> The Toyota was purchased from a farmyard by Clarkson, who began to try and kill it (to be classed as dead, you had to not be able to start the engine or drive it).
>
> (...)
>
> Jeremy's final attempts were hitting it with a wrecking ball and setting fire to it. Astonishingly, it survived.
>
> (...)
>
> Following Clarkson's failure to kill it, James May stepped in. He decided to place it on top of a 23-storey tower block about to be demolished. While the exterior and chassis were damaged to the point where the bodywork was holding the chassis and the vehicle was barely recognisable, the mechanic (again, using no spare parts and only simple tools) "reconnected the battery, put a bit of diesel in it, brum. Off it went."
>
>
>
[Answer]
### Getting there
You know, in 90% of the cases the police uses the car to get to a place where it is needed. You can do that by horse, bicycle or hire an Uber. A 70s car would do the job, certainly.
### Patrol
Then there are patrol service cars. They add an element of uncertainty to criminals: as the gang doesn't know the exact position of every police car, they never know how much time they have for their robbery. Once the alarm is raised, the police makes a u-turn where they are and go where the robbery was. You can do that with 70s cars, horses and bicycles; though not with an Uber.
### Move to the side and stop
Patrol cars are sometimes used to stop another car, lighting the siren and the lights very shortly and then both stop at the side of the highway. Boring standard work again. You can't do that with a horse, a bicycle or an Uber. You need a car here. Any car. You can use a Smart, also a 70s vehicle would be acceptable.
### Shoot out support
Go to cover behind the door. Get out the weaponry. Fire Back. Well, some cars have armored doors for this situation, and a machine pistol hidden in the door lining. (At least here, don't know the US) You need a car for that, putting some protection into the lining and hiding a weapon there is not possible on bicycles or horses. Or Uber. Your 70s car would even be good here, they really used millimetre thick steel in the seventies! A disadvantage anywhere and everywhere else, it is an advantage if someone shoots at you.
### Chase
Very, very very rarely, the police car is used to chase somebody. In that case also a helicopter is asked for support. You can't get a modern car with a 70s car. Any modern car is stronger, faster, safer and more agile than a 70s muscle car. Most comes due to the modern software for curves, acceleration and braking, which you simply can't retrofit into a 70s car except if you completely rip it apart and rebuild it with electronics, in which case it wouldn't be a 70s car anymore. But it's not necessary if the helicopter does the job.
So if you are ok with the 70s car not doing the only cool part of the job... it would certainly work.
[Answer]
I drive a 1973 car (in the real world) and its now 47 years old. Yes its driveable, but not as a daily commuter car.
Downsides:
* Starting from cold - she's a bit slow to get moving in the mornings or from cold. Modern cars have engine management systems that juggle things around and the only observable result is higher fuel usage in the first few minutes. Storing the vehicle in a warm garage helps a lot.
* Fuel usage. I average around 14 MPG, ranging from 10 to 17. That's a lot higher operating cost than a modern car. For vehicles that move a lot like taxis, delivery vans, or long-haul trucks, that adds up. For police cars, depends how much they're rolling vs stopped doing active policing.
* Aerodynamics - mainly contributing to lower top speeds, and increased fuel usage. Sure fins looked sleek, but they weren't particularly aero.
* Leaks - modern cars basically don't leak anything. Vintage cars leak all their fluids over time. *How can you tell when your vintage English car is out of oil? The leaks stop* So the garaging floor and carpark will likely be oily all the time.
* Leaks, inwards - My car has both air and water leaks. Driving in the rain can be like taking a shower. And driving in snow/cold gives many cold draughts.
* Safety - No cars had airbags, and even seatbelts were optional (legal requirements vary around the world) So getting in/out was quicker, and the car was simpler. Period advertising about my car makes note of the "new padded dashboard, to increase safety!" There are no collapsing steering columns either, and while safety glass was common, it was still relatively new at this time.
So a crash could cause the driver to be impaled on the steering column, whiplashed because no headrests, passengers could be flung though windows, but they would not lacerated by shards of sharp glass.
* Brakes - Drum brakes were common, and while disks existed, they were high-end. Drum brakes have much more heat fade, and take longer to cool off. You can also end up with non-functional brakes after they get wet internally. I've personally almost ran a stop sign 10 minutes after a river ford, because I hadn't dried the brakes.
* Handling and Manoeverability - Older cars generally don't handle as well as newer ones. There are no anti-screwup controls like ABS, and while a skilled driver doesn't depend on them, a heavily-distracted officer might.
* Top speed and acceleration - low, and gentle.
Neutrals:
* Chassis - modern monocoque construction wasn't a thing. Mine's based on a ladder chassis with the engine bolted to that, and a bodywork bolted on top. This leads to relatively simple customisation without compromising the strength of the skeleton. But it also reduces crumple zones to nothing.
This means the front bumper is an ideal location for a bullbar/nudge bar and it won't collapse back into the engine bay.
* Electrical Power - a modern police car needs to run a lot of electrical items. So uprated batteries, aux battery, and beefier alternators will be required. Check out military Radio trucks - a 200 Amp alternator is not unheard of in the 60s. Or two, for reduncancy.
* Air Conditioning - may be an optional extra - adding weight too.
* Alternative fuels - Mine's been equipped to run on original Petrol (gasoline) as well as LPG. This essentially doubles the range. Older engines were more accepting of a variety of fuels. Two storage tanks eats into the internal space though.
* Gearbox - Mine's a manual with 20 forward and 4 reverse gears, and a clutch. That's a lot to deal with. Automatics existed in the 70s, but they were even more power-sapping than modern ones, and might be 3 speed plus overdrive (and reverse) It takes some getting used-to when changing car.
Positives:
* Space - Older cars, especially American land yachts based on 60's designs, will have larger spaces all over. The engine bay is cavernous, the boot/trunk can store several corpses, and the passenger area can seat about 20 (according to the song)
* Comfort - wallowly soft suspension that smooths out most anything the road can throw up. Mine's got leaf springs, but coil springs were not rare either. This may compromise handling (*steers like a boat*)
* Visibility - Older cars have a substantial amount more glass than modern cars. Driving a Ford Cortina is like sitting in a glasshouse, with phenomenal views in all directions. Part of this comes down to thinner pillars on older cars, because there's less wiring, and no airbags in the roof supports.
Vehicles with heavily curved glass can cause visual issues though, due to lensing effects.
* Insurance - my car is listed as "Historic" and I pay a premium which is a tenth of what a modern car would cost to insure. There is an annual mileage limitation though. This may not apply to a working police car.
* Manufacturer support - There may be interest from the car's maker, in seeing these vehicles keep working and advertising the brand. This is likely to come as money, but there may also be access to design/technical specs and "old stock parts" or pattern tooling should replacement parts be required.
* Knowledge - there's a lot of older and retired mechanics who may have started their careers on MOPAR and big block engines. They may choose to make this knowledge accessible by participating in high school courses, or vocational skills programmes for rehabilitating former convicts. The British Territorial Army was reputed to strip and rebuild a landrover for each intake of new recruits.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/dSGaH.jpg)
Approximately 1976 Ford Falcon in New Zealand MOT livery. Not quite a Land Yacht - the fuel crisis had bitten, and hefty vehicles were out of vogue.
[Answer]
The main difference between those cars and the modern ones lays not in the engine but in the control electronics: anti-blockage, skid prevention, traction control and the like were non existent in those time, or only available in a purely mechanical implementation.
E.g. just reading some performance evaluation for the Dodge Monaco you read that when given full gas it burn tires. That means that in any but ideal surface condition (wet, dirty) a modern car would be at advantage, assuming same skill level for both drivers.
[Answer]
Not sure about USA, but I live in a country that has some 70's and 80's vehicles still in service in the police.
The only reason they keep them is there is no enough funding to replace them everywhere. These cars are in generally bad state, but they still run and are used for less demanding tasks.
[Answer]
Keep in mind the "Crown Victoria" used the "Panther" Platform developed in 1978 and gone largely unchanged in production til 2011.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NKY09.jpg)
[Answer]
Almost certainly not. The difference in safety features between a 70s era vehicle and one made in 2005 is utterly astronomical. There is no conceivable reason whatsoever a police force would use such old cars, they are death traps. Even if money is tight you would be using used cars from the late 90s.
To put it in perspective, there are many accidents that occur today that people survive without a scratch which would have beeen fatal accidents 30 years ago.
[Answer]
I own a 1960's "boat", grew up in the 1970s and '80s, and so experienced all kinds of cars from the era. As a younger man, I became a grease monkey and worked on countless cars from those decades: mechanically, electrically and electronically. And I even had a full-time job installing and repairing electrical and electronic equipment in police and emergency vehicles around that period.
If you're talking about simple road races, like catching the bad guys as in the movies, then clearly the heavier vehicles would be at a disadvantage when it came to maneuverability. But such backup-less, one-on-one chases are not common. As you said, nothing's faster than radio. Even then, some old cars only had 3 forward gears which made them accelerate rapidly when already at higher speeds, and their mass could bump anything off the road, if need be.
I'd argue the older vehicles are *cheaper* to maintain and repair than modern vehicles, ***if*** the mechanics are skilled. Carburetors work well when properly maintained, for example, but I have seen much ignorance and neglect there. Plenty of space around the engine and less complexity overall leads to simpler, faster repairs, meaning less labor costs. Parts are common and have been around for decades, so they, too, are inexpensive (compare any website's prices for examples).
Finding body replacement parts could be near impossible though, unless you chose a car model that is collectible and has a following, like Novas, Mustangs, etc., as there are manufacturers that make almost all the reproduction parts for such vehicles.
] |
[Question]
[
As I mentioned before, dragons are really hard to adapt to modern-day settings, when warfare is concerned. For every other race, even centaurs, it's fairly easy to find some kind of strength and the drawbacks tend to be fairly mild.
Sure, these dragons are about as big as a Clydesdale horse (183 cm at the shoulders). In fact, they only seem bigger because of their neck and tail, the latter of which is half the total body length.
Dragons have six limbs and are capable of powered flight, though only for a short period before switching to soaring. Their stamina is fairly low and while dragons can run fast and hit hard, they rarely get into melee range. Dragon scales act as ablative armor, roughly offering the same protection as an NIJ-rated level 3 armor plate, though it performs slightly above the criteria.
Dragons don't possess fire breath, they imbue their breath with "magic". In other words, they exhale swarms of specialized nano and micromachines to do various things. These swarms can be condensed into solid "crystals" and activated when the dragon needs to quickly replenish his/her swarm.
Obviously, offensive nanomachines are geared towards getting into people's bodies and giving them a good dose of botulinum toxin or cyanide. There are also bots that disinfect injuries and significantly hasten blood clotting, some can form into primitive sensory apparatuses that the dragon can use to spy/scry, and some absorb IR and radar.
The problem is that humans have access to this magic as well, and what they lack in individual power, humans make up for with numbers.
A running gag in the Foundation (a faction from my story) is that dragons are just diet F-22s. Sure, their "maintenance" will certainly don't make you go bankrupt, but they also lack the size, speed, weaponry, and armor of a regular F-22.
Nanomachines are rather powerful, especially their buffs, but they are utterly helpless against sealed objects and high-entropy bulk matter, such as flak cannons.
In layman terms, the only exclusive advantage of dragons, compared to humans, is their long lives.
---
We know that the Foundation, a peacekeeping military organization, low in numbers but mighty in tech; keeps dragons at the Defense Department, meaning they usually get to see live combat.
The biggest threat to them would be the Moster Hunters, a PMC that specializes in fighting mostly non-human forces. They aren't that large or well-equipped and had their assess kicked numerous times by the Foundation. Still, hate-crime seems to be a lucrative business, so they keep popping up like whack-a-mole.
Just like people, dragons are afraid of dying. In fact, most dragons seem to be extra scared of it, probably because of all those dumb dragonslayer movies. So, they won't be live-bait, do suicide runs or any unnecessarily dangerous action.
**But then, just what role should dragons have on-field, in combat?**
[Answer]
(nb - I'm assuming the dragons have the ability to use adapted human weapons and technology in addition to their nano-breath)
## Air Cavalry, Commandos, Airborne Infantry
Don't think fighter jets, think helicopters. They aren't diet F-22s, they're diet *Apaches*. Sure, they can't carry as much weaponry, but I'm sure some enterprising engineer will develop harnesses for them to use your world's equivalent of Stinger or Javelin missiles. Their maintenance and basing requirements are *much* lower than helicopters, they're significantly quieter, and they have the ability to move along the ground in order to avoid air defenses or early warning radar. Plus they provide their own "boots on the ground", giving them a mission flexibility that would otherwise require a larger combined-arms force.
A squad of dragons might be used to secure a landing zone while human infantry is airlifted in behind them. They could then deploy forward again to cut off enemy supply lines and establish ambushes while the main army force consolidates and moves up. They can help secure bridgeheads and beachheads with the ability to cross waterways at will.
They'd make tremendous recon troops, since, again, they can cross basically any terrain required in order to get to their intended vantage point. They'd also be exceptional in mountainous terrain as well. A dragon mortar team could set up on whatever high ground they needed to in order to maximize their coverage and effectiveness.
**TL:DR** - They have all the versatility of light airborne infantry/air cavalry without the giant logistic burden that actual aircraft impose.
[Answer]
**Strategy.**
>
> the only exclusive advantage of dragons, compared to humans, is their
> long lives
>
>
>
Humans live a long time. Probably humans live a long time because having some old ones around helped the tribe. They remembered things that were helpful.
Experienced individuals are still helpful today. Yes you can look stuff up but a written account does not do justice to the nuances of exactly how things went down and what happened next. Sometimes people don't write down the mistakes and the embarrassing stuff. Which is often the most important stuff, and dragons remember all of that. Dragons pay close attention and remember in detail; especially the details that meant they did not get killed. Many humans also appreciate those details.
Dragons are used as strategists. And sometimes sent out as noncombatant observers, because that is how you pay close attention.
[Answer]
**Urban Warfare.**
Your dragons are no use in open-warfare with tanks and bombs and fighter jets. Well that's not entirely true. Some dragons are very talented tank/bomb/fighter jet pilots. But this is not common knowledge.
What is common knowledge is dragons are urban combat specialists. One or two dragons gives an infantry platoon a huge increase in versatility. Here are the things the platoon doesn't need anymore
1. Medic and medical kits.
2. Aircraft for reconnaissance
(note dragons are silent compared to helicopters. Bonus points if they have night vision.)
3. Aircraft for emergency evacuation (max one soldier)
4. Smoke grenades.
5. Tear Gas.
6. Battering ram.
The aircraft seems like the most important. For a lot of operations you do not need an entire helicopter. One or two dragons is fine. This cuts down on costs and lets the platoon move much faster. By extension platoons can be moved around and repurposed much faster.
**Tactics**
Dragons are resistant to rifle rounds. But if your opponent has anything more powerful (like a grenade) then dragons are not an automatic win. They must be deployed with tactics.
Once common move is to pin down the enemy position and have the dragons flank from behind. Once they get into breath range, complete chaos ensues, the enemy formation breaks, they flee, and you shoot them all.
This is better than flanking with humans because it is (a) harder to accidentally shoot your own guys and (b) forgivable if you do.
**Indoors**
Dragons are just about small enough to fit through a doorway if necessary. Indoors dragons have a big advantage over soldiers because **they don't have to be careful to not shoot each other.** On the other hand, a group of soldiers that splits in two needs to be aware of where the other half is, in case you suddenly turn a corner and accidentally open fire on your friends. Dragons don't have this problem since they are immune to each others' breath weapons. So they can just roam about with no coordination and be completely unpredictable.
**Question:**
Would some of the breath nanites be considered *chemical weapons* and hence be considered a war crime?
[Answer]
# Dragons are natural Fighter Jocks.
When it comes to powered flight, we humans are the limiting factor. Dragons are born to fly. They can take more G forces and can rely on their instinct for a lot of stuff. And what ever you do, do NOT get into a dog (dragon) fight with a Dragon, they will eat you for lunch!
And don't let their size fool you, the smaller the adult dragon, the better they can fit into an air-plane. The more they age, the longer they had to hone their skills.
With the current generation of fighter jets (the 5th) we have pilots who are younger then their planes. With dragons you might have some that remember flying in a Musquito or a Lightning...
And some dragons are so old and storied that they have become living legends. You want a fighter ace? (5 air kills) there will be dragons that have fought in 5 wars!
With all this, I doubt humans will be more then amateur pilots...
[Answer]
**Heritage and Patroling**
When everyone will be focusing on actual combat usage, I try to give it a little bit of different perspective. It is not always necessary that we use an animal in actual combat, in many cases symbolic representations are as important as any.
Similar to the examples mentioned below, you can use dragons, to:
1. Display your rich military heritage,
2. Use as border patrols to have a drone-like view of rough and difficult terrains.
3. Use as trained dogs to tackel the enemy one on one.
>
> Horses
>
>
>
Horses may not be very useful in today's combat situations. But here are the Personal Bodyguards of President of India. These are not just showmen, they are highly trained to serve as a cavalry unit even to this day.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/k8LtJ.jpg)
[More info here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Bodyguard)
[See Also](https://www.outlookindia.com/photos/topic/Presidents-bodyguards/104118?photo-218994)
>
> Camels
>
>
>
Do you know that camels are also serving in armies in some parts of the world.
Indian Border security foces uses camels for their desert border patrols.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/30u4e.jpg)
[Answer]
**Un-Nerf them**
You nerfed your dragons down to ridiculous and are now looking for a way out.
Well, un-nerf them. The size of your dragons is pathetic compared to almost everything else out there. In most fantasy worlds, they'd be baby dragons or Wyverns or something. The description of their breath weapon likewise leaves me unimpressed, where other worlds gives them not fire breath but fire breath that is hotter than anything else in the world, capable of melting not just metal, but stone.
In a world that has high-tech weapons, almost everything from a medieval world is a joke when it comes to combat effectiveness. A knight in full plate armour is no threat to a modern soldier with an assault rifle, even if he's riding a trained war horse. Same for fantasy creatures. Only the strongest, largest, most magical would be a factor - and you've taken the strongest, largest and most magical and reduced all of its factors until it's just another mid-level critter. No surprise you struggle to figure out how it could matter in battle, because it doesn't.
If for other reasons you need to keep your dragons at a power level that any party beyond 3rd level would laugh at, then you'll have to follow through and accept that they aren't scaring anyone on a battlefield.
[Answer]
**TERROR**
Humans have an atavistic fear of being eaten. We also have a fear of being hunted. In an urban situation the simple knowledge that a couple of bullet-resistant, intelligent, flying lizards are coming to **Eat You** may be enough to break resistance, or even keep a town/city from trying to resist you at all. The same would probably be true to a lesser extent even in woodland or more open areas since the dragons you describe seem sufficiently small and quiet to still sneak up on people. I mean sure, you might take one out with a heavy machinegun or grenade in a confined place... but is that a risk you want to run? Of course this is dependent on the amount of dragons in a given society. If you grow up with a Friendly Local Neighborhood Dragon on your street that fear isn't going to be much of a thing. Just like people raised with dogs aren't generally afraid of dogs no matter how big and scary-looking. But if dragons are fairly rare, and the nation has a cultural heritage full of dragons pillaging the countryside in days of yore, the psychological impact of dragons could be immense.
Think how you, Average Joe or Tommy infantryman, would react to the certain knowledge that the enemy you're fighting has trained combat tigers. Sure a tiger isn't bulletproof and can't spray nanobots, but **JESUS IT'S AN APEX PREDATOR TRAINED TO HUNT ME!** A flight of dragons would be that fear cranked up to 11. It would be less effective against experienced and disciplined infantry, but conscripts and ISIL-equivalents would probably be terrified enough to bail or surrender rather than try and face them.
They'd also be handy as Military Police. Sort of a combination horse/police dog/drone that could help out with rear-area security, chasing down escaped POWs, overawing potential resistance in captured towns, and similar activities.
In summation, while dragons may not be useful in traditional peer-competitor battle situations, they could prove exceptionally handy in urban warfare or combat against medium to low grade infantry and as police forces.
[Answer]
Why use them in combat?
As sources of lethal nanomachines, they should be kept well behind lines. The lethal elements could then be delivered by small drones or other munitions.
If the dragons really are long-lived and able to learn, they might make good generals, with more knowledge and experience than any human commander could accumulate in a lifetime.
[Answer]
Dragons' low maintenance makes them a **great option to hand out when you want to support resistance/insurgent forces.**
It would be pointless to gift an F-35 to Kurdish or Syrian forces who don't have the air bases, pilots, mechanics, fuel, and spare parts that make up the $40,000 per hour cost of operating an F-35 - but dragons just need a few sheep and a cave.
A dragon has much less power than an F-35, but it still hits hard enough to decimate a supply convoy or unprotected base - forcing the enemy to build otherwise-unnecessary air defences everywhere.
You want them in regular armies too? Maybe dragons are used for **squad-level air support** thanks to their low maintenance.
The infantrymen know the air force is a great help - if they deign to show up at the right time. But it takes a while for a plane to arrive from a distant airbase, not to mention the bureaucracy, communications problems and inter-service competition.
As there's a dragoneer in each platoon, dragons can respond much more quickly to rapidly changing battlefield conditions. Why, a platoon without its dragoneer would be as naked as a platoon without its machine gunners or radio operator.
Every army officer knows the dragon has been the lieutenant's strong right arm since classical antiquity, when the Persian infantry arrived at Thermopylae without dragons, and fell in droves to the Spartans' integrated forces.
[Answer]
Dragons can do so much that traditional aircraft can't. Even if they have *zero* direct combat capability, they're incredibly useful.
A dragon is the ultimate all-terrain vehicle. If you need to evacuate an injured soldier, send a dragon. They can fly, swim, climb, crawl into (relatively) small openings, move debris, dig, communicate with others, and sense their surroundings. With some EMT training, they could even stabilize a patient before hauling them off. They can land on and travel across extremely uneven, slippery, or muddy surfaces without much problem (also why modern search and rescue teams still use horses). In a pinch, they could land or take off from something as small as a ledge, or possibly even from a vertical surface like the side of a tree. Nothing else at your disposal can even remotely do all of that.
Fixed-wing aircraft have a minimum safe airspeed that varies based on altitude. If they drop below that, they won't generate enough lift to stay aloft and won't have enough time to regain it before crashing. As a result, they can't handle low-speed, low-altitude operation. Helicopters can do it, but it's still risky due to the physics involved with flying close to the ground. They're also not very agile when doing so. The only thing we currently have that can do this well are extremely light aircraft like quadcopters, which have limited carrying capacities and range. Dragons can naturally do all of this without a problem. They can skim the ground at slow speeds looking for a target, then snatch them up (or drop off supplies) and zoom away. They can achieve the near-vertical takeoff of a helicopter with less horizontal clearance required, and then switch to "glide mode" to travel long distances fairly easily. In an urban warfare scenario, they can weave between buildings and around obstacles like nothing else.
One of the oft-overlooked benefits is the fact that they're made of flesh and bone and not metal (yes, that's a good thing). They're durable and resilient in a way that no artificial aircraft will ever be. One of the most difficult landings in the world of aviation is landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier in rough seas. It's a nightmare for jet pilots, and even experienced helicopter pilots have trouble with it. Here's a scenario: a wave tosses the ship, causing the deck to lurch upward and impact the bottom of a landing aircraft just before it touches down. That's enough to bounce a jet off the edge of the deck or to knock a helicopter out of the air and onto its side. In both cases, it can be fatal for the aircraft and its occupants. When that happens to a dragon, he just says "ouch", picks himself up, and dusts himself off. The same goes for other situations that are problematic for aircraft, like heavy fog, strong crosswinds, clipping a tree/mountain/powerline, etc. Flying creatures are well-suited to handling rough landings and other types of external forces disturbing them during flight. Most of them can detect and adjust for such conditions completely subconsciously, similar to how you or I might react when going down the stairs and your foot slips off a step. Your brain and body are hard-wired for keeping yourself upright and stable in a way that no machine will ever be able to match (watch a slow-motion video of what a cat or squirrel does when falling from height).
Along the same lines, dragons can be deployed defensively against lower-speed enemy aircraft. Some law-enforcement agencies are training hawks to take down small drones. This low-tech solution is effective because the bird can latch onto the drone and the drone doesn't have the mass, thrust, or agility to resist. Your dragons can do the same thing. They're much larger than a hawk, so they should be able to take out even the largest of drones. They could likely disable a helicopter as well, hanging onto the landing strut and either attacking the occupants or jerking the craft around to de-stabilize it. What would you do as a helicopter pilot if a dragon flew up from the blind spot below you, jabbed a hole into your fuel tank, smeared paint across your entire windscreen, and then disappeared?
Of course, there are all sorts of oddball things you can do with them as well. Several dragons flying in formation can create a radar shadow that can mask attack craft behind it. Use a team of dragons to tow small disabled watercraft back into port (or capture enemy watercraft). Use them as scaled-up carrier pigeons to transport messages, maps, and plans from ship to ship without worrying about radio signals being intercepted. Easily rescue sailors that fall overboard or whose ships have sunk. Fly up high with a large mirror and blind oncoming infantry, or take a spotlight and mark targets at night. Quickly shuttle a POW back to base so that you don't have to waste infantry on guard duty. Cold-blooded reptiles would be better suited for desert infantry work than a warm-blooded human. A low-budget opponent could use dragons as dive-bombers, turning dumb bombs into guided weapons without any additional R&D or technology.
[Answer]
Dragons have an advantage over aircraft: They produce less heat. Many weapons are heat seeking and won't work well on dragons, they need jet engines to lock on to.
Dragons can also land almost anywhere. Even a helicopter needs a fair amount of space to land and can be easily damaged if a rotor clips something. Dragons are more versatile, especially useful in urban environments.
Much warfare isn't about fighting other militaries, it's about fighting guerrillas and controlling the population. See for example the most recent Iraq and Afghan wars. Dragons would do well in a policing role, similar to how the police use horses because of their physical size and speed.
[Answer]
As noted in a comment on the question, Charles Stross supposed in [The Nightmare Stacks](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/06/crib-sheet-the-nightmare-stack.html) that dragons (or something very similar) could be used for air superiority in combined-arms operations. In his book, the result is a 1-1 draw between a pair of dragons and a pair of RAF Typhoons.
Unfortunately for the dragons though, the only reason they got the first plane was because the pilots had never seen anything like a dragon before, and had no idea of its capabilities. After a quick assessment of those capabilities, the surviving pilot had a good handle on how to take them down - and every other pilot then knew too. They just happened to get lucky in Stross's scenario because most RAF fighters are deployed overseas, and we only generally have a couple ready to scramble quickly because the expected threats needing to be escorted out of British airspace (i.e. Russian planes pushing their luck) tend not to be actively attacking. It was clear that had this gone on any longer, the dragons were toast when faced with a fast jet and competent pilots. I see no reason why this would not be the case for your dragons too.
So if dragons can't be air superiority fighters, what can they do...?
### Air to ground close air support
After 40 years, the USA still does not have anything better than the [A-10 Warthog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II) for air-to-ground and close battlefield support roles. It was intended to be replaced by the F-35, but this has (almost) been cancelled and the A-10 has been prepared for another 20 years of active service. The key features which make it so suitable for the role are its low speed, the time it can remain on station, its impressive survivability, and raw firepower. Attack choppers such as the [Apache](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_AH-64_Apache) fulfill a similar mission, with some extra flexibility but some loss of survivability.
Your dragons can fill this role in spades. They may not be quite as well-armoured as an A-10, but they will be able to manouevre much more tightly. As anyone who's watched a kestrel knows, being able to change your wing shape gives you a vastly different range of flight options compared to a fixed wing; and as anyone who's watched a pigeon trying to escape from a falcon knows, radical changes of trajectory make it much harder for anyone to hit you.
And that breath weapon is custom-designed for anti-personnel use. Anyone in an APC is probably safe, but anyone in the open is toast. Dragons may be vulnerable to flak, but strafing runs at treetop height are going to be very much their natural domain, and you're going to have to be *very* lucky to get AA trained on it before the dragon gets your AA gunner. Of course they'll be vulnerable to something like a [Phalanx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS), but currently those aren't a regular feature of land warfare.
[Answer]
# Counterinsurgency
Remember that a single soldier with a rifle is also very weak against the kinds of weapons that you're describing. Ever since the end of World War Two, people have been predicting the end of infantry, and yet they are just as important as ever in a world of asymmetric warfare.
It sounds like the Moster Hunters are an insurgent force that keeps "popping up like whack-a-mole." That suggests that they're using irregular tactics. Dragons could play an important role in this kind of a setting. They could travel with supply trains and fly ahead to scout suspicious areas. They could engage in street patrols with infantry. They could use their celebrity power to make friends among civilians (*Did you hear Cerbydon was in OUR NEIGHBORHOOD yesterday?! I love him!*). All of these roles are important to the modern military and none of them require charging head-on into enemy AAA. And in modern combat, all of these roles are critical to combat.
[Answer]
As someone else mentioned, Charles Stross had an entertaining and detailed look at how dragons would fare in modern warfare, though his "dragons" don't have that much in common with traditional fantasy dragons - instead, they're magical creatures deliberately evolved into their roles, controlled by geas and fed with the souls of slaves and enemies by their psychopathic-elf masters.
There's also Sword Brother by David Weber, which pits a demonic-dragon against an american APC armed with a machine gun. That one is a lot closer to traditional fantasy, while still taking a detailed look at how modern military weapons and training would fare against magic.
The problem here is that there isn't really a way to combine dragons with modern warfare, unless - as you've done - you use "magic" to overcome their fundamental limitations.
First: physics. The largest flying animal known was the Quetzalcoatlus.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus>
And that's about the same size as the dragons you've proposed - and they do the "short hop and glide" style of flying you've proposed.
But, modelling suggested they only weighed up to 200kg, or roughly the same as two fully laden infantrymen. And the general rule of thumb seems to be that an flying animal can only carry around a third of it's weight; I haven't researched it, but I strongly suspect that an animal designed for "gliding" flight is probably going to be able to carry even less.
Overall, this means they have no real carrying capacity.
Then too, armour/skin capable of blocking conventional weaponry is heavy. E.g. a level 4 vest capable of stopping **most** armour piercing rifle-fire weighs around 15kg. Scale that up to something the size of a horse/dragon, and you're probably looking at 60-100kg. Which means that if your dragons are meant to fly, they can't have thick skin, and your "ablative" armour concept is definitely a no-go.
And that leaves you with a dilemma: either you drape them in armour (as per medieval horses) and weigh them down too much for flying, or you leave them unarmoured and easily wounded with conventional weapons.
And they'll also be slow - the Quetzalcoatlus probably topped out at about 80mph. And if they glide-fly, that suggests their muscle power is limited which in turn suggests their manouvering capabilities will be low. So they'll be easy targets for ground-based AA fire.
Then there's the question as their biology. First: their intelligence and their "trainability". In general, reptiles and birds are less "intelligent" than mammals; the former are cold blooded and don't have the energy to spare, and birds are warm blooded but have smaller brains. Overall, they're significantly less trainable than an equivalent mammal.
To be fair, birds *can* be trainable - e.g. crows, parrots. But whether they could be trained to "military" levels is debatable - and as anyone who's tried to train
a cat will know, the fact that an animal is capable of learning something, doesn't necessarily mean it wants to, or that it'll be willing to perform on demand.
Then there's their physiology. Are your dragons warm blooded or cold blooded? If they're warm blooded, then they'll probably be more intelligent, and more active. But they'll also need a lot more food. And I'm guessing your dragons will be carnivores, so your human soldiers will need to carry around a lot of meat for them.
Equally, if they're cold blooded, they're going to be sluggish most of the time (especially at night), and will probably need long periods of rest and digestion.
As a guide: a komodo dragon can eat up to 80%(!) of it's body weight in a single sitting, which'd translate to about 150kg of meat for your dragon. Admittedly, the komodo dragon then potentially doesn't need to eat for a month, but it does then need a few days to digest. Which doesn't lend itself well to something being used as a weapon of war.
Still, I suppose you could feed human bodies to them, but that opens a large and controversial can of worms, unless you're engaged in total annihilation of the enemy. And even then, what happens if you get stuck in a siege situation? "Sorry Bob, you're today's dragon feeder. Here's a saw; there might be some shooting later, so you might want to take your other leg off and keep both arms...".
Any which way you cut it, feeding your dragons is going to be a logistical nightmare, far more so than horses (which can generally graze on wild flora when all else fails) and dogs (which are omnivores and require less food than humans).
And then, there's their fighting ability. Teeth and claws: great at short range, but you really shouldn't bring them to a gun fight, especially if you're effectively unarmoured.
Fire-breath (or your magic-nano-tech equivalent thereof. And how exactly do you reload a dragon with this stuff?). Range on this is going to be limited - the M1A1 flamethrower is limited to about 40m range, and despite the name, it doesn't throw fire. Instead, it throws napalm, aka the modern equivalent to greek fire: a viscous flammable liquid which will stick to anything it touches and continue to burn.
Then too, according to Wikipedia, the M1A1 carries about 40lb of fuel, and burns it at a rate of 0.5 gallons per second. Which I think works out at about 5 seconds of continual firing.
Put simply, your "nano-fire" doesn't have the mass to carry any distance, and won't stick-burn. Plus, a dragon won't have the carrying capacity for any significant amount of fuel, and it's debatable whether it'll be able to generate the pressures needed to attack anything more than a couple of meters away.
Finally, there's the time needed to birth, grow and train your dragon.
To use the Komodo dragon as an example, it takes around 8 months for the eggs to hatch, and then another 2-3 years before they become big enough to be considered an adult. And they'll need to be trained, exercised and fed for all of those years before becoming useful.
<https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Komodo-dragon/>
By way of comparison, during WW2, the US army produced over 10,000 tanks in 1942 alone, and the training for an M1 crewman is 15 weeks.
Put simply, your dragons are useless for attacking (no armour, short range weapons) and useless for scouting (large, unarmoured, slow moving). Oh, and they need significant amounts of food, take years to mature, can't be mass-produced, and will need human handlers when on the battlefield.
Overall, if you're trying to apply real-world physics to your dragons, you'll have to seriously tilt things in their favour with yet more "magic science technobabble" to make them even vaguely useful in a modern context. But at that point, they're a dragon in name only...
] |
[Question]
[
In a world where magic exists. A large army can hire several mages that able to cast spells as, or even more, powerful than a [16-19th century cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_cannon_by_caliber#Iron_balls_and_shot). The city walls will not keep out a determined mage for more than a few days.
For example: On average, a mage can cast 4 large fireballs per day. 1 fireball is enough to make serious damage to the wall. So, an army with mages can easily break a wall but are not strong enough to raze it down.
Real-life research: In the middle ages, many cities required high walls to protect the people during sieges. The wealthier the city, the better and stronger the walls. When gunpowder and cannons using stone balls were introduced, walled cities soon lost they advantage and many started to decline. This gave rise to the "new" design of [bastion or "star" forts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastion_fort) which were better suited to outlast the destructive fire of the powerful cannons.
When the cannons switched from the 15th - 16th century stone to more effecive iron balls and shot during the 16th to the 19th century it sounded the deathblow to the effectiveness of high city walls. Only the wealthiest cities could afford to make *all* the changes necessary for effective defence against the advanced [cannons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon) and even then they were soon rendered obsolete.
>
> It was during this period, the Middle Ages, that cannon became standardised, and more effective in both the anti-infantry and siege roles. After the Middle Ages most large cannon were abandoned in favour of greater numbers of lighter, more manoeuvreable pieces. In addition, new technologies and tactics were developed, making most defences obsolete; this led to the construction of bastion forts, specifically designed to withstand artillery bombardment though these too, along with Martello towers, would find themselves rendered obsolete when explosive and armour piercing rounds made even these types of fortifications vulnerable.
>
>
>
**Limiting Factor on Magic System:** Searching Medieval army sizes on [History Discussion Forum](http://historum.com/medieval-byzantine-history/53917-size-armies-medieval-battles.html), the first answer found stated that instead of the 100 000 - 500 000 (or more) soldiers often mentioned, modern scholars believe that armies were closer to 10 000 - 15 000 soldiers only. Coalitions being maybe double that at 30 000 soldiers. If an army this size could only retain the use of 6-7 mages, that indicates that magic is fairly restricted/expensive in the fantasy world in question (if we used the larger embellished numbers, magic users would be even rarer).
In a world with mages capable of destroying city walls in 2-3 days, **why would people still find it useful to have these "old-fashioned" high walls around their cities?**
Note: the question isn't focused on how powerful the mages or the fireballs are, but rather if and why the cities would still find high walls useful in the wake of such destructive forces.
[Answer]
Going to post an answer that contradicts one of your assertions on one simple premise:
Walls > fireballs
A fireball (using almost any definition of magical fireball I can find) is a ball of fire. There is no mass, just pure heat and flames. A wall is nearly immune to this.
A meteor swarm (probably one of the highest level spells any system has) would have the effect you are going for much more readily...to be effective against the wall, you need some form of mass to impact it or at very least concussive force, both of which a traditional fireball lacks in. Though if your armies contain mages that can throw around meteor swarms, I'd suggest the concept of army is basically obsoleted by a few mages.
Goes back to the earlier "Enchanted Cannon" question...mages are great on soft targets, but unless extremely powerful there isn't much a standard 'evoker' style mage can do to a wall. When walls need to be knocked over, siege weapons are required, even in a medieval magic prolific environment.
So answer = yes, walls are still exceedingly effective. If you are saying that a standard magic user can throw around massive concussive force fireballs that could tear holes through walls, then I'm back to suggesting you have some heavily powered up magic users that have little need for an army if they wanted world-wide dominance.
[Answer]
This question suffers a bit from the one-side problem I've seen more than once on here: You're surmising that the attacker has access to magic but the defender *doesn't*.
* A large, solid and permanent structure that surrounds the entire area you want to protect sounds pretty much perfectly suited to anchor defensive wards of various types and flavors.
* As mentioned above, a fireball does a lot of damage to squishy and/or flammable targets, but large thick stone walls aren't either of those (and historically, it tended to take way more than a couple of flaming arrows to ignite a wooden palisade wall) You'd be better advised to lob your fireballs *over* the wall and onto hopefully more flammable roofs and houses.
* In fact, fireball spells tip the scales toward the *defender* much more than the attacker, because the main problem with using cannon defensively was that they were tricky to aim at anything smaller than the broad side of the proverbial barn, whereas a fireball spell is basically "you see it = you hit it" -- and if the siege mages can see the walls, any defending mages on the walls can see *them*. Hopefully they were not standing too close to the rest of the army divisions they were part of...
* More generally, the purpose of a wall, as mentioned above, isn't so much to keep a sufficiently motivated enemy out indefinitely, it was to make it too costly in terms of time, manpower and resources to make it practical, in the hopes that an attacker would find someplace less well defended to bother.
Adding magic to the mix will likely change the nature of how walls are built and designed, but the idea of a solid barrier between "outside" and "inside" isn't going to become obsoleted quite *that* easily.
[Answer]
If magic isn't just used for offense, but can be used defensively as well, then walls could serve two purposes.
First, the walls themselves could be magically reinforced, countering offensive magic with defensive magic.
Secondly, a walled city would be more contained, thus being more amenable to casting various defensive emnchantments on the population than a sprawling unwalled city would be.
[Answer]
While armies love to have their cavalry and, in your case, their wizards, they *win or lose on the backs of their infantry.*
Your wizard is actually less combat effective than a cannon. 4 shots per day per wizard. And that wizard is probably more expensive to operate than a cannon, since she can charge exorbitant rates and probably demands better living conditions than anyone below officer rank in your army. For 4 shots a day, plus some lesser magical effects along the way. Meanwhile, your cannons can fire all day, as long as you have crews, powder, and shot. And yes, they require a crew, but that crew requires far less training than your wizard.
That's why the entire army isn't wizards with a handful of bodyguards. Infantry are cheap by comparison and effective.
So you need low-tech, easy to maintain, defenses to keep the infantry out. Yes, they cannot stand forever against the might of a wizard squad. But they can slow down the enemy long enough to mount an active defense via counter-attack.
This may be high walls, or it may be low, sunken walls like the bastion forts. That would depend in part on how long warfare and wizardry have worked together. If wizardry is relatively new to war, then you're going to have standard castle walls beginning to give way to bastions. Much as you see in history as gunpowder become more reliable and effective over time.
If wizards have always been combat-effective units in war, then there's a high probability that high-walled castles and cities never evolved at all. They simply wouldn't have necessarily been the best defense against the infantry/wizard combo. Maybe the engineers would've learned of the bastion style sooner. Or maybe they'd come up with something far different.
I would hazard a guess that you'd find some kinds of defensive spells imbued into your defensive construction, as well. Some kind of spells to make them more resistant to your wizard attacks as well as infantry. Much like you see an escalation over time as armor and arms try to out-do each other, you'd have wizard attacks and wizard defenses in a similar arms race.
[Answer]
You ALWAYS have to define and restrict your magic. If you don't, there's nothing a magician can't do, and the story falls apart at the seams.
So imagine magic only working on organic material, and being line of sight. The walls, quite apart from making control over who enters the city easier, now seriously hamper mages from harming people inside the city from the outside.
Or your mages can as you say cast only 4 spells that can damage a stone wall per day. Now you make those mages rare, so an attacking army can't muster more than a very few of them and will have to decide how to use them (attack those walls, or maybe do something else).
All depends on the boundaries and limitations you set on your magic.
[Answer]
Depends. Can mages also be paid by the besieged to counter the magic being cast against their walls? The walls were not designed to protect against a siege, they were designed to keep enemy armies at arms length from the town. Hopefully they'd move on and find a different town to sack or run out of money to keep the siege going.
So unless every band that could threaten the town has a few powerful mages to handle the walls, the walls would still serve a purpose. If you buttress the walls with a mage of your own to strengthen them from attack and to counter attacks, the walls will still keep out the average soldier/raider.
[Answer]
Walls generally both keep people out and people in - the higher the wall, the more effectively they do this.
Although a wall may not offer much resistance to a concerted attack, by either a mage or an army with heavy artillery, it will still offer some and will certainly withstand weaker forces.
Walls themselves, with limited gate access control the flow of most people in and out - this can help control infiltration by spies and defection by traitors, and undoubtedly would in a war situation.
A walled city also offers some level of protection to citizens who may normally live outside in times of peace where, otherwise, they could be easily picked off by any enemy soldier. Likewise their livestock, which in a siege situation might provide an important food resource.
Why would they not have walls?
[Answer]
The lock on my front door isn't going to stop a determined burglar from kicking in the door, but I still lock it because it stops casual burglars from just walking in.
Having high walls limits the kind of tactics your opponents can use. Cannons can be mass-produced; if mages cannot be mass-produced, having a big wall is advantageous because the opponent cannot attack unless they have mages. This means that the attacker would have to commit more time and resources to a carefully planned attack.
There is also the law-of-false-comfort: the government may maintain the large walls because they give the citizens a false sense of security, rather than because they serve any real strategic value.
[Answer]
1. As someone already pointed out, if your invaders have to knock the wall down, you buy some time, regardless of how much. Time is essential to warfare... as Napoleon said, “Ask me for anything but time.” A lot can change on a battlefield in minutes, let alone days.
2. Even the ruins of a wall are more defensible than an open urban area. They didn't call the first charge on a breached wall the “[forlorn hope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_hope)” for nothing, you know.
3. Any numerically small group within an army is relatively vulnerable to both disaster and enemy action, so while wizards are useful, they're possibly, if not probably, not going to carry the battle alone, so any mundane defenses are still valid.
[Answer]
Let's for a moment accept your premise that mages will be able to breach your city walls within two or three days.
That still requires the attacking army to survive long enough while the defenders most likely will try to hinder their survival with any means they have available, including but not limited to magic.
Living for two more days already is an advantage in its own right. It allows you to do pretty much anything you damn well please, be it fighting back, or grabbing your valuables and escaping through that secret tunnel (or the back gate), negotiate, or anything else you might come up with.
And then there is the fact that it means your attacking army needs to hire those wizards first. Any army failing that will stand somewhat helplessly in front of your wall, looking up at heavy things being dropped on them.
So, I would say being attacked successfully by fewer armies is an advantage, too.
I'd definitely prefer having the wall in your setting than not having it.
[Answer]
First, one comment: The question sounds as if the magic from D and D is being used, rather than a magic system more useful for a book.
A lot will depend on the cost of magic, or rather the mages that cast combat spells. If they are expensive, this serves the defender who can offer a mage a comfortable living environment and good pay for little work only in defense. If the magic includes clairvoyance and other ways of information-gathering, then it will be difficult to sneak up on a city defended by mages.
One thing that I've seen few books address is that tactics would change if magic is a part of war. If fireballs are so useful against a stone wall (not that I think they would), then the walls would be built differently. They would be warded. Perhaps the very shape of the walls would be different to reflect the difference in combat.
Likewise, the concept of a siege might change. If there are ways for the defending mages to produce food and water for the people, a traditional siege might take too long for the attacker to use. It might come down to magical battles between the two groups of mages.
And, given powerful mages (why aren't they ruling the world already?), I would think the attacker would do better sneaking in a mage or two before he brings his army in. Then the attacking mage that is now inside can wreck havoc and let loose whatever he has. Or perhaps the attacker could buy/extort one of the defending mages with the same result.
Even worse than fireball would be some form of teleportation. I cringe at stories where the spell for teleporation is unlimited. I can think of so many ways to use this in combat that it would change everything.
[Answer]
The thing is that this is like putting up a lock when you hear a master thief is on the loose. Will the lock stop him? Probably not. But will it slow him down? Maybe by a fraction of a second. The walls aren't there to STOP the invasion. They are there to slow it down. Besides, if you encounter such walls, you will need to hire a cannon force/wizard, which will take away war money for normal soldiers.(As an after thought, couldn't you get enchanters to reinforce the walls?)
edit: I know there are some people saying the same thing but I posted this, then started reading the other ones. sorry
[Answer]
So many answers and I'll just add mine!
Premise: magic is powerful but time consuming, allowing wizards to destroy walls with spells.
Question: would walls still be used?
Yes, they definitely would. Considering the amount of wizards available for a trained army there will be a lot more "civilian" mages available, from the local witch who cures your pigs but is distrusted to a venerated member of the city. These mages would at it's core be about Food, shelter and Sex. The ability to get good food keeps you strong and alive. Sex contains everything from looking good and being able to convince others to have sex with you to protecting and nurturing your children, and shelter is anything from finding or creating a warm spot in a ditch to protecting your house against insects and fire breaking out.
Considering the power of each spell it wouldnt be unimagineable that defensive spells against other mages began development the moment mages began creating spells to tear down the local townhouse. The biggest question would be: Will there be enough mages to fortify the walls against magical attacks? If the amount of mages remains around 1 per 2500 people (using the 6 mages per 15.000 soldiers) then it might not be possible to get enough mages to permanently ward your walls, or the task requires immense amounts of money and time even when considering walls are expensive anyway. This would mean wards would be created for important sections and others left open.
This problem would mean a more Japanese type of fortifications build around "come on in if you think you are hard enough", rather than the "keep em out at all cost" of Europe. Walls would be build with in-build slopes leading to walls that are somewhat climbable, with fortifications and chokepoints higher up as well. If the wall is breached by magic the slope in front (now covered with debris) will make entering much harder and keep an advantage for the defenders, and the attackers would still need to breach the next fortification. It would also be easier to get out and mount counter-attacks to attempt to disrupt enemy castings, and potentially assassinate the mage(s) at a casting.
Lastly if protective wardings are impossible, then counter-mages might be used (probably used anyway). A likely section of wall is selected, mostly based on where attacker mages/their bodyguards seem to gather, and one of the few city mages is placed on a wall section nearby. This mage tries to disrupt the casting or kill the enemy mages, hopefully from a position that isnt going to collapse. Walls might become a series of low walls that area relatively easy to take so that it reduces the effect of a single breach on the outer walls and doesn't become too ludicrously expensive, giving the defenders the time to hold out and increasing the expenses of the attackers as they try to breach.
[Answer]
Without retreading too much ground posited by previous answers:
Any enemies that do not have access to mages, but have an *abundance* of line infantry, ie, mongols.
Provides control over entry.
Gives sense of security to citizens.
Slows down any army that is a credible threat.
And finally my own contribution, disease and quarantine. If any sort of Bubonic style plague rolls through, high stone walls will be more than sufficient to stop hordes of potentially sick peasants from coming in.
[Answer]
If a mage can create a destructive impulse, then another mage can create a shield. This has been the history of warfare.
A defensive shield could take various forms: Could be a "structural integrity shield" that knits the whole wall into a single entity, so a mage's blow is dissipated over the entire structure.
It could be in the form of a mirror spell, the reflected the assaulting mage's blow back on himself.
---
Not all people are mages. So the walls keep some people out. Attackers have to bring up additional tools/resources.
Siege engines didn't stop cities from making walls. Siege engines were difficult and time consuming to move, and operation took effort. A siege engineer was a highly valued specialist. Meanwhile, while you were waiting, perhaps the besieging army camp would be thinned by an epidemic of cholera or typhus.
When cannons came in, it became both faster and cheaper to take out a stone wall.
As another analogy: We lock our houses. It keeps out the delivery man, and the neighbourhood kids. It doesn't keep out someone with a lock pick, bump key or sledgehammer.
---
A good magic system requires carefully design. If all things are possible, then you have to ask why any action isn't done with magic. There have to be both limits (not all things are possible) and there has to be a price (No free lunch)
[Answer]
Fireballs are pathetic weapons, especially so against walls.
High walls finally fell to artillery because they could apply direct kinetic energy which shatters brick, and causes the walls to collapse. So I would first suggest using a better spell against walls.
However, assuming you have some wall shattering spell, there are three options to keep high walls
* The wall shattering magic is a recent development (matching artillery development) and thus the high walls are a relic of the past which have not been updated to modern star forts by those who can't afford it. Fortifications are extremely expensive, and cities that are not immediately threatened may well forgo upgrades for a long time.
* There are counterspells to reinforce walls against those offensive spells, hindering any siege
* The mages in the city get some kind of advantage due to having access to permanent spell circles on towers, or some other rather immobile magic structure, and can retaliate against any sieging mages that try to bring down the walls.
[Answer]
# Frame Challenge
**The walls aren't for the wizards. They are for animals (and certain monsters if they exist).**
Maybe the walls won't last long against an army with magical support. But that's not what they are there for. They are for the bears, cougars, or even the occasional moose. Or if they exist in your world, goblins and kobolds and owlbears.
The walls stop creatures with no access to magic or even advanced tactics and technology. They make sure that they can't see the tempting humans and food on the other side, and created a limited point of access.
[Answer]
Without making additional assumptions (re. defensive magic etc.), some alternatives:
1. Mages that powerful are likely to be in charge. ~They~ build (have built for them) the walls to keep non-mages from bothering ~their~ cities. Mages own the cities; they aren't going to be in the employ of some non-mage foot-slogger.
2. Walls exist to allow for gates. The existence of gates as the only means of access to a town or city forces all traffic through a bottleneck - this allows for control, of people, of trade (taxing goods to generate revenue for the city). If you want gates, you have to have walls high enough to stop people climbing over them.
3. Walls - of some kind - exist to separate the civilised from the wild. Keep your livestock behind a wall and the wolves won't eat them; keep your valuables behind a wall, and they are safe from itinerant thieves and beggars. They also foster in-group identity: "those within the wall" vs "outsiders".
[Answer]
Multiple reasons:
As others have said, the walls are useful against the infantry. However, there's another advantage to a sufficiently high wall: Gravity. The taller your wall the more energy it robs from whatever is being shot at the defenders and the more energy it adds to whatever the defenders are shooting back with.
Your fireball-casting wizard is going to have a very big problem with attacking--namely, that archers on the walls outrange his fireballs. The higher the walls the more of the bow's energy can be used on horizontal velocity and thus the bigger the area in which it can hit.
Assuming no air resistance for maximum range you aim up at a 45 degree angle and the arrow comes back down at a 45 degree angle. Lets pretend our wizard is a 1' x 1' x 6' figure standing 400 feet away--any arrow that hits the ground between 400' and 407' hits the wizard. Now lets try that at a closer range, dropping 1' for every 2' of travel. Now we hit him in the front from 400' to 412' and 412' 6" still clips him. Almost twice the distances that hit and thus twice the chance of the arrow hitting.
[Answer]
**Come up with an in universe reason why magic *doesn't* work against high walls.**
Why not go the other way? Maybe some long dead group of magicians created a spell that make high walls impregnable (so as to protect people). Since they're dead, and the spell is long ago forgotten, *no one can undo it*. "And believe me, we've tried!"
Even flying over them, if propelled by magic, is problematic. The walls detect any magic near it and cancels it out. That's part of the ancient spell.
So unless you're gonna pull a Kevin Costner (in Robin Hood) and catapult yourself over, its a no go. No Pegasus, no Dragons even, as they can be considered magical beasts.
[Answer]
IF casting a fireball requires line of sight then a high wall blocks the wizard from doing any real damage. Even a tall wooden wall will be effective as a sacrificial protection of the city within.
One thing that other answers have missed is the effectiveness of sappers. Standard wall removal was to dig a tunnel under a city's defensive wall, shoring up the stone with wooden timbers. Once the sappers were far enough under that removing part of its foundation stood a decent chance of bringing it down, they would light the oil soaked beams on fire and run .. A single mage could cast a very useful fireball to replace the usual dangerous methods of igniting the supporting timbers. Not part of the answer .. but i thought it worth mentioning.
] |
[Question]
[
The world consist of several different countries who are no strangers to being at war with each other. Even more, some countries are ruled by different races, like humans, elves, dwarves, etc. Racism and xenophobia are common occurrence.
Yet, despite all their differences and mistrust, necromancy is forbidden in all of them. Also, **no** government tries to secretly train necromancers in order to unleash undead hordes on their opponents if war happens.
[Answer]
In Hamlet, Shakespeare describes the realms of death and the afterlife as "**The Undiscovered Country**". Maybe in your world, that description is more literal than poetic. The dead are loyal citizens of the afterlife, a country quite distinct from and universally opposed to whatever living world country they used to belong to while alive. That country might be in a constant state of war with the living world. The reanimated may for a short time be enslaved to the necromancer but after that time, they do not return to the grave. Instead unfettered by the living necromancer's will, they strike out at the living indiscriminately as warriors for their new homeland, the afterlife.
And if some of those undead were themselves necromancers before they died, the situation will escalate exponentially.
In a world where xenophobia and rampant nationalism are rampant, where war is a constant across the present and past, adding another country to fight with doesn't make sense to anyone. So all nations outlaw it.
[Answer]
**Because we do it in our world too**
Thanks to Geneva conventions and others, many weapons are forbidden. Gas and chemical among them. Now there are of course countries that secretly, or not so secretly, still have such arsenals and use them. Still, there are some lengths that no one would stoop to. Things like cobalt bombs, or actually using a disease to kill your enemies. The reason is that the result is undetermined and near impossible to control. It can just as easily kill your own people, or at least the people they want to keep alive.
Undead armies might be such a thing. They might be turned, or the control too difficult. Maybe they feel that the dark powers are simply too dangerous. Would you invite the powers of a dark god among your people as a nation, while it could destroy you all? Especially if stories how it could go wrong are everywhere. Undead turning, blight that makes the land unlivable, necromancers getting extremely unlucky, or getting some bad feedback, or requiring horrible sacrifices to take into effect. Maybe families of the undead people get a curse or feel the bad effects. This is a very bad thing, as eventually everyone is sort of connected.
Others can be more mundane. Most races might not want their dear old grandmother created into an undead abomination and off to war.
Or maybe it's because despite all the advantages, the undead are just not cost effective. It is very easy to keep you to the rules if it is costing you more than you put in.
[Answer]
### Because that Necromancer Emperor 100 years ago was REALLY SCARY.
Some time ago, probably between 100 to 500 years, a Necromancer became Emperor, conquered half the known world, and killed the majority of the world population.
Armies of all kind banded together, to no avail. All were swept aside. All used magics were pointless or countered by the Emperor.
In the end, the only reason that the entire world dodged being ruled by the same mass-murdering Emperor for millenia was because someone slipped a knife in his back.
This would develop into a cultural hatred of the practice. If you practice it, your village will hang you. If you overpower your village, the noblemen will. Or the clergy. The nearby city. The local Mage's Guild. Assassins from the royal court. *Armies* from the royal court. International alliances.
***Everything*** to kill a Necromancer in rising to prevent from what happened last time.
[Answer]
**Nobody trusts necromancers.**
There is an inherent problem with necromancers, and that's what you do when you're done with them.
If you decide a conventional military leader is a liability, generally you can revoke their authority from above - the duke or king or parliament or president signs an order stripping them of command, and the general assumption is that other leaders and troops will more or less obey.
Even a weapon of mass destruction is relatively easily contained from the hands of a lunatic in charge. Codes can be changed, procedures modified, generals put on do-not-allow-entry lists. Again, the assumption (perhaps unwise, but generally believed) is that the legitimate authority can exert control over their weapons.
Undead don't work like that. They don't have access codes or accept written authority. They're irrevocably bound to the necromancer who raised them, come hell or high water. For a legitimate authority such as a king, they are forever out of reach. If your ability to exert control over the necromancer slips, there's no way you can ever bring the undead back in line.
For this reason, kings and lords consider necromancers to be an implicit challenge to their rule - a subject they can never control or contain. You can imagine for yourself how most kings respond to such a challenge.
[Answer]
## Necromancy is easily detectable and impossible to control on a large scale.
Necromancy needs huge amounts of necromantic energy to function. Small time necromancers raising the family dog or a lover from the dead can hide it, but enough undead to be useful gives off a big aura that skilled magical detection can easily find. This prevents secretly training necromancers.
In addition, if you have a large enough concentration of necromantic energy, and what is 'large enough' is subjective and impossible to tell, ancient liches and ghosts and necromantic spirits will intervene. They want to form an undead empire of their own, and so they'll augment the spells and spread them beyond their usual bounds to conquer everything around, which usually includes your kingdom.
Raising a necromantic army means allowing an enemy king a foothold in your land. Nations that don't have a strong taboo against necromancy don't remain life run nations.
Those that did fall were eventually defeated by alliances of many previously hostile nations. They serve as memorials to the danger of trusting necromancers and the undead or trying to use them.
[Answer]
## Hey, you know what sounds like fun? Angering our ancestor spirits!
So you're just sitting around, chilling, enjoying your afterlife of choice (or maybe you're not enjoying it, which could make this even worse), when something chills you to the bones. Literally. Because your bones, they ain't resting in their final resting place any more. They're on the move, fighting some mortal war you thought you had escaped from, which upsets you for reasons varying according to which flavor of the afterlife you've been sipping.
Fortunately, the breach has weakened the veil enough to allow your spirit to return separately from your body and wreak some good old-fashioned vengeance on whomever it was that disturbed you. Unfortunately, you find that the necromancer necromancing your bones was prepared for this. He just has too much power for you to affect him.
So you seek out your descendants. Surely one of them will have enough respect for the departed to put an end to this travesty, and then you can empower them or reward them or something. Except when you find your descendants, it turns out they're willingly going along with this!
Well, at least you found someone that's a part of this, but not strong enough to keep you from wreaking some vengeance on them until they do the right thing.
[Answer]
You probably need multiple reasons, and there are fortunately several reasons you can give to the people in your world.
Culture:
There are some cultural reasons you might not be allowed to use necromancy. The archetypical honorable dwarves would easily have a problem with their soldiers and families being turned into the undead. Similarly using other species as undead can be seen as such dishonorable as you hide behind the corpses of your enemies.
Religion:
Proper burial, respect for the dead even if they used to be hostile and just plain "life and death is God's terrain not mere mortals" are excellent ways to discourage using necromancy.
Distrust of power and motivations:
The Necromancer has absolute control over the undead. They could turn on you whenever they want right? And if you kill him then their undead go wild meaning the Necromancer is a risk. Also this is a guy that works with dead rotting bodies for a living, he does not think like you or me right? Can you trust him to follow your rules, to not stab you and turn you into an undead yourself?
A bargain with Dark Powers:
All Necromancers need to make a pact with demonic entities to work their magic. Even with the best intentions these Necromancers will eventually be twisted and corrupted. Why take the risk using one?
[Answer]
The short version of the answer is that a skilled enough necromancer is enough of a perceived threat to the established power structure of the lands they reside in that the leader take action to neutralize that.
Something that should be noted is that it doesn't have to be a militaristic threat. The zombie dreadhorde can most definitely be a militaristic threat. However, an undead horde doing repetitive manual labour can create an economical threat to the established power structure. Learning things that people are not supposed to know is a different kind of threat to the powerful.
Also noted is that it does not have to be an actual threat. Just because a person can raise an army, does not mean that they will. But the fact that they can makes them a potential threat.
## The Unnature of Necromancy
### Calling all Spirits
People like to focus on the raising undead hordes part of necromancy, and that is all well and good, but there can be so much more to the art of necromancy that is far more benign in principle, but just as dangerous to the powerful.
I like to point out our English definition of necromancy:
>
> a method of divination through alleged communication with the dead;
>
>
>
*Source -- [Dictionary.com](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/necromancy)*
This could very much involve speaking to the recently deceased to find out things, like what and more importantly who, killed them. While on the surface a good investigative tool, you know it will be banned quick when the aristocracy starts getting caught arranging accidents for their rivals because somebody used this to talk to their victims.
We have magic -- there is no "alleged" in this communication with the dead.
### Death Magic
Depending on the setting, necromancy also takes into account spells that use negative energies to weaken or outright kill living things.
When one kills with a knife, there is a highly visible knife wound. There is no ambiguity as to how they died. In fact, that they could get in and murder someone can be itself a message. Poison straddles a middle ground depending on the nature of the poison used in the murder and any overt effects of it. But death magic? Unless it leave a tell-tale sign, there is no wound. Just a body flopping over dead.
Done stealthily enough, say in the middle of the night or while the victim is alone in the woods, and nobody will know if they died from necromantic attack or a heart attack. As an iconic example in recent memory, the Avada Kedavera spell in *Harry Potter* explicitly leave no mark on its victim.
In a similar vein, if you get a necromancer into enemy territory and blight their crops and cause a famine over the winter, that will have a heck of an effect on people not involved in the wars. It is quite bluntly, a horrible war crime on civilians, at lest by our standards. But the catch might be that such a powerful curse on the land does not dispel easily or may even have unintended consequences.
### The Undead Labour Market
When people think of raising undead armies, they think of war. While this can be a good use of human resources, another is in the mindless and repetitive jobs around.
Should the nature of your basic undead allow for it, with a bit of clever machinery a zombie can power basic things or do a simple task without fail or break. It's basically free labour, and that allows the commoners time for themselves to do things that the nobles may not approve of. Also, if it's one man's zombie workforce, then that centralizes economic power in one person. This is possibly a threat to the local administrator of the village.
### The Nature of the World
## Magical Balance
Note, you have magic in the world. How would the world itself react to an undead army, or more specifically the concentration of negative energies where the undead army is and/or was created? I could see that the biggest problem of the undead hordes not being the undead themselves, but the imbalance in the magical forces of the world caused by concentrating so much negative energy in one location.
For that matter what is the nature of your undead? Various media have different kinds of undead, and even your zombies may have different properties than the general norm. Some of them may not be conducive to the control of a large-scale army of undead.
### Societal Balance
It has been brought up before, but the big question here is if this is one world-wide ban in the vein of "I hate you all, but this is the one thing we all can agree on" or if this is each individual kingdom/state making the decision and they happen to all agree necromancy is bad.
Even then, each kingdom will likely have their own reasons for the necromancy ban, as well as ensuring that their neighbours have and are enforcing that ban. There could be kingdom-specific reasons as to why necromancy is banned.
* The kingdom of intrigue bans it because it unbalances the political and diplomatic games the nobles play. That it happens to ban undead armies from ravaging the countryside is a bonus to them
* The kingdom that honours its ancestors bans it to prevent their rest from being disturbed or from noble bodies being used for ignoble purposes. That reverence spreads down the the common folk even if they aren't as dedicated to the honour of their ancestors as the nobles are
* The ambitious kingdom banned it because they remember the one time it happened and nearly destroyed the kingdom. The one castle in the corner of their empire lies in ruins, still somewhat unsafe to enter even after a century or two. They aggressively prevent the art from returning to avoid a repeat of history
* The kingdom with less fertile lands bans necromancy so that nobody can blight each other's lands as a form of revenge. They can't afford the loss of food it could cause over their winters.
The point is that everyone will have their specific reasons to ban the practice even if there is a world congress that has agreed to it on a global level.
[Answer]
**There is a balance, and somebody developing necromancy would break it**
The various countries hate one another, they fight continuously, but there is a kind of balance, so that everyone is at about the same level of power.
Think of the perpetual deadlock among Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia in 1984.
In such situation, these countries would probably fear the idea of some another country gaining the upper hand much more than they would like to gain the upper hand themselves.
So, I expect them to make (and break) a lot alliances, in particular every time one of the rival countries seem to achieves any kind of advantage.
Xenophobia and the consequent lack of trust imply that there is a very strong level of espionage and covert actions in all the countries (and probably magic would help to monitor the foes).
Since necromancy would give an insane advantage to whoever masters it first, whatever country starts to try to exploit these techniques would soon be discovered. In order to be able to deploy an army of undead, it would take years of preliminary research and experiments.
Everybody knows that in case a country starts to develop necromancy, basically all other countries would unite and attack it far before they could reach a usable level of necromancy and were able to defend against the "rest of the world".
In such a situation, the actual status quo is a lot better than trying to prevail, since being discovered would mean the assured destruction of the country.
[Answer]
## Because necromancy isn't as good a weapon as it sounds
Hordes of shambling corpses sound great. No logistical problems with food, no need to resupply, and the troops are great recruiters (if you look at it right). If they're as capable (or nearly as capable) as regular, living troops then the choice is obvious.
So there must be a reason why they aren't used in war, and the obvious one is that they aren't as good as they sounded initially. A good analogy (stolen from [Bret Devereaux's excellent blog](https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/)) is with chemical weapons. We didn't stop using chemical weapons in war because we're noble beings who despise their senseless loss of life, we stopped using them because they didn't work well enough to be worthwhile.
Maybe there are easily available countermeasures (a mage can dispel the army as easily as it's summoned, for instance). Maybe they're difficult to control (the army becomes a steamroller you can't turn, so all you can do is set it on a fixed position and hope they haven't dug a big pit or put up a big wall, or skeletons retain some of their old personalities and stop doing what you want after a while). Maybe the conditions for necromancy to work are really delicate (you need a day-old corpse and a lock of their true love's hair or something).
With some or all of these reasons, practical battle necromancy could be juuuuust around the corner - we've almost got them following orders boss, I promise, just a few more million ducats in research funds and we're there. Might be quite a good hook for a story!
[Answer]
Many better answers have been previously written. There's only three reasons I can think of that one nation chooses not to research/prepare a weapon for use against another nation.
One is that the weapon (necromancy) is known to be too weak and ineffective. It this case, however, a ban isn't needed. No nation (that I know of) has banned its military and citizenry from creating, using, or training with wiffle bats. And no no citizen that I know of works on mastering the wiffle bat as a means of aggression/defense -- despite any lack of ban.
The second is that the weapon is feared more than the opponent, by both the government and by the citizenry. Many other answers propose ways to enforce this, but without knowing the prerequisite details of your system (including the definition of "necromancy") I could not give reasons this might be true.
The third is that power of the people(s) itself. If all peoples fear necromancy (the weapon) even more than life itself, and are willing to do anything -- killing, insurrection etc. -- to stop it, then the governments would also fall in line. The occasional government might try to start a secret program, but if 99.99% of the people will immediately squash out anything/anyone they think might be involved in necromancy, it would only take a few failed attempts before even the 0.01% would be unwilling to even talk about it, much less participate.
The last leads to some interesting witch-hunting scenarios, particularly if all religion(s) are actively crusading to find and eliminate necromancy-practitioners.
[Answer]
No matter what race your enemies are, they are still living beings, enjoying the aspects of life, each for their own merit and liking, and their thinking can be understood.
Undeads aren't: they reek of decomposition and death, they hate life in all its aspects and make terrible allies, both because they can't be trusted and because they lower the morale of the troops they happen to side. They can't be trusted to stick to the agreements, nor they trust living beings for doing so, since they remember the stories of the few of them who were called and then immediately dismissed.
[Answer]
## It's an almost instinctive taboo
Nearly every culture on this planet has a taboo against eating other humans, or having sex with your closest relatives, due to Fun Times™ for the health of your local population this brings down the line (like genetic defects or prion diseases). Your world might have similar taboos against necromancy (for similar reasons... Can't think that a reanimated corpse would be too... sanitary) that all arose independently and convergently in your cultures, and naturally weaved their way in the morals first, and then in the laws as well.
[Answer]
I think there are three primary reasons.
Necromancy is feared as a form of magic which unleashes actual beings, who will certainly have their own motivations, and therefore may become uncontrollable. As such, they have great potential to become like unstoppable golems or deamons, but with malice and motivation toward all living as a group. The undead doomsday machine, so to speak.
At the same time, calling the dead back to life is seen by many as a violation of their revered loved ones. Virtually every society tries to instill a respect and reverence for elders, as part of maintaining their own social fabric and hierarchy. Calling the dead back to serve effectively as slaves violates that social more, and implicitly then threatens the basis of social control of the living. If, as an example, the father or king or general who was to be feared and obeyed in life, can be called back as a virtual slave after death, why did we feel compelled to obey and follow them when they were alive?
Lastly, the boundaries between life and death are seen as the rightful domain of the gods. We have myriad stories of how really, really irritated the gods can become when men, elves, or anyone else tries to invade their exclusive span of authority.
[Answer]
In my honest opinion, I find other answers interesting and there are some points I particularly like.
---
**Culture**
@Demigan & @Gardoglee answers cover the cultural aspect: necromancy is seen as a taboo in every country and by every race of your universe because:
* It is a violation of the bodies of loved ones. Every society shows some ceremony and respect to the dead. Even if they have different beliefs about afterlife, you still let your dead rest in peace.
This could be backed up by religion or laws.
So no one would practice necromancy because its unethical, taboo and the worst thing you could do.
**Limitations**
@Michael Richardson’s answer about limitations and counters of undead as a military force.
* Holy or light magic could be the weakness of necromancers and their puppets.
* Controlling undead could be mentally tiring.
* A necromancer could only control a limited number of units.
* The undead would not be durable (corpses raised in an already damaged state, the natural decomposition)
* The undead may not be that strong in combat, and if the necromancer needs to stay close to his units, he could be vulnerable.
* Raising the dead could cost a lot of magic and the necromancer would be too weak to assert dominance on the undead he just raised.
Anyway, we could find a lot of reasons to make necromancers useless. Just hard nerf them by putting a lot of constraints on the use of this magic.
So no one would practice necromancy because it’s not efficient enough and it has a lot of constraints.
---
For me, these arguments already justify the absence of necromancy, but I will add another reason to the ban of necromancy in your setting.
**It breaks Reality.**
Maybe necromancy is not possible because it distorts the reality. Suppose you have the *Physical World* with all your people and the *Plane of Death* (where souls of beings go after they leave the body).
A necromancer works by picking a soul from the Plane of Death, bind it under its will and put it in a corpse (I think it works like that in the Warcraft universe).
This operation between the Plane of Death and the Physical World creates holes between the two dimensions (realities, planes, or realms, whatever you want to call it).
The hole stays here, and the two dimensions start to mix up: it is really bad.
* The land around the hole decays, fauna and flora are dying (blight, scourge, etc…)
* Souls from the Plane of Death wander into the Physical World (ghosts or stuff like). It confuses and scares people. Strong souls could even possess living beings, causing more problems.
* Even worse, wandering souls can possess dead bodies and create undead that are not under the necromancer’s control.
* You can also say dangerous creatures naturally “living” (existing) in the Plane of Death go through the hole and rampage the nearby area.
Secondly, the practice of necromancy could draw the attention of *some Death ruling entity* (maybe the god/creator of the Plane of Death).
That entity might not be happy that some living being plays within the limits of its realm. The Death ruling entity would then come near to the Physical World and be angry for various reasons:
* To close the hole in the reality.
* To kill the necromancer and get the souls he stole back to the Plane of Death.
* Eradicate the population around as a soul payment.
The *Death ruling entity* is inspired from Warcraft: Sargeras and demons drawn on Azeroth because the use of Arcane magic by Night Elves, who banned Arcane magic after the incident.
---
*Briefly*, avoid any contact between the two dimensions because it will cause a lot of problems.
To conclude, I would say that with these elements, you can find a lot of justifications for why necromancy is not used by governments and organisations in your setting.
I would like to point out that *it would not prevent individuals that want to spread chaos (like terrorists) to perform necromancy*.
Thanks for reading this long answer.
PS: It is my first post here, I hope it fulfils the requirements of the community. Any feedback is appreciated and sorry if my arguments come only from Warcraft or cite arguments that other people already mentioned.
[Answer]
**1. Because continuous control is not guarantied, or even likely, over long periods of time.**
Controlling even a single undead requires continuous effort made by the necromancer. A single necromancer is limited in how many undead can be raised, and must be in fairly close proximity to maintain the control. Should the necromancer be killed or become incapacitated, those undead are no longer controlled, and would be a danger to *their* side. This would lend credence to necromancers infiltrating into enemy graveyards to raise some undead and then flee, but those would be small pockets rather than an army.
**2. Because undead make really poor soldiers.**
A swam of undead is really frightening to a farming family on their homestead. Not so much to a well organized militia or army. A phalanx or shield wall will decimate oncoming mindless swarms.
**3. Because corpses really don't travel well.**
Corpses exposed to nature really don't last that long. Depending on the season, insects (flies/maggots) will make short work of remaining flesh. Vultures, crows, bears, wolves and other scavengers will likely also take a considerable toll.
**4. Priests/Clerics have counters to enemy undead**
It may take less effort to deal with undead invaders than it does to raise and control them. The resources it takes to raise the undead is more than those needed to counter them. There are more efficient ways to wage war on your enemies.
[Answer]
Most answers already here states that undead are disloyal and untrustworthy to every king. Besides that, someone could still use necromancers as a weapon to cast havoc into the lands of an enemy that is sufficiently far away if one could successfully be deployed there. So, there must be something more.
Or perhaps not. Maybe that forbidden terrible island in the shores of the kingdom is in fact the place where the king secretly maintains his loyal necromancers. Or perhaps it is the case of that ruined fearful castle imprisioning something terrible that nobody knows for sure what is inside. But since the OP demands that even this is forbidden, surely even this needs to be unfeasible or counter-productive somehow.
So, here it is: whenever the dead hordes of zombies and skeletons are released, chaos quickly ensues. The reason for that is that those undeads are mindless beasts that destroys and kill whatever living thing they see undiscriminately. And those that they kill would quickly join them by the actions of necromancers. Defeating zombies and skeletons is something hard, because they don't fear death, don't feel pain and don't value anything. However, hopefully since they are mindless, they don't coordinate efforts, are easily tricked and are very innefective about invading fortifications and strongholds.
Necromancers however, have strong minds and reason. To become a necromancer, a specific ritual needs to be performed. In order to perform it, the necromancer-wannabe needs to:
1. Be a powerful wizard/witch with deep knowledge of magic.
2. Have a hearth full of cruelty and hate with no love, pity or good-being left.
3. Have great desire for power and vengeance.
4. Take an oath to a dark entity and accept to be subject solely to its desires and orders.
5. Sacrifice his/her own life and become an undead lich.
If 1, 2, 3 or 4 fails, then 5 also fails and the entire ritual fails degenerating just to an ugly form of suicide.
After becoming a necromancer, the conditions 2, 3 and 4 are irrevocably bound as conditions necessary for its existence. If the necromancer, even after many years of becoming so, loses its power (i.e. fails 1), shows any sign of love, pity or good-being (i.e. fails 2), thinks that it already has enough or is satisfied (i.e. fails 3) or rebels or betrays its oath (i.e. fails 4), then it immediately dies.
So, a necromancer can't be a friend or be loyal to anyone who is a living being. They are no subject to any king. They can't be used by country A against a neighbour enemy country B because the necromancer and undeads would quickly destroy whatever is worth to be conquered in B and also cross back the frontier to A.
Necromancers could in theory be deployed by A against an island B. However, they are powerful unloyal smart wizards with a great desire for vengeance, so they will eventually find their way back to A.
Also, since necromancers are smart, they won't just start to raise skeletons and zombies carelessly and randomly except when they know that this is a strategy that will work and serve their purposes. They might instead choose to hide and fly under the radar. In fact, almost all of them does exactly that, raising a few skeletons and zombies only occasionally in the right circumstances.
Also, although skeletons and zombies carelessly attack any living being, necromancers don't. They know that they will need to use and spare some living people and animals in order to achieve their objectives and that this should not be confounded with pity, love or good-being.
So, in effect, a king unleashing a necromancer in a foreign land simply rarely works. It is much more likely to turn back against him than against the enemy. Also, frequently, what happens is just the opposite. The tyrannical king that rule with an iron hand ruthlessly slaving and killing its own people is likely a meat puppet of a necromancer.
[Answer]
I like RDDs answer of:
They are not effective as they sound for topnotch empires, and it's easy to ban something horrible you don't want to use anyway.
I want to draw 2 other historical analogies: Longbows and nuclear weapons.
The english longbow was great at it's time, why didn't other kings adopt it?
You have to order your citizens to train regularly so they are skilled enough when the call to arms comes. But only the english did so.
There is a great article explaining here:
<https://www.peterleeson.com/Longbow.pdf>
the tldr is:
once the longbowmen are trained, longbows are cheap. So any upstart noble who wants to start a rebelion can do so on a dime. Crossbows and regular weapons are way more expensive. So e.g. the french kings were more worried about rebelions than loosing a battle here or there against the english.
The english king in comparison had a stable position, he wasn't worried about rebelions. Which only changed over a hundred years later in the war of the roses.
So in your fantasy world, every king of yours is more worried about being replaced than about the war with another race. As long as no kingdom adopts necromancy first, a potential superweapon that might win you a war that might come around in ten or a hundred years is of less concern.
But Lord SuperExtraHonorableIswear here who said this would be a great weapon against race X and pushes for adoption? He knows he has the biggest place of learning in his city and he knows this would be the center of learning for necromancy too. So all the topnotch necromancers would be under his controll.
No way this could go bad, right?
The other possibility is nuclear weapons (which would be a slight change in frame):
Some empires secretly have a few necromancers. But everyone knows they do, they just deny it publicly. Attacking them? Pure suicide. The undead are so devastating (mindlessly killing everything, their magic draining whole lands, whatever reason you want) that nobody intents to use them, but they make a great deterrent. So the nations who has capable necromancers have an interest necromancers not spreading (to keep their own power). But those without want to acquire them for their own safety. But if you get caught before you have them, you just painted a big red target on your nation...
The nations who have them just fight proxy wars without necromancy, because again, it's just too destructive.
[Answer]
The simplest answer is that other people won't let them. Historically foreign powers have imposed sanctions or even gone to war to end governments that sponsor necromancy. They do this because a necromancer once almost enslaved much the world and nobody wants to see a repeat of that event. The people find necromancy creepy, repulsive, and frightening, so a government that sponsors necromancy might find themselves at war and without the support of the people.
[Answer]
>
> Why is there a universal ... ban on necromancy in the world ...
>
>
>
I am not going to give you an explication to this kind of ban on your magic world. But I can give you an explication why this ban do exist in our (real) world.
Because it is the most emotional (so it is very dangerous) way to divination.
Other ways to divination make use of things that most of the time simply never existed, are mythological at best. Eg:
<https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/ancient/oracle-of-delphi/>
Where Apollo was believed to speak through a priestess, called the Pythia. You know the god Apollo did not exist.
With necromancy is different. You are using someone who really EXISTED as an oracle. This give you lots of opportunities for telling the
fortune of the consulter. The dead person could be a king, a priest, a hero, a saint and so on. And in the most common and extreme case a beloved family member.
Fake a dead people is easy, a god necromancer can talk like a professional theater impersonator. If the dead person is a famous one there are lots of sources for research. And this was the case even by the bible time;
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_Endor>
>
> Later Christian theology found trouble with this ... as it appeared to imply that the Witch had successfully summoned the spirit of Samuel, therefore giving credence to the idea that necromancy and magic were possible.
>
>
>
Using a beloved family member like a oracle is a effective way to gain one trust. A simple and discreet query can providing the necessary information to forge a communication with the dead person. It is very old con-artist act, really very old.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick>
But if you want a "hard" justification to don't use died people like weapons (your misinterpretation of the word "necromancy" <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/necromancy>) you can use the same arguments used against biological warfare <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_warfare> :
It can get out of control easily and turn against yourself!
] |
[Question]
[
For my story, I intend to include a city/civilization that is entirely 4 foot tall- with plants, greenery, walkways etc. on top of the connected 'houses'. This city is located in the middle of a desert, and derives its economy from trade through it. I was just wondering:
* Whether it is plausible
* Why they would have such short buildings
* How the city would remain in this state indefinitely
I'd also like to keep this civilization's inhabitants as having a relatively normal height, if it's possible!
Edit: to be clear, I'd like to keep them without the ability of digging down. The aim of this is to create a sprawling mess of veryshort buildings, and I'd like to know how to achieve that.
[Answer]
You ask for a sprawling city with 4 foot tall structures (external), without the ability to dig to increase the internal height.
>
> Whether it is plausible
>
>
>
As some have indicated in comments and other answers, people tend to live inside their homes, and as such they are constructed to fit people, and typically people will try to improve things past basic utility into comfort. In any culture you have a number of contributing factors such as security, tradition, and economics. We need to tweak these factors to produce an environment conducive to the maintain the status quo of tiny buildings.
But before we start in on those factors I'd like to start with two points:
1. If you only retreat to your personal space to sleep, you do not need a lot of head room.
2. The primary requirement for any shelter is not for comfort, but for protection from the elements. Small buildings will satisfy this basic need as well as (or in some environments even better than) taller ones.
Today, we have a sprawling city of four foot tall buildings, where the average adult can see very long distance in all directions. Most who live here today do not question it, for it has always been this way, but how did we get here to begin with?
## Founding
Stepping back many many generations before any trade routes run through the area. We find a vast and barren wasteland of wind scoured granite fields resulting from a catastrophic natural (or magical if your world allows it) disaster. At the center of the stone fields we find some grand awe inspiring natural landmark formed as a result of the same event.
The first settlers in the area are ascetic monks come to worship at the landmark. They build their shelters with the minimal and poor quality natural resources available locally. Although the tiny hovels they can manage push the limits of their resources material strength (built any taller or any wider, the structures collapse under their own weight) they fit perfectly with the monks' lifestyles of self denial providing only shelter from the sun and wind.
Time passes and the environment begins to recover from the disaster, enabling it to support a larger population. Along with this recovery, the community grows, and as it does it becomes more formalized. Higher quality materials are retrieved to build more durable replacements for the original structures as well as additional ones for new arrivals; however, the mold has been struck for what is expected of the supplicants, and the replacements are no larger than the originals.
## Generations Pass
More generations pass and the site draws the attention of others. The now well organized Order of the Landmark grows rich on the gifts brought by pilgrims which travel great distances to visit the now Holy Landmark.
Given the benefit of time and the care (and prosperity) of the Monks of The Order the area immediately surrounding The Landmark has recovered as much as can be expected from the disaster has become quite a pleasant place to live. With the exception of the middle of the day when the sun is highest in the sky, the climate is perfect to support a culture where people live the majority of their lives outdoors.
The riches and the pilgrims attract merchants and other residents to support the local tourist industry but The Order is still in control and issues an edict that "No permanent structure may obstruct the view of the Holy Landmark".
Although not an explicit height restriction, the practical result of the edict limits the height of buildings to below eye level of the average high ranking monk.
## Minima Civitatis
As the city is the center of travel for the faithful from all directions, it naturally becomes a major center of commerce as well and The Order further enriches itself on taxes from trade.
Centuries of tradition enforced by the city's primary resident results in a society where most 'private residences' are limited to smaller sleeping quarters with most day to day activity taking place outdoors. Kitchens and areas where work is done will most likely be completely open air, or built to allow pop-up tent like roofs.
## So why not down?
The entire settlement is built pretty much directly on bedrock. Digging into the stone is possible, and it will happen, but for most people it is not economical to do so to gain a little extra head room you don't need anyway.
That said, some digging will be required. Gutters and sewers become necessary to carry away human waste with settlements of any reasonable size to avoid disease.
Perhaps the city is littered with public outhouses (or trenches anyway), but these still need to lead somewhere.
Beyond public utility work like the sewers digging where it does happen will be for the homes of the wealthy, or for shared indoor community space where the benefit of the effort is shared by many.
## Center of Trade?
As with the need for sewers, here your restriction against any digging becomes a problem which is likely to prevent it from becoming a center of trade.
Trade means product. Which means storage. More trade means more product and more storage. Which means warehouses. No sensible person is going to want to deal with warehouses with a 3 to 3 &1/2 foot interior. It would be impossible to store or retrieve anything efficiently. Trade is one of those areas where economies of scale really impacts things, and the height restrictions literally prevent any scale here.
If the height restriction stands, then warehouses will have to be one of the exceptions to the no digging rule for the city to become a trade center. Otherwise the warehouses will be built outside the city, along with the offices and businesses that handle the trade as well as the homes of the merchants themselves, and the people that work for them etc, etc. All forming perhaps a sister city to yours, but that city would become the center of trade and reap the direct benefits and riches associated with it.
[Answer]
**1: Tent city.**
<http://ridgelineimages.com/musings/karasawa-tent-city/>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XOfP6.jpg)
These tents are four feet high, if that. The people of your city are from a culture of mobile pastoralists in a harsh climate. For hundreds of years they used small, wind resistant tents like this. When they settled they continued to live as their ancestors had - outside most of the day and then retiring to these small tents to sleep.
I had thought maybe constraints of building materials might be a reason for short buildings. But igloos, sod huts and wigwams all can be bigger. It is these mountain tents that are small.
---
**2: The city was not built for the current inhabitants.**
<https://sprech4.deviantart.com/art/The-Nameless-City-Part-1-204543739>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/v3HeM.jpg)
<http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/nc.aspx>
>
> Very low and sand-choked were all of the dark apertures near me, but I
> cleared one with my spade and crawled through it, carrying a torch to
> reveal whatever mysteries it might hold. When I was inside I saw that
> the cavern was indeed a temple, and beheld plain signs of the race
> that had lived and worshipped before the desert was a desert.
> Primitive altars, pillars, and niches, all curiously low, were not
> absent; and though I saw no sculptures nor frescoes, there were many
> singular stones clearly shaped into symbols by artificial means. The
> lowness of the chiselled chamber was very strange, for I could hardly
> more than kneel upright; but the area was so great that my torch
> shewed only part at a time. I shuddered oddly in some of the far
> corners; for certain altars and stones suggested forgotten rites of
> terrible, revolting, and inexplicable nature, and made me wonder what
> manner of men could have made and frequented such a temple. When I had
> seen all that the place contained, I crawled out again, avid to find
> what the other temples might yield.
>
>
>
Your city was very robustly built of stone by a long vanished prehuman race. It was found abandoned by the current human occupants, but the buildings were solid and excellently suited for the desert locale. Stones for building came from elsewhere and so the only available stone for any new construction is that of the buildings themselves. The human residents of the city consider it unwise to disassemble these preternaturally robust structures and so they are used as they are, unmodified.
[Answer]
## **Real Example: Makhunik**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rvGX1.jpg)
What you're looking for is the ancient Iranian city of Makhunik.
The city is full of very short buildings for two reasons, both of which are related it it's location / geography.
People settled in a very harsh environment - therefore they had little in the way of building materials. All stone or wood for construction had to be painstaking hauled in from remote locations, which led to a very minimalist style of construction. Approximately one third of the buildings are less than 6 feet tall, with the shortest ceilings at around 4.5 feet.
Additionally, the remote location and harsh climate lead to malnutrition. People living there were very short, some full grown adults were only ~3 feet tall. Of note, this is NOT dwarfism. Modern populations descending from this population are normal height. They city was simply pushing the boundary of sustainable nutrition.
So a desert city of very small buildings actually makes perfect sense, if they are living at the very edge of habitability.
Most of the info for this post is shamelessly stolen from a BBC travel [article](http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180109-irans-ancient-village-of-little-people).
[Answer]
## Build Down.
4-foot tall buildings are really much too short for 'relatively normal height' people, especially if they're planning on accommodating totally normal height or higher traders. Thankfully, you can dig a few feet down into the ground and embed your structures slightly underground.
### But why Bother?
You're in a desert. By having the buildings be partially embedded in the sandstone, you can maintain airflow while minimizing contact with the sun. Speaking of airflow, it's a good thing the buildings have such a low profile, since the area is so windy all the time! If the buildings were much taller, they'd be in danger of much more serious erosion from the **strong winds** in the desert. (See where I'm going with this?)
When they need more room, they can expand down, or to any of the four sides. There are [plenty of examples in the real world, even.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_city)
### What about trade and transport?
If you're okay with having gaps wide enough in the streets for foot traffic + carts, you could have some standard sandstone roads, and cover them with some fabric or [tarp of some kind.](http://www.tarpaulinmakers.co.nz/images/G-LFaWBeFedFh4-L7aMgfTHx5-xFXRE467WqMLE-sT8-2.jpg) You could even potentially gather the water run-off from the rain on these tarps as a bit of water supply, though likely you'll need to end up relying on underground wells for the majority of your water.
I hope this helps. :)
[Answer]
What about protection from enemies (of a different species) or wild beasts. If you've ever been in a large indoor playground you soon realise that the 3-4 foot high ceiling force an adult to crawl slowly but a child can run.
So the perfect height might be about 4-5 feet. Kids can easily run and adults can still run if they bend over a little. But an 8 foot intruder in the home would have a hard time moving around. This would be especially true if they are built like a giraffe. Narrow body that can fit through a human width door but legs that don't bend well.
Also, having all the buildings 4 feet tall means a 6 foot person can easily see over the roofs of the buildings and know when danger is approaching.
[Answer]
Fundamentally what you are asking for makes no sense assuming these inhabitants in any way resemble humans.
Homes are built to be comfortable for the inhabitants. Rooms are built to a size that allows you to comfortably move around and store/use what needs to be stored and used.
You need to come up with an over-riding reason why they must build the houses this small (which is likely to seem very contrived considering they can just dig down), you need to make them quadrupreds (in which case a human sized creature would be comfortable in a 4' dwelling, or you need to make them smaller.
[Answer]
**They live outdoors**
The inhabitants of this city spend nearly all of their time outdoors, only going indoors to sleep (or maybe to take shelter from sandstorms and the like), and maybe have other buildings used just for storage.
The climate of the area is such that the majority of the rain falls at night when the air cools down enough to allow condensation, so they only crawl into bed at night because no one likes to be rained on when they sleep.
This being the case, and due to the lack of tall trees, construction materials are difficult to come by and so they never really saw the need to build taller buildings.
Despite being a desert, the heat is not so uncomfortable that the citizens would need to take shelter from it (and again if so, maybe this is usually limited to certain times of day, during which they may take a siesta).
[Answer]
They could live in an area where the sand keeps them from building downward and very strong winds that keep them from building up. You kinda need to reduce their height or I wouldn't see a reason for them not trying harder to dig down or find another place to live.
[Answer]
>
> Whether it is plausible
>
>
>
As mentioned in another answer, some kind of tent structures or igloos could make it work. I'm assuming a city might have roads. So perhaps people ride around in recumbent bikes:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle>
Or maybe they crawl around, you never specified if they have to be bi-pedal. This would also make their anatomy change over time, you think? They are same like human, but more adapt at crawling around. Perhaps they all have a serious hunched back.
>
> Why they would have such short buildings
>
>
>
Perhaps something to do with the atmosphere. I could only suggest an idea to give a reason for why they would have short buildings. Maybe there is some kind of gas in the air that sets just above 4 feet in the atmosphere. Perhaps it's deadly? Or perhaps it causes some kind of erosion/corrosion to buildings? Maybe this is why they build short buildings. How you would work that into your world to line up with everything else, I don't know. Perhaps the basis of another question.
>
> How the city would remain in this state indefinitely
>
>
>
I think that's entirely up to you to decide. Do you think a city like this can survive and function properly for that long? They will have some serious limitations.
[Answer]
**Religion**
The population has some religious belief that requires a form of supplication or penance so that they must never be walking straight up when indoors. This belief would be enforced with a law that structures cannot be above a certain height.
[Answer]
I think it could be reasonable, given certain circumstances. Maybe there are high powered winds that would shear the roof off of any normal sized building, and the ground could be hard stone or some other dense material. I can see it in both a fantasy and a sci-fi setting, with sort of hobbit style society for fantasy and extraterrestrial colony for sci-fi.
[Answer]
I read recently about an aircraft factory that was camouflaged with under-height buildings, trees, cars, etc. to hide it from air attack. This seems to answer most of your requirements, although people did not live or work the buildings. Everything happened underneath.
Here's an article with a slide show: <https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/from-the-archives-how-boeing-hid-its-bomber-factory/>
[Answer]
The giants have mechanical push reel mowers, that destroy everything over 4 feet high. and the city is located on a diamond plate eight miles wide, covered with 6 inches of hardpacked topsoil. The trees have shallow root systems and are acacias, ash, beech, birch, cypress, desert willow, elm, eucalyptus, maple, mesquite, mulberry, pepper tree, poplar and sycamores. The giants find a uniform lawn attractive.
[Answer]
**Building materials.**
To build a house 5m across you need a beam the same length. In the desert trees of any form are rare. The standard building material is a type of cactus that grows about the size of a single man tent.
To build a house you hollow out the body then pile a mixture of wet clay and straw on top (the spikes help it adhere). After a few months in the desert sun the cactus rots away and the soil compactifies into a self-supporting [mudbrick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudbrick) material. Larger structures are made by building these *compartments* next to each other.
**Cultural standards**
In the desert it's a given you can see for miles in any direction. Which is good for looking for predators or your missing herd of oryx. The four foot city does not block view and the culture develops to pretend the two things are related.
When I find a very rare six-foot cactus and decide to make an extension on my house, the first piece of gossip my neighbors come out with is not 'is blocks my light' but 'it blocks the view'. There is a stigma attached to taller structures and this keeps them down.
] |
[Question]
[
About fifty years ago, a number of people started to get *really* lucky. While normal humans when exposed to toxic waste, radiation etc. die, these guys actually managed to exploit previously unknown loopholes in the laws of physics. Long story short, they became Supers.
At roughly the same time, various animals rapidly evolved / were discovered / woke up after a few million years / arrived from outer space / whatever. These, every one of them, *also* used these loopholes. So, not only did civilization have to deal with super villains (with heroes to fight them), but also with monsters that often dwarf cities.
As a result, the destruction of large metropolitan areas (for some reason, these seem to attract monsters and supervillains like magnets) has become an almost bi-yearly event.
# Why do people insist on rebuilding cities in a universe where cities of a certain size regularly attract monsters the size of skyscrapers?
[Answer]
**Fortifications.**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/tXnjY.jpg)
(Source [here](https://kingkong.fandom.com/wiki/Skull_Island_Sacrifice)).
In worlds where cities are regularly attacked (Angel Grove being the best example, I think), the silly thing is not that people still live in cities. The silly thing is that these cities remain very similar in appearance to how cities look in our own giant monsterless universe.
After the second giant monster attack, people would figure it out. Smart folks live in cities. Maybe some of the Supers are super smart — definitely have them help with the planning. They would build walls and fortifications, like our ancestors did in bandit plagued lands and like the natives did in their village pictured in King Kong. Attack on Titan is another example — a world infested with giant monsters, and the human response is to hunker down in cities and *fortify those cities against monster attack*!
Cities would definitely have barriers and defensive weaponry. Supers will help too, but I am sure the supers would like their opponents softened up by long range weaponry in advance of the battle.
[Answer]
My answer is in two parts.
**Part I — a [Frame Challenge](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7097)**
If you review [my answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/91452/40609) to [Routine monster attacks and city economy](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/91443/40609), what you'll discover is that your monsters can't attack with any frequency at all or it's simply impossible to rebuild and continue. Unless you give the average community the "superpower" to rebuild with amazing speed, they're dead.
Therefore, frame challenge, monster attacks on cities are really rare. If it takes [1–5 years](https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-skyscraper-now-versus-fifty-years-ago) to build a skyscraper, and if we assume your monster(s) is/are worth their salt, then the shortest frequency of attacks is, what, once every 50 years? Otherwise your question is irrelevant because people can't rebuild fast enough to claim they are living in cities.
So, I know you want it, but unless you incorporate a way to seriously reduce the damage done by your monsters, they don't/can't attack all that often. Consequence: the natural "there's safety and more jobs in numbers" mentality takes over and people live in cities.
**Part II — I give you, the Woolly Mammoth**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZgdfOm.jpg)
*Bernard Long, "Early Hunters Attacking a Woolly Mammoth" from the [Illustration Art Gallery](https://bookpalace.com/acatalog/info_LongHunt.html)*
In days gone by (and not much has really changed), humans brought down bigger-than-humans creatures with (a) intelligence and (b) numbers. I'm absolutely and without a doubt convinced that Hollywood it absolutely right when they portray the victory of human intellect and numbers over skyscraper-sized critters (*Godzilla,* *Pacific Rim,* etc.) because (and we all know it, right?) *Hollywood is never wrong!*
But on a more serious note, we really are pretty good at handling big critters (in fact, pretty much everything) given time to think and sufficient numbers.
And the value of cities is that, statistically, you can find a few smart people and a lot of ~~cannon fodder~~ help to stave off disaster. All we need is a little motivation! And the best battle cry I've heard in a long time is, "[Nobody steps on a church in my town!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aW8oyTgA60)"
**Conclusion**
People will stay in cities because, no matter the size of the critter, unless you allow that critter to attack often enough to *stop* people from staying in cities, they will always gather for safety, resources, and the simple reality that a lot of people can solve more problems than a few.
And history and Hollywood agree!
[Answer]
To summarize your question, it's basically 'Why does New York still exist in the Marvel universe?'
Questions like these have two kinds of answers - the Watsonian answer and the Doylists answer, or an answer from the author's perspective and the answer from the poor NPC sap's perspective. The answer from the author's perspective (Doylist) is simple - because it's easier than wordbuilding and more relatable to an audience. You'd rather watch the Avengers defending New York and its very remarkable landmarks than defending some brand new city, or more likely not even - group population centers aren't as necessary today now that 90% of work can be done online. A few start-ups to make eOffice-space programs and then you'd have a vast integrated network across the country, minus the main population centers.
The NPC perspective (Watsonian) is that they don't die during these attacks (somehow), they aren't the one who rebuilds everything (Tony Stark has his suits do it), and they've somehow managed to work their bystander syndrome to the point where seeing giant spaceships invade weekly is basically 'Huh, I guess that they'll block the rain. Better water my plants today." Yes, it's not good, but it's just a justification for the Doylist answer, and audiences are willing to put up with a small break from reality.
[Answer]
## Because its still safer for the majority (i.e. they will still attack in rural settings)
So we have a bi-annual destruction but cities still have benefits which would be hard to find in rural settings:
* Enough people that one can hide or band together and have an effect
+ In rural settings you have less of a chance to "lead the monster away while the kids hide"
+ You can even setup watches so you have at least some warning of danger
* A better chance that the Supers will show up "in the nick of time"
+ Might even have "signals" or other means of calling for them
* Better community resources
+ You have one hospital in a farming community and it goes down - this is a really, really bad thing (seen it) vs. at least having a 2nd or 3rd in city
+ More diversity in important areas (if you have 1 or 2 doctors in a community and they die vs 20+ with a school in the city)
+ You actually have enough people to rebuild or even build: "safe houses", "underground bunkers", and other hiding spots (and maintain them)
* It solves the "warband" coming communication problem
+ Rural city 1 gets destroyed but it can be weeks before the next rural city finds out...esp if it is then destroyed then 3 then 4 (nobody may ever know due to communication issues). City is big so there is at least a chance the next one will be forewarned.
## Biggest reason (with above): its only safe to live in rural areas because of the cities making a big cycle of destruction
The only reason the **cities are targeted is because there are so many in one place**. Meaning that rural areas could get hit less and adding an attraction to people who want that way of life (which the urban centers will need for food production).
When **too many people move to rural areas** though then the *opposite begins to happen (monsters attack small communities and farms)* with all the negatives outlined above.
Then **equilibrium is reached as cities are rebuilt and people move there** from rural communities to escape all the monsters and *we start again*.
[Answer]
# People don't have the economic/political option to just leave.
During World War II people knew that cities were likely to be targets for bombing runs but you can't just run to the hills. You don't own property in the hills, you can only squeeze so many refugees into every country house, you work in some job that you have to do in a city (e.g. factory work), the job market is over-saturated in the hills... Cities may also increase in size because people migrate in from other destroyed cities because cities have more resources to deal with that migration than small towns.
So what can you do? The British sent their kids out to the country but even then not all the kids were evacuated: ["only half of all school-aged children were moved from the urban areas instead of the expected 80%"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuations_of_civilians_in_Britain_during_World_War_II). So that's the reality of it, even though you can send your kids out to some lady in the country to look after, loads of people didn't ([maybe they thought they'd miss them too much?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuations_of_civilians_in_Britain_during_World_War_II#/media/File:Don't_do_it_Mother_Art.IWMPST3095.jpg))
Its also possible that the country doesn't want people moving to the hills because it will tank the economy and hinder the war effort (in this case against the monsters). So they may engage in propaganda or create laws to keep people in cities. [Russia downplayed the dangers of radioactivity to people living nearby to test sites](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semipalatinsk_Test_Site). Sometimes [Russia payed people to stay in radioactive cites, while the rest of the country starved](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/20/graveyard-earth-inside-city-40-ozersk-russia-deadly-secret-nuclear).
Just because you live in a dangerous area doesn't always mean you can move. **You may not realize how dangerous it is, and you may not have the economic means to move.**
[Answer]
# Why do so many people today live in cities?
In the city you have more crime, more accidents, a much higher cost of living. If you watch regular news you will also get the feeling there is a real danger of terrorist attacks in major western cities, as well a a higher chance for civil war in bigger cities of unstable countries. There are still millions living in big cities even today and some monsters ain't gonna change this.
### The perceived benefits outweigh the risk
Better jobs, a more diverse crowd of people and a bigger choice of stores/pastimes are a big allure of urban areas. For many younger folks the saying "I'd rather die than live on the country side" is quite real - they will accept a higher risk for the prospect of an exciting life.
### People feel safer in a big group
While some people are loners, who will prefer to find safety on their own, most people will prefer the perceived safety of a big group. Since there are also rich and influential people living in the city, most people will expect the government to do its best to protect the cities. On the other hand people in rural areas are perceived to be on their own; if a villain or monster attacks there, probably no one will be there to help.
### Humans resist change
If there is no clear way to salvation most humans will simply keep doing what they are doing. It is just human nature to keep to ones ways if all other ways seem dangerous. Since relocating is a lot of work and no guarantee for safety, many people will revert to human directive zero: Just keep doing what you have always done.
[Answer]
You wrote
>
> As a result, the destruction of large metropolitan areas (for some reason, these seem to attract monsters and supervillains like magnets) has become an almost bi-yearly event.
>
>
>
I am assuming that you do not mean that **all** large (what is large?) metropolitan areas get destroyed in a given year but rather that some of them get destroyed in a given year. An additional assumption is that the metropolitan area is not 100% destroyed, but rather some parts of them are destroyed.
Now, given those assumptions (which may or may not be true) it seems to me that you could argue that the statistical increase in danger, that is the chance that a given person residing in a given part of a given city is not big enough to render living in a city unbearable given all the prons mentioned above by JGreenwell
[Answer]
I can take on a beehive and win, but it's going to end up stinging me (pun totally intended) as well. Even if you forget about the beehive and focus on an animal that can't really fight back (e.g. forest ants), **just because I can take it on doesn't mean that I will prefer to do so for no particular reason**.
The answer is different based on the animal's size, but in all cases metropolitan areas remain viable.
---
## Dog vs human
If the animals are big but not building-big (i.e. humans are to the animal what a dog is to a human), then metropolitan areas can afford fortifications. It's easier (and better) to build one big wall around a city than it is to build walls around every remote farm. Having to build less walls means you can instead invest in buildin better walls. Also, a few guards can guard many civilians, as opposed to every farmer being their own guard.
## Mouse vs human
If the animals are building-big (i.e. humans are to the animal what a mouse is to a human), then the animal still can't simply walk over the metropolitan area like it's nothing. It can walk on the people easily, but not the dense buildings in which the people will obviously go hide. Not that it can't take out a building if it wants to, but you'd need to give it a reason to want to take out a building.
This is where my beehive analogy comes in. Sure, the animal *could* come into the area and break stuff; but it will take effort, and the little people will at the very least inconvenience or wound it. Is it really worth the effort? Even if the animal is nigh invincible, it's still annoying to having to wade through the metropolitan area as opposed to a nice open field.
If your animal particularly feasts on people (or anything else found in a metropolitan area), then it's going to suffer the drawbacks because survival comes first. If the animal has easier food sources elsewhere, why would it bother with the more cumbersome metropolitan area?
Supposing your building-big animal *does* want to particularly come into the metropolitan area, then the same "unified defense" argument from before still applies. It's better for the humans to pool their resources and have a subset of people defend all people, rather than separating and requiring everyone to fend for themselves. It's really just a matter of effort versus reward.
## Ant vs blue whale
If the animals are true leviathans that wouldn't even register if they stomp on a metropolitan area (i.e. humans are to the animal what an ant is to a blue whale) then it doesn't matter where you live. The animal will or will not trample you regardless of where you live. This is essentially like living your life under the rule of an indifferent temperamental god. All you can do is hope that god doesn't smite you, but you can't actually change it. You get smote, or you don't.
If you can't prevent something from killing you, it's pointless to spend your days worrying about it. True leviathans are so beyond our abilities that it's futile for us to dedicate our lives towards preventing something we can never prevent.
At this point, all that matters is living your life under the assumption you don't get stomped. The argument for living in a metropolitan area would be the same as if these animals did not exist.
Some may argue that it's better to spread out so the odds of the entirety of humanity getting stomped out lessen, but then again the average casualty rate will remain the same. This is where people's opinions will diverge. Some will want to go live remotely, whereas other either actively disagree or are indifferent to it and instead choose the day-to-day benefit of metropolitan life.
[Answer]
**Why do people prefer metropolitan areas, considering monsters and villains?**
Although fortification and arms can come into play here, the main reason is that people fell safer in numbers.
>
> Safety in numbers is the hypothesis that, by being part of a large physical group or mass, an individual is less likely to be the victim of a mishap, accident, attack, or other bad event. Some related theories also argue (and can show statistically) that mass behaviour (by becoming more predictable and "known" to other people) can reduce accident risks, such as in traffic safety – in this case, the safety effect creates an actual reduction of danger, rather than just a redistribution over a larger group.
>
>
> In biology
>
>
> The mathematical biologist W.D. Hamilton proposed his selfish herd theory in 1971 to explain why animals seek central positions in a group. Each individual can reduce its own domain of danger by situating itself with neighbours all around, so it moves towards the centre of the group. The effect was tested in brown fur seal predation by great white sharks. Using decoy seals, the distance between decoys was varied to produce different domains of danger. The seals with a greater domain of danger had as predicted an increased risk of shark attack. Antipredator adaptations such as the flocking of birds, herding of sheep, and schooling of fish. Similarly, Adelie penguins wait to jump into the water until a large enough group has assembled, reducing each individual's risk of seal predation. - [Safety in numbers (Wikipedia)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_in_numbers)
>
>
>
[Answer]
## The monster attacks aren't as bad as you think
In the real world, some cities have high crime rates. Some get bombarded by rockets every couple of months. Earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and fires cause massive loss of life and destruction of property. But the thing is, most disasters are small, and big ones are infrequent. For most people, life goes on.
The life of a firefighter is full of fires, the life of a police officer full of crimes, the life of a superhero full of villains. If we are focusing exclusively on their escapades, we might question how people can continue living in such a dangerous world and pretending things are normal - but when you run the numbers, the occasional monster or supervillain attack is barely a blip on the radar. Car accidents continue to be the main source of death in the modern world, and yet people continue to drive.
A Kaiju-scale threat might be a big deal, but a bi-annual event *worldwide* isn't much more common than the occasional city-wrecking natural disaster that occurs in the real world. Also, Kaiju probably do a lot less damage than, say, hurricanes because a superhero can stop them before they get very far.
[Answer]
**CITIES ARE A PAPER TIGER:**
You need to look at the psychology of monsters to understand why they keep attacking cities. Do they like smashing buildings? Do they want to kill people? Disrupt industry? WHY are monsters attacking cities?
If giant monsters are behaving like movie monsters, they are not very smart as individuals, but behave as they do out of some compulsion. Maybe they are attracted to toxic waste. Maybe aliens are sending them to smash human cities as a prelude to invasion. You need to understand this, but ultimately it doesn't matter as much as that people know why and us it to their advantage. Our disposable culture finally comes in handy.
**Cities are lures to suck in giant monsters and keep them occupied while heroes and militaries martial their forces.** All vital functions of a city have been moved to an extensive warren of underground bunkers and tunnels. Everyone might have a "good times" apartment or office with stuff they don't care about, but everything important is in the fortified basement. Transportation is by subway or airplane. The surface is disposable.
On the surface, the cities are big and impressive, but the rate of spontaneous failure has skyrocketed. They simply don't build buildings on the surface to last. Everything resembles a warehouse, and all the historical buildings are gone, replaced with the architectural equivalent of paper mache.
Functionally, this is much like many major cities during WW2. Politicians promise to rebuild, and get to look good. The military is all for it, as the monsters attack the worthless cities instead of the fortified factories in bunkers out in the middle of Kansas. Heroes don't need to worry about collateral damage. The rich have country villas far from trouble, and the poor have subsidized housing to make cities attractive. Bunkers make it reasonably safe. It's not ideal, but hey, there are giant attacking monsters. What are you going to do?
Parts of this answer were touched on by LinkBerest, so I'm giving some credit, but I thought mine was sufficiently different.
] |
[Question]
[
Lets assume we are dealing with a futuristic setting set several thousand years in the future with major galactic empires controlling thousands of systems and producing all sort of things that we can only dream of as easily as we can produce nails. This includes all sorts of Dyson spheres and super advanced FTL space ships.
This of course includes manipulating metals at a level far surpassing our own. Or maybe discovering all sorts of crazy elements or exotic materials and stuff of dreams, or nightmares...
**Let's assume that an ambitious engineer or someone who owns a sun is bored and asks his people if he can use the sun as a weapon.**
What does that even mean? Either by breaking parts of it off and throwing it at something, or making it explode or go supernova. (I guess, ok I'm bad at science.)
It is probably insanely impractical and the resources needed would be too high and will pose a danger to the system and it might have no value.
*But this is a question of could it be done, not should it be done*
This project is a question of the possibility. We are not worried about anything else.
The answer should rely on some sort of scientific or speculative science basis: up-scaling what we have or modifying certain elements or materials or expanding our current knowledge but with a clear connection to actual science.
I don't want complete fiction like: drop two tons of element *contrivium* and enjoy your desired effect.
And if it can't be done then please explain why.
[Answer]
Weaponizing a star might not be as implausible as you imagine.
First, we have the "tried and tested" method of luring your opponents close enough to a star so that they cannot escape it's gravitational pull. Then just let nature do its work. However, this might not be the weaponization you are looking for.
But I am going to try and answer your actual suggestions here:
**"Either by breaking parts of it as throwing it at something."**
This could prove to be tricky. Stars are mostly made of super-hot materials in a fluid/gaseous state, all bound together by huge amounts of gravity. It's not like you could just scoop a chunk off the surface of the sun - imagine it like trying to scoop some helium out of a balloon with a spoon that is quickly melting.
It's not impossible however. If you have something with a greater amount of gravity (like a black hole), parts of the star will be slowly siphoned off into the black hole. You could collect parts of the star during this siphoning. It should be noted that if you have tech to bring a black hole to a star, you may as well just throw the black hole at your target as it will do far more damage.
**"Or making it explode or go supernova"**
Now we are talking, this could be done. Stars go supernova when they have too much matter, so providing that you have enough matter you could achieve this. We're talking a lot of matter however, possibly in the range of several million Earth-sized planets would be needed to make the star go supernova. Or maybe another star would do, throw one star at another and then boom.
**Moving Stars**
But if we can move stars, then that could be weaponization enough for you.
Being able to move a star has several interesting features for a would-be weaponsmith. Not only can you throw the star at your target, simply moving a star slightly would effect the orbits and climates of all it's planets. It could be possible to render a world completely uninhabitable by giving its host star enough of a nudge.
The biggest downside to moving stars is that their gravity is so huge that, even if your tech levels were so advanced that moving a star was trivial, the movement of the star would be detectable from anywhere relatively nearby (if Alpha Centauri moved significantly, for example, we'd be able to detect that from Earth with today's tech). It wouldn't be a stealth operation, and your enemy would no doubt have time to react and respond.
**Deathrays**
Stars output a lot of energy, huge amounts. You could capitalize on this and position a spacestation near a star and have it collect as much energy as it could. The spacestation could then use this energy to power some kind of deathray to eliminate the enemy.
This spacestation could take many forms, from something resembling the Icarus II from the film Sunshine, all the way up to Dyson Spheres.
To destroy the Earth, you need somewhere around 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy. The sun’s luminosity generates about 380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules a second, so if you could collect all the suns energy for just over 3 days you'd have enough to deathstar the hell of out the Earth and reduce it to rubble.
This is probably the most practical method of weaponizing a star, unless of course you have super advanced technology, and you could play around with Neutron Stars...
**Neutron Stars**
Everything mentioned before this has been assuming you are talking about most stars in the spectral range. But if we are talking Neutron Stars and we have technology so advanced it could be considered magic, then we have some new options for weaponization.
Neutron stars are the remnants of of a star after it has gone supernova - it's effectively the remaining core of a star and they are super dense and have insane amounts of gravitational pull.
Imagine a ball about 10 kilometres big that has considerably more mass than our Sun. That's a neutron star.
Moving or manipulating a neutron star would be bordering on the impossible, but supposing we could do something with it, throwing a neutron star at a planet could potentially end up taking out the entire solar system.
**Returning to "breaking parts of it as throwing it at something."**
To return to one of your suggestions, neutron stars are incredibly dense, and scooping a bit off them is suddenly way more feasible than scooping bits off a gaseous/fluid star. Dropping a part of a neutron star the size of a football at a planet would definitely wipe out all life on that planet (and the planet might get vapourized in the process).
Just bear in mind that scooping parts off a neutron star would be virtually impossible, and require such ridiculous amounts of energy that it simply becomes inefficient. Effectively you'd already have enough energy to vaporize several planets, so why then bother scooping bits off a neutron star?
You could have this football sized chunk of neutron star left behind by some super advanced but now extinct race - as the tech levels required to do this is far beyond anything we could currently imagine. Or at least, anything I can imagine.
Personally, I'd go with the deathrays shot from an orbital spacestation approach, as this would give you a reusable weapon that would be very efficient. But unfortunately this might not be as dramatic as what you were originally after, if that's the case go for the neutron-star-football left behind by some long dead aliens. But be prepared to deal with how something with such an insane gravitational pull could be moved/stored and used as a weapon (this is almost worth another question all of it's own).
[Answer]
[**Matrioshka Brain**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain)
Nobody said a weapon had to be a gun you fired or a bomb you exploded. Knowledge is a kind of weapon all its own.
A human brain draws about twenty watts of power, and nature came up with that by mashing cells together until something survived. So it's clearly possible to develop a computer at *least* as energy-efficient as that, even if the human brain is somehow the most energy-efficient thought-generator in the universe and your approximation of it is just to replicate it with silicon instead of meat jelly.
You've got a Dyson sphere's worth of power (~ 3.8 x 1026 watts for a Sunlike star) and presumably future-grade heat sinks, information processing systems, and support infrastructure. This means you can bring to bear a *minimum* of *septillions* of brains' worth of raw thought off of your star.
---
Model a conflict before it even begins, and deduce exactly how to act in order to win it with the least material resources expended on the part of the galactic empire. Use your sun as an *economic* weapon, ensuring you win the cost war before your enemy tries to win a gun war.
Come up with an idea so compelling, a psyop so thought-consuming, that humans cannot resist its power over their minds. Deploy a *memetic* weapon against your enemy, tailor-made to convince them all to surrender, to kill themselves in shame, whatever suits your purposes.
A Matrioshka Brain is the ultimate *cyber*weapon. Set your computers up on pinging duty and conduct the greatest DDOS the universe has ever known. Bring your enemy's networks crashing down, destroy their ability to coordinate and communicate, and mopping them up is easy. Or design the perfect hack, infiltrate and shut everything down as stealthy as a legion of legions of legions of legions of minds can think up.
Harness your *ideatic* weapon; spearhead your technology forward a billion years all at once. Test every new concept of physics that the population of an entire galaxy of inhabited worlds would be able to think up.
*This* is how you use a sun to win a war.
[Answer]
This can definitely be done if you can build a Dyson Sphere. Imagine you have built a Dyson Sphere. Then a war breaks out between you and a neighboring solar system. If you open your Dyson sphere on the side towards your enemy, most of your sun's energy will be focused in that direction like a deathray. This is called a [Nicoll-Dyson Beam or Laser](https://controllingsociety.blogspot.com/2020/03/skhadov-thrusters-and-nicoll-dyson-beams.html)
Here is a [good video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjtFnWh53z0) explaining the Nicoll-Dyson Beam.
[Answer]
Ramming Speed!
No, seriously.
If you can build Dyson spheres, then you have everything you need to MOVE your star.
Just put a ring around it, run a significant electric current around your ring. The produces magnetic field causes your star to preferentially jet its corona material at the poles, producing asymmetric thrust.
Your star (with ring) is now a slightly slow, clumsy, but HUGE battering ram.
[Answer]
At least according to legend, **the sun has already been weaponized, and what's more, in the distant past**. It's well known that focusing enough of the light of the sun on a small enough point will cause it to burst into flames.
<http://www.hellenicaworld.com/Greece/Science/en/Mirrors.html>
It has been proven that this CAN work, although it remains controversial whether it actually DID work.
There's no reason your future society couldn't use a version of this. Just put some lenses or mirrors in space, and focus all that light on a target. The easiest target would be something relatively small on a planet in the local solar system, but in theory, this could also work at longer distances. Of course they'd have to have unbelievable accuracy for distance work, but this is SF, right?
[Answer]
Of course! There are lots of ways to do that, here are several:
* Stellar Engines
* Supernova
* Nicoll Dyson beams
* Stellar Lifters
* Mirrors
* Blackhole bombs
* Ascending Toposophic Levels
* Tippler Cylinder
## Build a Stellar Engine
Move your star to a more strategic location, or cause problems by moving it in unhelpful ways.
Kursgesazt has [a video about stellar engines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU), here's several possible designs:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JzaBx.jpg)
This is assuming you can't just apply the FTL technology your universe has to the star. Many scifi novels talk of entire planets being moved through hyperspace junctions etc, but stellar engine theory is based in our own universes physics.
The shield version is called a Shkadov thruster and works by reflecting the stars output in one direction to generate net thrust
A faster version would be the caplan thruster, which uses a stellar lifter to gain mass for a giant fusion rocket and a secondary bumb to push the star forwards
### Gravitational Perturbation
Move your star through the viscinity of populated enemy systems so that orbits are perturbed and catastrophe ensues.
If your FTL allows it, move the entire star into the system on top of the targets, then move it elsewhere after a short while.
Here's a graphic from a Kursgesazt video demonstrating a red dwarf displacing asteroid orbits to cause bombardment:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8oaLk.jpg)
### Ramming Speed
You could also ram the target, though if the target is another star this would destroy your setup
## Supernova
You can blow up the star if it's large enough and destroy all life within a significant range, if not planets themselves.
Here's Romulus being destroyed by the Hobus star supernova in Star Trek:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EjDYn.jpg)
Planets further afield can be devastated by radiation alone
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rBCv7.jpg)
Here is an enlightening question on this stack that asks [how to artificially trigger a supernova](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/117319/can-i-trigger-supernova-artificially).
If your star is a white dwarf you can dump a large amount of fusable hydrogen on to its surface to trigger a type Ia supernova ( the target will need to exceed 1.4 solar masses ).
Alternatively, adding non-fusable mass to a star so that it exceed its [Chandrasekhar limit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrasekhar_limit). Moving a large amount of iron into the stars core may do this. As would elements that are beyond the stars ability to fuse such as other heavier elements.
## Nicoll Dyson Beams
Partially enclose the sun and focus its output into a Nicoll-Dyson Beam or Laser, and aim at the target:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bx5Hm.jpg)
* <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjtFnWh53z0>
Any large dyson swarm that's reflective enough can be repurposed for this use, becoming a phased array emitter.
Keep in mind though that the construction of a Nicoll Dyson weapon will be very apparent to neighbouring systems.
Most scifi Nicoll Dyson weapons combine a wormhole to allow fast targeting and pinpoint destruction of smaller objects such as planets and fleets. However in a real life setting one would point the output at a starsystem and everything within it would be razed after several years of transit time, assuming it is within range. Beyond 100 light year ( likely less ), the beam will have diverged enough that it can no longer cause enough damage, though still visible
## Build a stellar lifter
You could do this to get materials and build huge numbers of automated weapons
>
> Star lifting is any of several hypothetical processes by which a sufficiently advanced civilization (specifically, one of Kardashev-II or higher) could remove a substantial portion of a star's matter which can then be re-purposed, while possibly optimizing the star's energy output and lifespan at the same time. The term appears to have been coined by David Criswell.
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_lifting>
This has the added benefit of increasing the lifespan of the star.
There are several methods of doing this but the simplest method is to build a dyson swarm of mirrors and target the reflections on an area of the star to induce heating and thus emission.
## Mirrors
Even without all that technology, large arrays of mirrors act as a superweapon of sorts, such a weapon could be achievable within the next 100 years, and already fries birds in solar concentrator generators.
In Gundam MS such a weapon was built to get around treaties by the federation and named the Solar Flare system:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/YWcFk.jpg)
[See Ep35 glory of solomon](https://gundam.fandom.com/wiki/The_Glory_of_Solomon)
## Blackhole Bombs
Compress the star down to blackhole size and use it to create a blackhole bomb
>
> A black hole bomb is the name given to a physical effect utilizing how a bosonic field impinging on a rotating black hole can be amplified through superradiant scattering. If the amplified field is reflected back towards the black hole, the amplification can be repeated, leading to a run-away growth of the field, i.e. an explosion. One way this reflection could be realized in nature is if the bosonic field has mass. The mass of the field can then cause the amplified modes to be trapped around the black hole, leading to an endless cycle of self-amplification. The mechanism by which the black hole bomb functions is called superradiant instability. It can also refer to one such method of creating such a runaway effect, a Penrose sphere with no means for energy to passively escape.
>
>
>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_bomb>
## Ascend the Sophonce Scale and reach higher Toposophic levels
Currently you are but a mere human, with human level intelligence, how small and boring.
A star has a lot of computing potential, we can build various forms superstructure to ascend the toposophic scale, starting with a singularity level intelligence at S-1, then repurposing more of the stars output to reach S-2 and beyond.
A matrioshka brain is one method of doing this.
The orions arm project has [a primer on toposophic levels](https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4b9f2a844034a) here, as well as several theoretical mechanisms for doing so
## Tippler Cylinders
Take your star and compress it into a hollow cylinder 10km long, then spin it as fast as you can around its longitudinal axis. This should produce powerful frame dragging effects.
If such a cylinder appeared to have an infinite length, or if negative energy was provided, then ships following a spiral trajectory could follow closed timelike curves at sub-light speeds to travel into the past.
[Answer]
**Blast 'em through a wormhole!**
If there are galactic empires then you have faster-than-light travel. Let's suppose FTL is done by using wormholes. You now have the most devastating weapon at your disposal. Open one end of the wormhole facing a city you want to destroy. Open the other end in or near to the local sun. Watch as radiation and hot plasma pour out and vaporise everything for miles around.
[Answer]
It's not just possible, I think it's almost certain.
If there is an interstellar civilization, it's extremely likely that they already have something akin to a Dyson sphere. Simply because the Sun is, by a very large margin, the most abundant source of energy in the solar system, and you don't build an interstellar civilization without a lot of power.
Having obtained many orders of magnitude more energy than we have now, it really doesn't matter that much what kind of weapon you create. Just find some way to point all that solar energy at the thing you want to go away, and it'll probably work.
If you redirect only 1% of the energy of the Sun, it's still like exploding more than 1.000.000.000 Hiroshima bombs per second. You can try fancy stuff, but a bunch of lasers, or a relitivistic railgun is good enough, anything else is just gravy.
[Answer]
There are a variety ways a sufficiently advanced society could weaponize a star.
## 1. Harness the Star for a Superweapon
A society this advanced could easily harness the star's energy and mass using a [Dyson Sphere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere) or similar structure to fuel a superweapon. This is likely the simplest and most practical way to weaponize a star. Stars possess such unfathomably large amounts of mass and energy that their applications seem bound only to imagination. Each second, our Sun outputs more energy than all of our nuclear weapons combined.
Possible uses include:
* **Focusing the energy into a powerful energy weapon**, like Starkiller Base from *Star Wars: Force Awakens*. Unlike the weapon in the movie, a star has enough energy and mass that such a weapon wouldn't need to destroy the star unless the device harnessing the star has an extremely inefficient conversion rate. Most proposed implementations of a Dyson Sphere are just a really big network of efficient solar panels and wouldn't actually harm the star. Focusing that energy into a powerful beam-like weapon could easily destroy civilizations and possibly planets. However, it would likely be more efficient to do so by incinerating an enemy planet's atmosphere or causing mass extinction climate change, instead of reducing a planet to dust.
* **[Transporting a portion of the star's mass to a planet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ldO87Pprc&list=PL808BC8B06434819C&index=285).** Even a tiny piece of a star can create an explosion powerful enough to overshadow even the mightiest of nuclear weapons and bring about the end of all civilization on a planet. A larger piece could incinerate the atmosphere or outright annihilate the planet entirely.
* **[Trigger a super solar storm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHHSSJDJ4oo)**, using the technology to direct a powerful solar flare to wipe out all electronics on an enemy planet
* **Fuel a doomsday device**. Self-explanatory. Harnessing the power of a sun for any weapon of death and destruction.
## 2. Shoot the Star
Using a [stellar engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine), an advanced civilization can move the star and literally throw it at an enemy planet system.
This sounds fantastical, but this is actually quite feasible for a civilization with the technology to build a Dyson Sphere. A number of stellar engine designs have been proposed in peer-reviewed journals. The [Caplan Thruster](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576519312457), for example, uses relatively tiny portions of the star's mass to fuel an engine that pushes the star using a beam of oxygen-14. Pushing the star would also have the effect of causing all of its orbiting bodies to move along with it with little adverse effect.
The real limitation of weaponizing a star with a stellar engine is distance and speed to the target. Solar systems are usually very far away from each other. Even if we had a stellar engine that could push our Sun at the speed of light, it would take more than 4 years for our Sun to reach Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring solar system. So either the civilization would need FTL technology or be waging slow/patient wars against neighboring systems that last hundreds or thousands of years.
The damage a "star missile" could cause would be unfathomably devastating, especially as it also throws any other celestial body that orbits it. Even if none of the bodies directly collide with the bodies of another solar system, the weaponized star's gravity would utterly disrupt the target system. Fry celestial bodies. Fly-by kidnap planets or shove them out of orbit. Combine the star into a binary system or cause the suns to collide and explode. Numerous things can happen and none of them would be good for the victim.
## 3. Sabotage the Star
Another way to weaponize a star is sabotage a target system's sun or use it against them. You could harness the star for a weapon (like in #1) or kill/destroy the star. Probably the most efficient way to kill a star is to artificially age it. This can be accomplished by either adding an enormous amount of mass to it or by exhausting its fuel supply. Doing this would cause the star to progress to a red giant/supergiant and eventually to a nebula or supernova or neutron star. This would effectively destroy almost any civilization in entire solar system.
At a glance, this *seems* like one of the easiest and obvious ways to weaponize a star. However, even a very advanced civilization would encounter a lot of obstacles. Stars are *massive* and have a huge amount of fuel and energy. It would take an enormous amount of technology to transport enough mass and gas enough to prematurely kill a star. A Dyson Sphere might be a technological wonder, but it's essentially just a really big network of solar panels. Transporting its gas and mass would take significantly more effort.
[Answer]
The idea of using solar output to power an epic-scale beam weapon has been used in science fiction. In the 1941 novel *Second-Stage Lensman* by E. E. "Doc" Smith, some sort of handwavy technology was set up on various asteroids, and the technology caused some large amount of solar energy to focus into a beam. This awesome weapon was called the "Sunbeam". According to Wikipedia, the amount was 100% so I guess the sun would appear to go dark when this weapon was used? In the climax of the book, a large invasion fleet comes to attack the Earth, and the Sunbeam destroys the ships easily.
The biggest objection to this one is the handwavy technology. I have no idea how the "Sunbeam" was supposed to work.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Stage_Lensmen>
The next paragraph has major spoilers for plot from the John Ringo book series *Troy Rising*. Read on only if you don't mind the spoilers.
In the *Troy Rising* series, Earth was contacted by sentient beings from other solar systems. One group decided to declare themselves the new rulers of Earth and Earth didn't really have any ability to resist. One clever guy got rich selling things to aliens and used his money to set up an asteroid mining operation in space; this used the old idea of reflecting sunlight from large mirrors to focus it on ore to melt it. IIRC, the new rulers permitted this as they expected to tax the income from mining and get fabulously rich. After a staggering initial investment the asteroid mining operation became self-bootstrapping and it built more and more of the mining mirrors. Once there were enough mirrors to have a reasonable chance of success, he activated a computer program that used all the mirrors together as a weapon: instead of focusing on ore to melt metals out, they would focus on a ship that was putting the Earth in danger. With enough mirrors focusing enough sunlight on a single ship, that ship would immediately melt and/or explode. This is an example of the idea that anything that can move large amounts of energy around can be used as a weapon.
This one is totally plausible. A bunch of giant reflectors that can be steered to focus sunlight on a target? Doesn't even require any new science, just some large-scale space engineering that seems possible. The hardest part would be scoring hits on ships at distances of millions of kilometres while the ships could be moving at rather high speeds.
[Answer]
In Larry Niven's *Ringworld*, the ring and shadow squares -- much less than a full Dyson Sphere, though still an unreasonably large construction -- were able to use EM fields to cause a solar flare and to cause the plasma in that flare to lase. In the book this then disabled the spacecraft.
This happened directly in the substance of the sun, unlike the Nicoll-Dyson laser mentioned in other answers, where energy is first collected and used to power separately built laser machinery.
[Answer]
The most plausible way I can think of is to develop nanotechnology that could replicate itself, harvest resources in space and the use those resources to build a giant lens. Then control systems could be added to that lens to position it however the operator chooses. That could then be used to burn the unfortunate target on the planet
[Answer]
Countless generations of kids have weaponised the sun, either with a mirror- to the annoyance of anybody glancing in their direction, or with a magnifying glass- to the terminal displeasure of the neighbourhood ants.
[Answer]
Since the technology to conquer galaxies, we can assume that they have enough power and resources to move stellar objects, then what needs to be done is to create a solar system with as much mass and energy as possible. This includes giant planets, multiple asteroid rings, and a neutron star(s) or a black hole(s). This wouldn't take (relatively) much energy, as you would need only to move the central body, making the rest of the system follow along. Depending on the size of the system being thrown, it may cause planetary damage to the target, temporary and destructive change to orbit paths, definitive changes to the central body of the target system, potentially disrupting the entirety of the target.
[Answer]
Actually, really simple. If you want to blow up the sun, all you need to do is make it so that the Dyson Sphere aims the sunlight back at the sun. This causes the sun to expand because of a huge output of heat pressure and basically puts way too much energy into a small space, compromising the structural integrity of the sphere, which will break apart in an artificial supernova. Unfortunately, your Dyson Sphere will definitely need to be solid and it is a one time use. Plus, this is not a short and easy method. You will need to estimate when it should blow up. But if you can get past that, you now have a working time bomb. Simple.
[Answer]
“... This includes manipulating metals at a level far surpassing our own.”
While the Sun is 98% hydrogen and helium, it also contains lithium, beryllium, boron, iron, nickel, calcium, sodium, and magnesium.
2% might not sound like much, but if you wanted to mine the elements to use those parts of the Sun for warfare, you would have something bigger and purer than a planet to draw off of as a resource.
(Source: Astronomy.com, solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov )
[Answer]
I remember reading in [Death's End](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25451264-death-s-end), one of the Three Body Problem books by Cixin Liu, of another way to weaponise a star. Stop reading if you want to avoid **SPOILERS**.
In the book, this is called a "photoid", which is basically a rock launched towards a star at nearly the speed of light. The enormous kinetic energy makes the object quite massive. I remembered its effect in one way, but a quick internet search to brush up suggests a different effect.
* When the photoid hits the star, it will travel deep (due to the mass and speed). The "crater" left behind will take some moments to close, and this short span of time exposes the sun's core to the outside universe for a brief moment. Given the core of the sun is (IIRC) 15 millions degrees Kelvin, the light escaping from it through the crater would be extremely powerful, both in terms of raw wattage and in terms of the energy of the average photon (which would be in the X-rays, again IIRC).
* [This summary I found](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheThreeBodyProblem) says:
>
> Dark forest strikes usually do this by shooting a star with a "photoid," which is essentially just a rock...fired at speeds just under the speed of light, so that its relativistic mass is a fraction of the star's mass. The impact literally blows the star open, spewing its contents onto surrounding planets before the star ultimately collapses.
>
>
>
* [This other summary](https://www.bookstldr.com/book/deaths_end) says that a photoid is:
>
> a small piece of matter moving so close to light speed that it causes the star to go supernova on impact.
>
>
>
I remember finding it a pretty cool idea while reading the book.
] |
[Question]
[
Let's assume post-scarcity in this case means everyone, regardless of income or employment status, has unlimited access to food (or bio-engineered food substitutes), a place to live, means of transportation, and information services like television, the internet and maybe even virtual reality. In an environment like this, would it even still be possible for aristocracy to exist or for the rich to oppress and exploit the poor?
Money still exists in a post-scarcity society, but it's not strictly necessary (at least not for survival), and possessing it is no longer a motivating factor. How would those with access to all they need to survive plus a small excess margin of various luxury items make life difficult for people in the lower class when their basic needs are all already met?
[Answer]
# There's no such thing as a post-scarcity society
Even if you have completely free energy and Star Trek-style replicators that get around any sort of precious metals limitations, some things will still be scarce. For example, living space. If you're confined to Earth, it only has a finite amount of space. OK, maybe the population is low enough that everyone can have a mansion as large as they want. Or maybe houses come in standard HabCubes so that everyone has exactly the same living space.
But what about desirable locations? No matter what you do, only so many people can live at the top floor of a high rise building. Only so many HabCubes can fit on the beaches of Hawaii where you can look out your back porch and see volcanoes and see dolphins frolicking from the front door.
How do you determine who gets the prime real estate? Money.
## Artificial Scarcity
One way is by manufacturing artificial scarcity. This already exists in today's technology, in the form of digital rights management (DRM). For example, many public libraries now have ebook "lending" sites. Have you ever tried to download one? They have a limited number of "copies" of a given book that they are allowed to lend at a time. Of course this is all nonsense, as a new copy is created every time you download it. Now this is done so that publishers can monetize the work, so in a true post-scarcity society this would probably go away. But there is always motivation in the human spirit to one-up your neighbors, so manufacturing some sort of artificial scarcity seems very likely.
## But
So you can't get away from equality completely. The question is, once you've closed the gap between rich and poor so much that you really have to look close to see the difference, will human nature still resent that small difference, and seek to rise up against "oppression"? History I would say suggests yes. Even though the *wealth* disparity between rich and poor is currently mind-bogglingly vast, the difference in *quality of life* is certainly less than say the middle ages.
# Let's pretend anyway
Let's assume as a commenter noted (why can't I see the comments while editing my question???), that you have such infinite resources that you can make new Hawaiis. You can make new planets. Everyone can literally have any material thing they desire. Is there still some way for some members of society to be ahead?
One thing that will never be infinite is human attention span. Who are the trend-setters, the famous? Fame tends to come and go unlike wealth which accumulates, but the mega-famous are pretty good at banking on their existing fame to increase their status. These will continue to be an elite class of people, envied by many of the masses (though some of us still can't understand today's desire to be famous for it's own sake, but I digress). It's hard to imagine "I'm famous and you're not" being a form of oppression though.
What about healthcare? But why would anyone ever be a doctor if everything is free? So maybe we've got medical nanobots too. I think once we're so far beyond our technology that we're basically talking about a magic society here.
Unless our technology has granted us perfect insight into human behavior, we still need some sort of police force for those individuals like serial killers. But why would anyone ever want to be a police officer? Hmm, maybe we can do it by robots. But then someone who knows how to program those robots can do whatever they want. Otherwise, those individuals willing to inflict physical harm on other people as a power trip, even though they gain nothing material from it, will be the new ruling class. And we've gone full circle back to "might makes right".
[Answer]
What you are describing is essentially the world in [Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom](https://scribl.com/books/P56E4/down-and-out-in-the-magic-kingdom), by Corey Doctorow.
>
> Jules is a young man, barely a century old. He's lived long enough to
> see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages
> and compose three symphonies…and to realize his boyhood dream of
> taking up residence in Disney World.
>
>
>
Since there was little scarcity of resources, society shifted (back?) to a [Gift Economy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy). What you wanted was *status* (measured in "[Whuffie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whuffie)"), which could go up and down like the stock market if you happened to be doing something public enough. There was a class of whuffie-less have-nots who just lived their lives and minded their business, and then at the top ranks people who were competing for status (and some willing to kill for it...)
In this society, if you have more status than another person, and see them with a luxury you (as a person judged to be doing more important stuff) could make better use of, you can just take it. That's viewed as legitimate. So the high-status people had all the nice cars and apartments, and the low status people (while having all survival needs taken care of) were forced to live in relative squalor.
Extrapolating to some stuff that isn't in the book... it seems to me that if you visibly belong to some prejudiced group (eg: wrong amount or kind of melanin in the skin), that may very well ... color ... how all your actions are perceived enough to make gathering reputation much more difficult for you. Money may be the root of all evil and whatnot, but at least its colorblind.
[Answer]
# Sure
Money will still matter. There will be people who are satisfied with the material goods of their post-scarcity welfare package. Perhaps they are concentrating on non-material goals, like being the best kung fu fighter in town, in the state, on the continent. Perhaps they are couch potatoes.
But others will want more. Genuine 50-year-old wine. A flat with a view on central park. A front row seat at the Oscars. As long as there is a market, these things will be priced beyond the reach of the welfare recipients -- the supply is limited and prices will rise until supply matches demand. So they will have to *work* to earn money, or *invest savings* to earn money.
And obviously some of the couch potatoes will resent that the rich investors get that beachfront summer home, or the invitation to the charity ball. Class is **not just** about having money. It is about who you know, who will invite you to their parties, who would be willing date you or marry you. In the future, it could be a question of having friends on social networks, or being whitelisted by people's spam filters.
So there could be different social groups. Think of the stereotypical high school society -- there are the [jocks](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DumbJock), the [nerds](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Nerd), the [valley girls](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ValleyGirl). Each of the groups might have a leadership core and circles of hangers-on who are desperate to **belong**. And then there are those who are not in any "in" group. They might want a revolution which puts *them* on top, because of their knowledge and faith in revolutionary ideology.
[Answer]
Yes.
Once I saw a documentary on Lemurs in Madagascar, I believe from the BBC Nature series. These particular lemurs lived in the fruit trees, and there was enough food that they didn't even need to get up in the morning; just stretch their hand out and there was breakfast.
But, after breakfast was over, they went into the neighboring valley to wage war with the rival tribe. Both tribes had plenty of food, and the edge of the valley made a fairly unambiguous divider of territory so there was no practical reason to go to war, other than out of boredom.
Discrimination is also a factor. It is a terrible example to use, but in 2014 some 'yobs' painted a seagull with red paint, and it was subsequently bullied and discriminated against by the other seagulls for being different.
[Seagull faces bullying](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2731690/Seagull-spray-painted-red-cruel-yobs-faces-lifetime-bullying-birds-released-wild.html "Seagull faces bullying")
I've tried to use animal examples of natural, as opposed to human discrimination, but it is likely that factors such as gender, weight, height, etc. would also lead to inequality, regardless of how plentiful the staples of life are.
[Answer]
it's no post-scarcity if money still exists. Money is useless in a world that value and quantity have no meaning. Supply and demand would be only in terms of logistics. If you have unrestricted access to resources, you'll have no need to overstock with anything.
In my opinion, if you just tamper with the goods, the environment and the technology you can't expect to change the status quo. The problem today is not the scarcity, it's the society. There are more than enough resources and technology to live in a utopic-like society. The problem is that 99% of the wealth is property of less than 1%. Today's scarcity is artificially man-made.
If we don't evolve socially no amount of resources or technology will ever be enough. The humans will need to start thinking as species in order to survive. Most of us still think as retarded medieval peasants, we just want the best for us and fuck the world. No species can get far with this archaic mentality. We just have 40.000 years old, we are like a nanosecond even for the history of our planet. We can't afford to make the mistake of thinking that we're the civilization that last the longest or that we are the most evolved.
The first mistake most people make when they try to imagine societies in the past or the future, is that they look and think these situations with a present point of view.
When you are doing this kind of mental exercises you can't just assume that the social contracts, ethics and morals were or will be the same as now. You need to rethink that society from the very fundamentals.
Hope it helps.
[Answer]
Who gets to go to the moon? Who gets to choose who gets to go?
By 'Post scarcity' you seem to mean easy living, but for the imaginable future there will still be scarcity of something. This leads to politics and economics just with reduced stakes. ie losers need to wait a week to get on a rocket instead of starving.
Often post scarcity means humans don't have to work, which means traditional oppressing and exploiting is not really viable. But if there is anything like democracy or top 10 charts getting bunches of people to do what you want is still valuable, so new tools need to be made.
Tools for post scarcity 'oppression' might be as tame as unfriending or saying they all ought to do whatever from a popular media stream. When nobody ever actually gets hit with a stick or stone the value of words might become more relevant. Explicit social status could allow inequity and its conflicts to persist about as long as humans are social.
[Answer]
I'm going to latch onto the virtual reality bit in your question and run with it in order to provide what seems to be the one answer that suggests a post-scarcity society is both completely possible *and* easily free of inequality.
Let's assume a Matrix-like setting: perfect, indefinite VR in a universe where you wouldn't want to spend much time in the real world anyway because it's pretty much destroyed. No evil AI overlords, though - instead, everyone gets their own private virtual world limited only by their imagination. Unbiased automated systems still take care of the inescapable limitations of our physical bodies - delivering nutrients, processing waste, etc. - but reality as far as we're concerned is literally whatever we want it to be.
Assuming the technology and infrastructure exist, there's no scarcity because reality as we perceive it is unlimited. And if AI is sophisticated enough to provide intelligent and pleasurable companionship, then we don't even need to interact with other humans. No interaction between humans means there's no way for us to pick out what differences remain and bicker over them.
True, it's likely that inequality will occur between humans and their AI companions. However, if that counts then I'd argue you're not actually at the point of zero scarcity anyway. This, I think, is because as long as multiple wills depending on the same resources and empowered with equal rights are allowed to interact there will always be something to fight over. So if you can come to terms with the idea that sophisticated AI characters being treated as unequal to their human creators is normal and sustainable, then inequality involving AI doesn't need to count.
[Answer]
**Yes: the prettiest girl/handsomest boy is always in short supply.**
The one they choose has more of them; so much for your egalitarian society.
After you have secured your mate, the focus shifts to your children, but it's the same fight.
Advantages that can be traded are wealth. Wealth quantified is money. Wealth that you can give to your kids is class. Beauty is oppression! Desire is slavery! (Pause for my inhaler.)
A truly egalitarian society would be much stranger than "everyone has food and stuff".
[Answer]
**YES**
In fact, inequalities will be more pronounced because all environmental factors will have been removed from the equation.
You can see this in the world right now. Societies which level the playing field and open it up for everyone find that to be the case.
In such a society as you propose, people would pursue their interests freely, not being limited by needing to earn a living from them. Some would naturally be more talented than others and would excel in those fields.
Then there's that nasty human tendency towards greed, summed up best in the movie ***Key Largo*** "I want **MORE**" Some will be driven to acquire more, some will be content with what they have, which will make inequality **GREATER** because there will not be a universal motivation to improve one's conditions.
**Edited to add from comments:**
Want's and needs are two things. Just because you have everything you need, there will still be things you **WANT** You could be fed a basic diet, housed in an apartment with cinderblock walls and construction, but would rather live in a house by the lake and go fishing because you want to eat the fish you catch yourself.
While needs are fairly universal. (Food, shelter, clothing, medicine) wants are not. I may want a yacht where you may not. You may want a house where I'd be happy in an apartment. Needs may be fairly equal, but wants are not.
[Answer]
Yes.
Just because things aren't scarce, doesn't mean that they are free. If nothing else, you have transportation costs (including labor).
Also, can everyone have as big of a house as they want?
Some people value the trappings of power. They will manipulate the system to maintain that power. That builds in a class/caste system. Remember that you have to get to any future society. You have to consider how the current power structure will evolve into that post-scarcity society.
If everything can be automated, a show of wealth would be to have human maids/butlers. Fancy restaurants will have human waiters.
[Answer]
It depends on your definition of post-scarcity. If there is unlimited resources in the long term only (i.e. no possibility of complete consumption of a resource), then stratification must be possible as there will only be a finite amount available at the moment. Hell, you could make a good book out of a society where everyone has an unlimited amount of all but one resource, and that resource is what determines your social standing. But if everyone has an unlimited amount of everything then you could argue there is no stratification, at least based on material ownership. This would also mean that money doesn't exist, as there would be no reason for anyone to buy or sell anything because they already own everything. Likely in such a society stratification would be derived from a different source; perhaps a genetic trait (skin color, height, etc.), or status gained from lineage likely based from pre-scarcity status, or something more vague like "honor" accrued by a person's actions over their lifetime.
But post-scarcity will never exist. Not without a severe decline in human population coupled with no drop in worldwide production. There just aren't any resources with unlimited supply.
You can loosen the definition of a post-scarcity society to mean there exists enough of all resources for all people to survive in relative comfort, though the supply of these resources is not unlimited. If you look at it this way, clearly the U.S. (and likely the whole world) is a post-scarcity society. The amount of food, space, clothing, and all other resources is more than enough to provide for the 7 billion+ humans alive today. However this is not the reality, as many resources are used by people who don't need to use them and even more is wasted without being fully used.
[Answer]
Aristocracy = Form of government which places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class. It's contrasted with democracy or monarchy.
Post-scarcity society = I take it here, that you mean, that all usual needs are more of less fullfilled (and guaranteed). Materially, all inhabitants of your world, are equipped very similar. (Otherwise there would be some scarcity.)
This means, there is no tangible privileged class really. There cannot be. If nothing is scarce, everyone can have everything.
What government will this society have and why? You didn't say anything about it. Will it be a democracy? Or a tyranny? Or what will be it be? Will there be wars maybe? What about nations?
From the definitions above you see that aristocracy is a form of government and post-scarcity is a technological, resource, infrastructure thing. Both seems to be pretty independent from each other.
My guess: People will still favor certain other people based on family ties, appearance (color of skin for example), manner of speaking, ... and depending on the political system this will results in different groups which even in a democracy would fight against each other. The majority party could oppress the minority. One way (the most direct) to oppress someone might be to threaten to kill him if he disobeys.
Or does post-scarcity mean that you cannot kill anyone?
[Answer]
Yes....if your question is set in a world like Earth with humans having the current in-born biological "survival of the fittest" drive in action.
If this biological drive cannot be met by individuals competing for basic resources to live, then the wonderfully imaginative and resourceful human mind will look for other ways to express and satisfy this drive. See all other answers for excellent examples of ways to express this need to compete, and also consider these:
"I have everything I could possibly want?"
Ok, then, let's create The Voice, The Nobel Peace Prize, and a way to gain reputation by presenting excellent ideas to discuss new worlds on the Worldbuilding SE!
No....if your question is set in a world where the humans(?) do not have this in-born survival of the fittest drive in their genetics. Perhaps it didn't evolve over centuries due to there never being any scarcity to start with that would naturally select this trait to be expressed so forcefully. Perhaps the humans are all connected telepathically and there is instead an overwhelming drive for all to instantly respond to any individual that is suffering some kind of lack or pain and do whatever they can until this is alleviated.
Whatever the reason that drive is not there, in that world they might try their hardest to imagine a world where they are constantly challenged by lack of resources, and post the Worldbuiling SE question...."Could equality and community still exist in an individuality-first scarcity society?"
The right answer will depend entirely on what kind of people are in the world being considered for the question.
[Answer]
Use author Ken McLeod's test of your society by asking his question: **Who cleans the toilets?**
Basically, think of some vital but low status and onerous/unpleasant task which must be done to keep the society ticking over. If you have magical self-cleaning toilets and self-running sewage systems (done by robots or whatever), and every single other boring/unpleasant/dangerous job is also 'magicked' out of existence, there is no need to exploit/coerce/pay other people to do them.
If however people still need to clean toilets/gut chickens/mine asbestos, there will be folk who insist that they are too pretty and too special to do it themselves and who will want others do those jobs for them.
[Answer]
Without a more precise description of the society you’re depicting I’d have to say the question can be answered with both yes and no.
Just to clarify my understanding of the setting of your described world:
1. Food, housing, transportation and information services are made
available for every human individual to consume without the need for
anything in return
2. Money exists but is not a motivating factor when people make
decisions
For 1) to be valid the means of production are likely entirely mechanised and roboticised. If every human did nothing the goods and services would still be made available. This demands that non-humans produce the – to some extent even highly technological – goods and services.
With 2) – and here is where things get really interesting – it has been made quite clear that the goods and services supplied are of high quality. Paying money for higher quality goods and services than the ones supplied for free is not something any one would do. In fact, 2) is stated irrespective of 1) which would allow it to apply to a wider range of goods and services, and indeed challenge our view of value and what’s important in life.
**Society’s structure**
For 1) to have developed from contemporary society, I can see three ways for that to have come to pass.
* A highly advanced, compassionate, irrepressible entity has come
from outer space and started producing the listed goods and services. This is leaning more towards fantasy-fiction.
* New technology for material production has become so accessible that every
household has gotten its own omni-manufacturing unit with an unending power supply,
but society has been left very similar to what it is today. This is not a very plausible scenario as the development would throw the market into copmlete disarray.
* The technological advancement in material production has required an
intricate web of infrastructure and cooperation across the planet,
and has happened gradually over time, allowing other institutions to develop
alongside it.
Additionally, 1) severely restricts the presence of organised physical force. If 1) is to be truly valid, no one should be able to systematically prevent anyone else from accessing the listed goods and services.
**The concept of class**
According to the Weberian school, class in a broader sense is derived from three sources: wealth, status and power.
*Wealth*
Assuming some form of private property is still a thing, the influence attributed to owners of means of production (capitalists) would be somewhat diminished by 1) in general, and by 2) in particular. Money is central for a capitalist because of its universally translatable value. Yet, money seems so inflated by 2) that any capitalist unable to produce every part or link or module in a production chain with their accumulated capital is rather powerless because the money they would (if they even could) pile for selling these parts would not be enough to buy any missing one. A capitalist’s role as someone to deeply envy or as an oppressor therefore seems unlikely.
*Status*
Through status one can have influence by being someone people trust or look up to. However, it can be considered volatile and inconsistent. What someone might find awe-inspiring someone else might detest. Trends might swing and the source of the status deplete. The person who holds the status is ultimately reliant on other people to maintain their influence.
*Power*
Through power one can be in a position where a decision or action has consequences beyond the ordinary. Power is derived from being responsible for a certain task and is just like status tied to that exterior something. Someone might through their position be able to shut down a power station or create new laws which would allow them to exert influence. However, their power is derived from their position. To stay, one would have to do so through sheer force (yet not enough to also be able to disrupt 1)) or by being irreplaceable – being the only one who can perform the required task for instance.
**Oppressive high class aristocracy**
An aristocracy is a form of government where a few privileged individuals decide upon a political agenda to rule their subjects. Such a government would theoretically be possible in your setting, however its existence might be slightly difficult to motivate. I am going to assume the aristocracy is powerless to have the conditions of 1) discontinued (otherwise there can hardly be unlimited abundance). And any form of government is reliant on its ability to enforce its political decisions. This means the aristocracy is weak enough to be unable to change the means of production yet strong enough to keep a vast majority of well fed and housed, mobile and informed throng of oppressed and exploited citizens in check. Autonomous, indestructible, kind-hearted, one minded super-robot workers and a heavily militarised/influential, power hungry, psychopathic elite? I don’t know…
The other option I suppose would be that high end technology capable of producing the goods and services listed is so easily accessible that no matter what the aristocracy did, the populace could still feed, house, transport and inform themselves. I fail to see how there could be any problems whatsoever in such a world.
All in all, an oppressive aristocracy coupled with 1) and 2) seems quite far-fetched.
**Sufficient for class struggle**
Aristocracy or not, there is still the prospect of inequality and a flamboyant, resourceful clique as a motor for class conflict. In my interpretation of this fictitious society economic gain is not a motivating factor and physical violence is not an available tool within the eventual class struggle. This leaves status and non-physical power as both means and end. Those with the highest class would then be famous people with important duties, maybe charismatic and reputable politicians or influential mega star artists. Such positions alone might be so sought after that acquiring or maintaining them would bring about class strife. Remember however that everyone’s survival is guaranteed as well as some luxury. No one seemingly has to work but the responsibilities of a politician might be hefty, and the attention a mega star receives might be intolerable. The politician would have to work more than non-politician and the artist would have to deal with things like heavy media attention or millions of mobile admirers with loads of time on their hands.
On top of this there are two important consequences of 1) and 2) which will add to the speculative nature of this question: free time and the view of value.
*Free time*
If everyone’s basic needs and wants are guaranteed, no one would be required to work. This means that people would have an unprecedented amount of free time on their hands. Actually, I fail to see how it would ever have been seen or available for study in the history of mankind, especially not in a wide sense. Imagine the amount of self-fulfilment billions of people could embark upon and all that it would entail. Its effect on class might be noticeable as well. The upper class, the famous and powerful, would have to work hard to maintain their position or they would be replaced whereas the lower class could live and love and thrive without any input in the form of work. It seems to me that the lower class would live the “good life”, a life without struggle, with security, with freedom; a satisfying, happy, easy life. To me it sounds then as if power and fame are punishments or necessary evils which everyone would try to get out of.
*Value*
Lastly there is the deeper implication of 2) “possessing [money] is no longer a motivating factor”, that money – a universally translatable medium of exchange and store of value – exists but has no or very little value. The accepted medium of value has very little value. Objective value no longer exists. So almost nothing is sold. Or bought. The implications of this are almost breath-taking. And, to be frank, makes the discussion above largely irrelevant. It would mean that status and power or whatever else desirable can’t be bought. For this to be true a radical shift in human behaviour must have taken place. I am uncertain if this was the OP’s intention but it would be rather decisive.
**Conclusion**
Highly sentient beings will likely always be able to make decisions and take action of questionable ethical nature. However, in an environment where every individual’s survival, relative freedom and social recreation is guaranteed and where society has been severely de-monetised powerful oppressive forces would find it difficult to exist, and even if they did it should not take long for them to be phased out.
[Answer]
There certainly can be inequality and class warfare even in a post-scarcity society. The general reason that this is true is that scarcity is not the only source of such conflict (neither does scarcity ensure this type of conflict: some poor people are very peaceful, some rich people are very violent).
As was pointed out by T.E.D in an earlier answer you can still have people competing for status (and this seems to be a very real motivation, not just the stuff of fiction). So if there is a struggle for status, and if people differ in their abilities to attain status then you can have inequality. If it is possible for those who are better at attaining status to band together then you can have class warfare.
Here is an example of how this might work: It is possible that a society that is secure in terms of resources may begin to place an even higher emphasis on various artistic ventures. Art may be so important that a person's value in society is strongly tied to their artistic talent (whatever this art may be). If we posit that artistic ability is partly heritable, and if art is so important to status that it affects success (lets say that men and women in this society prefer to marry and mate with talented artists), then artistic talent will tend to pool into families.
If these families are constantly marrying between each other (because the talented artists want to marry other talented artists) then you have a condition conducive to creating an elite class.
To summarize:
It is possible to have inequality and class struggle in a post-scarcity society if members of that society compete for "status" and if the ability to compete for status is partly heritable.
As others have pointed out this competition for status in humans is almost certainly a result of biological evolution. The rationale being that status is correlated with scarce resources that are correlated with health and success. The tragedy is that even when resources are not scarce our mental hardware still inclines us to that type of competition (see for example How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker for more about evolution and psychology).
] |
[Question]
[
In my setting you can revive people from the dead as long as the brain is intact, though you have to remove all their organs and replace them with a suitable alternative Egyptian mummy style.
The Technology level is late Bronze Age - early Iron age roughly. Think Ancient Assyria/Persia/Greece where they use Bronze for some things like armor and Iron for most everything else. For now just assume no other magic exists. Most armies in the setting use 'supply depots' à la the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
Whilst they're dead though you can whisper commands into their brain and when revived they will follow that command.
If you don't do this however, they just come back normal with some memories deleted.
They can also feel what killed them for the rest of the time they exist and they will continue to exist until something kills them. Example: you stabbed them in the heart, and when they get revived, it feels like a dagger is embedded inside them even when there isn't and there's nothing they can do about it.
They're not any more fragile than normal humans other than the fact they can't heal from injuries and can't feel any physical pain whatsoever besides whatever killed them (still emotional pain though, since that's mostly mental health stuff) and in some ways are more resilient (don't have to breathe, don't have to consume things, can't bleed)
So my question is, why would the powers of this world ever need to use human soldiers that might mutiny and have needs like breathing and eating over undead people?
[Answer]
The undead make TERRIBLE soldiers.
If you give them commands, they will obey them mechanically, even when it produces disaster. Direct one to bring in water, and it floods the house. Direct one to set a fire, and it burns down the city.
If you don't, they are in pain. They would not obey YOU, you are the source of their pains, and it's very likely they will attack the source of their pain. If not, they will want to die, from the pain. A belief that the undead are unnatural would also inspire them to die as quickly as possible.
[Answer]
from OP:
>
> (still emotional pain though, since that's mostly mental health stuff)
>
>
>
**The mental state of soldiers is key to victory.**
The undead are in a very bad place, mentally. They have lost everything they had - they cannot go back to their families because they have become monsters and they cannot hope for some normal life after the war. They hurt, all the time, and physical pain adds to mental anguish. They are not concerned about being punished for disobeying. They cannot be hurt any more than they already are, and they have nothing left to take.
The original Robocop did some things well and this aspect was one of them. The Robocop has been brought back from the dead via technology. In one scene he sees his wife and child. He can remember what he used to be, but they do not recognize that.
War is bad enough for human soldiers, who can sustain their mental state with whatever inner strength or hope or faith or support they might have. Your undead have lost nearly all of that. Those who are motivated by patriotism will soldier on. Some few find strength in the company of their kind. The rest of the undead soldiers routinely commit suicide within a week of being raised. Are you going to raise them again?
[Answer]
**They Spook The Horses**
Horses and most other large quadrupeds (camels, donkey's etc) don't like being around corpses. What's more in this setting, they REALLY don't like being around walking corpses. Maybe the necromantic magic spooks them, maybe they can just sense the unnaturalness of a mummy wandering around. Either way, an army with too many undead in it cannot keep horses or other beasts of burden close enough to camp to be useful to the army. Cavalry is out (if it's been invented yet) chariots are out, oxen to pull supply wagons are out. Because if the things smell/sense the undead they break all restraints and bolt.
Sure they also spook the enemy's horses, but the downsides of lacking your own don't make up for it. (The enemy is more mobile, has better scouts, and has better logistics even if your all-undead force mitigates their cavalry/chariotry in actual battle.)
Don't overlook the logistics. Even with "supply bases" moving an ancient army was TOUGH. Especially for offensive warfare when you'd obviously be operating away from your own supply bases. Undead might be great for fortresses (can't be starved out, simple commands suffice for guarding fixed positions) but in open warfare an army without them is going to have the advantage.
An undead army such as you describe still needs a logistics train. They don't eat, which is a big bonus. But they also still need replacement weapons, spare ammunition for slings/arrows, potentially siege equipment, and all the food and usual supplies for whatever humans are in charge of them. Without horses/oxen/camels they're carring all that crap themselves. Which is terrible because it puts more wear & tear on the corpses. The army might start off quicker than a "human" one (they can march farther due to not needing breaks for food/sleep) but they quickly slow down as knees blow out, joints degrade, muscles shred themselves apart etc etc etc. So most armies use human or majority-human troops in most circumstances, and use undead forces as small formations of "gimmick" troops to protect against enemy cavalry in the field, and for guarding specific strategic chokepoints within the kingdom during defensive wars.
As another aside, there may also be a strong religious component to not wanting a ton of these guys roaming around. If they feel what killed them, people are gonna be MAD if you turn their relative into undead infantry. "My father constantly feels the pain of his death instead of experiencing his peaceful/blissful afterlife like he SHOULD BE DOING RIGHT NOW." Having a bunch of these guys would be a sure-fire way to make most of the populous hate you.
[Answer]
## A semi-scientific approach : Undeads don't last long
**You said that undead individuals cannot heal their injuries. The thing is, the healing process in living beings is done constantly, at micro-and larger scales.** Indeed, a lot of cells die in our body every second and new ones are created. Only a few things remain intact over the lifespan of an human.
Now, **undeads are mummified to slow down the decaying process, but the thing is, mummies are actually quite fragile, especially if you send them in mud and dirt, taking sword hits from their enemies**. All of these misfortune events will lead to open or wet tissues, a good fertile ground for all sorts of parasites and bacterias which will devour the body from the inside.
**Even if they manage to survive the battle, you'll have to thoroughly disinfect and knit back all the damage done, which would require almost as much mummy handlers as you have injured undead soldiers.** Because unlike some humans, any scratch done won't repair themselves -even partially-. And since undead cannot feel pain, you'll have to do a full check-up yourself, because you can't simply ask "where is your pain?".
Note that being able to feel the cause of death in your body will surely feel mentally distressful at best, and like when you have that nasty itch you can't get rid of, you'll feel the need to scratch it, removing any protective ointment you'd have there.
Not taking account any kind of muscle atrophy and rigor mortis they'll have by being mummified, **I think you'll get a single usage soldier who'll last a good 2-3 weeks and with regular maintenance**, which is very short for a medieval military campaign.
[Answer]
**A dying man is not a good soldier.**
I have no firsthand experience, but I imagine dying can be rather traumatic and painful, particularly if you're in a violent period of ancient warfare and limited medical science. The knife in the chest that killed you likely hurt a *lot*, to the point where you couldn't focus on much else. Every single member of your undead army must experience the pain of their own death at all times, vastly diminishing morale and combat effectiveness - they mostly just scream and writhe around in pain, waiting for the sweet release of death that will never come.
A dying man is not a good soldier, and you have an army made entirely of men who are moments from death (or at least that's how it feels to them). At the start of any battle, all of your soldiers are *already* mortally wounded!
[Answer]
In general, the "don't need to eat" part makes undead vastly superior. The hardest part of war, especially in a medieval setting, is generally logistics.
Therefore, undead need a major flaw to justify not using them for everything.
### Idea 1: magic
There is a special kind of magic that is very efficient against undead in certain situations, and doesn't affect the living.
* Maybe holy magic.
* Maybe interfering with the revival spells allows a caster to disable undead.
* Or reverse the idea: maybe some spells that are extremely useful for war (healing magic? reinforcement magic?) just cannot be used on undead
### Idea 2: they are costly
Undead are just too costly to create to make an army out of them. And when they're broken you cannot revive them anymore.
* corpses in too bad a state cannot be used (you can make undead out of them, but they are basically useless in combat), so you have to procure good corpses (you cannot just pick them up on the battlefield)
* the undead-making process requires a powerful caster, expensive ingredients, and a lot of time
So the use of undead is almost exclusively reviving extremely powerful individuals / making chimeras out of different body parts, because that's the only thing that justifies the cost. There is a market of powerful dead bodies.
### Idea 3: they have a short (un)life expectancy
Since undead don't heal, the accumulate wear. Every small bruise will stay, and with time, they accumulate. Their body wears down, unable to repair itself, until it becomes unusable. And in the rough environment of battle / military camp, it can be fast. That back problem caused by sleeping on the floor never heals. Worse, since they don't even notice it, they don't try to mitigate it, so it worsens.
This reinforces the fact that undead are expensive, since you have to replace them frequently
[Answer]
## **Moral/Ethical/Cultural reasons**
The act of reviving dead people is considered immoral by the society. Families would not feel comfortable with reviving a relative to send them to war, specially if their relative is going to be both brainwashed and feeling constant pain of whatever they were killed by.
Using this as one of your restrictions, whoever is recruiting undead would have to work with bodies of people that:
* Actively declared that they would want to be revived as a soldier. (No brainwashing would be needed)
* Do not have anyone close to them, like family or friends, that would be against their revival.
This makes an army of **only** undead soldiers too small to be used. Maybe a mixture of both human and undead would be the best, depending on whatever operation. Also this would mean that the human soldiers could keep in check any undead that was revived without being brainwashed.
This answer considers that whoever is making this army, cares about the morality of what they are doing.
[Answer]
**Humans are far superior to undead**
To take a freely inspired line from Star Wars. Humans can think more creatively than undead. They can respond quickly to unexpected outcomes or situations. They more easily can reevaluate a plan, or set a new goal when a previous has finished or is no longer valid/should receive less priority. They also aren't distracted by pain or memories. They can fight with more vigor and are more likely to engage in self protecting behaviors, giving them more chance to survive.
They are also the only ones that can procreate. Although you can then use the dying people for the undead army, they do seem to cost much more than a human. A human can add their worth to the economy at all times and the parents carry most of the upbringing costs. The undead require a lot of upfront costs from the government. The same can be said for humans with training, but undead soldiers might need the same and possibly more.
Most likely they will get one or a pair (redundancy) of humans with every squad of undead. Still, their seeming high upfront cost and utter reliance on commands is a big weakness. The large scale can be compared to a non-autonomous robot fighting a boxer, where you need to quickly give new orders to the robot with every move of the boxer. Reactions are slow, uninspired and basic. Not to mention that they might be taken over by the opponent if they somehow can budge in and start whispering in the ears.
To make properly use of an army of undead, you'll probably only revive already trained people that can rely on earlier training, together with humans close by to give them orders.
[Answer]
**Limit the number of your magicians... for reasons.**
A line in your question (*Whilst they're dead though you can whisper commands into their brain and when revived they will follow that command*) made me wonder this...
How many magicians have the ability to create your version of the undead? It creates a problem if you have five magicians in a given Empire, but they need to create an army of 5000 asap. That would be 1000 undead for each magician, and that's got to be taxing, even if the magic is easy to do.
But all "believable" magic systems have a price to pay of some kind, so what would be the price to pay if you had to create that many undead? High I would imagine.
So what would make living soldiers preferable to the undead, given the undead's advantages? The magicians to create them are **A**) hard to find because so few have been taught this awful dark magic, **B**) the spell to create each undead takes a while; you cant just do a blanket spell to create an entire army all at once, and **C**) so few magicians have been taught this kind of magic because its very taxing on the magicians themselves.
Taxing how? Maybe it steals some life force from the magicians? Maybe it takes time off their lives? Maybe they get terrible wounds all over their bodies when they do the spell? You'll come up with something.
(*Why would a magician ever want to do this? Power? Glory? Money? They were seduced/coerced somehow? Again, your call.*)
So maybe, your undead are better as smaller special ops type groups, or even as assassins, rather than entire armies. Just a thought.
[Answer]
I'm assuming a best-case scenario and only undead that died a nigh on painless death are recruited.
In warfare we have this idea of masses of people dying all the time. A single slash across a steal plate armor and somehow that person is dead almost instantly!
The truth is that most fights there are very few directly dead, even if you are on the losing side. Most will die of disease and infection after a battle rather than during the battle. Pre miss Nightingale\* this could be more than 10x the number that died on the battlefield or from their wounds directly afterwards.
At this point you say "ah but my undead can't die from infections! So they would be superior!". But the key here is that the undead cannot heal. If your medieval people have their own Nightingale who teaches them antiseptics and hygiene the death toll of disease can go down and many soldiers can become healthy enough to fight or go home and do jobs.
Your undead will keep all wounds. They will not succumb to disease and infection but they will not improve their condition either. That means that every battle you increase the pool of undead who become increasingly useless to your empire. Why would you rule an empire of undead with slashed bodies if you could let those undead do the farming, supplies and other jobs required to keep an army going? In the passed entire armies were disbanded for periods of time to make sure those people could help with harvests, then re-enlisted/conscripted later on. Your undead are the most valuable workforce you can have to support your living. Use them as such!
\*<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale>
[Answer]
**Life force obeys all applicable natural laws of conservation:**
1. It is **finite**: Life force is the essence of each living being, and can only be created naturally, through procreation.
2. It must come from **somewhere**: The spell is impossible to activate without the input of life force.
3. It must come from other **living** beings: There's no way to produce life force from machines, agricultural sources, natural forces, or anything except other living beings. It also cannot be obtained from someone who is already dying, or who is fatally wounded (unless that's how the ritual works).
4. It functions only on a 1:1, **all-or-nothing** basis: Another living being must perish in order to raise a dead being. It is not possible for groups to sacrifice partial life force in order to raise one being from the dead.
5. It is strongly typed to **specific species**: Only human life force is compatible with raising humans from the dead. Only elephant life force is compatible with raising elephants from the dead. Only frog life force is compatible with raising frogs, and so on. Any substitution of other life force produces disastrous results.
The natural laws of conservation introduce the element of scarcity or finitude, and reduce the number of times undead soldiers can be raised. There's no way to raise an army of one million undead without taking one million other lives. The greater the size of an undead army, the greater the waste of life from others, be they farmers, miners, craftspeople, babies, or any other group.
Thus, if a ruler wishs to create an undead army, it comes at a significant moral and ethical cost. It requires a ruler or general to commit (or to sign, or obey orders for) some kind of atrocity that will not go unnoticed, even among their own kinsfolk or countrymen, or other allies.
[Answer]
The way you've describe your undead, I imagine that many (if not all) would be *extremely* resentful over having been reanimated: constant pain and disfigurement, unable to enjoy the pleasures of life, etc. Because of that, you have the "djinn in a bottle" problem: a mean-spirited supernatural being who will follow your orders technically, grudgingly, and to the letter, but will happily muck things up as it suits his mood or sardonic sense of humor, just to make your life miserable. If you're lucky you reanimate someone who really dislikes your current enemy, and is happy to fight them for a while because it's what he wants to do (but what happens when he gets sick of doing it?). If you're unlucky, you reanimate someone and tell him to go kill the enemy, and he instantly turns and tries to lop *your* head off because you didn't specify *whose* enemy he should kill.
Human armies run on loyalty and pride. Living humans love people and things; they want to protect them, and show how valorous they are in the process. That makes them dedicated and reliable. An army of resentful, malcontent undead might make good cannon fodder, but they have no reason to be loyal to your cause.
[Answer]
**Only a few undead soldiers can keep their sanity for an extended period of time**
You state this:
>
> They can also feel what killed them for the rest of the time they
> exist and they will continue to exist until something kills them.
> Example: you stabbed them in the heart, and when they get revived, it
> feels like a dagger is embedded inside them even when there isn't and
> there's nothing they can do about it.
>
>
>
This means that your undead soldiers are constantly in pain and are forced to relive the moment of their death every moment of their undead existence. Chronic pain is a very debilitating condition that leads to a number of [negative](https://www.pathways.health/chronic-pain-long-term-effects-on-the-brain-and-body-explained/) [symptoms](https://www.neura.edu.au/news/new-discovery-how-chronic-pain-changes-your-brain-and-personality/). [Anxiety](https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(16)30182-3/fulltext) and [depression](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674370805300403) are some of the most frequent ones. Untreated chronic pain will also trigger detrimental changes in the brain that will lead to lower combat prowess due to lower control over the body and reduced cognitive capacity.
A constant reminder of the event that led to one's death, especially if death is unnatural, would also have a negative effect on mental health and increase the likelihood of PTSD-type disorders.
Your world does not have the knowledge and technology to deal with chronic pain and mental disorders. And even if it had it would be economically non-viable to keep an army of undead that need to be in psychological/psychiatric treatment in addition to daily medications.
Perhaps, some of your undead managed to live to a ripe old age while keeping their wits about them and being rather healthy. They might've died peacefully and do not suffer from any pain. However, these will be the minority due to the technological limitations of your world. I am not sure how your revival magic works, but if it does not bring people back in their prime condition, old people would not make could soldiers due to the limitations of their age. You can, probably, train them for non-combatant positions, though.
[Answer]
# [The Undead don't know when to hold 'em, don't know when to fold 'em, don't know when to walk way, and don't know when to run](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gambler_(song)).
Human soldiers fleeing a battlefield is usually not a good idea, but there are situations where it might be useful for your human soldiers to flee a battlefield and let a commander know when a situation has changed dramatically not in their favor.
Take, for example, sending some troops across a mountain range, over a plains biome, and across a bridge to try and attack a force on the opposite side (i.e. a city territory, a set military barracks, etc.).
The other side might setup a few troops on their side of the bridge as scouts, and when the Undead start to cross it, allow them to, in part - and then destroy the bridge.
The Undead on the other side of the bridge might then try to walk across or use undead bodies as a bridge to cross over, but they could be susceptible to [Greek fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire) in the river between the bridge, or just being pelted with arrows as they attempt to do that.
While a set of scouts try to also take on the undead that have successfully crossed the bridge, or just let the much smaller force *try* to take on the barracks or city. If they allow 10 Undead at a time to try and attack the barracks, it doesn't matter if you send 100 or 10000 Undead soldiers - 10 Undead at a time is presumably manageable for the opposing army, barring them automatically resurrecting on the site as they die.
If this was a human force of soldiers in the same situation, the soldiers crossing the bridge before it was destroyed may respond to the destroyed bridge by surrendering, or fleeing to the mountains, while the side that hasn't yet crossed the bridge may provide covering fire for them or begin fleeing themselves, perhaps back across the path to the commander to report on what happened. They may also setup camp outside of the river area while sending a smaller scouting party back to ask for reinforcements or bridge building capabilities, or additional orders. If they encountered the Greek fire and had no existing knowledge of it before, they would also want to relay that back.
Similarly, if they encountered Greek fire while on ships, humans would understand that not only are their lives important to get back, but so are the ships that were built - especially if it was followed up by catapults throwing rocks at them to try and sink them. Some orders are given with a bad understanding of the situation.
Additionally, you can give a human force - especially a human commander - enough information about their task that they might catch on to information that indicates that the information higher command has is incorrect, or a possible trap, and update them as necessary. For example, if you send them to take on a large group of the enemy army force to keep them away from a castle you're planning to siege, and they show up and find only 90 soldiers holding up the outpost instead of the 900 you thought were going to be there, a human commander might fight the 90 soldiers quickly, but also send a messenger back to alert their high commanders that their information is presumably out of date; there's a discrepancy in the force they were told to attack and the force that was there. Useful information if you have a mole in your team providing false information.
Finally, humans will likely retreat if they feel that the enemy army is starting to encircle them, or attempt to force them into a worse situation. The Undead may still want to fight the enemy force, because that was the order they were given, and they may not have gone to war with the enemy force if they weren't compelled to anyways.
# Furthermore, the Undead have no inclination to prevent the enemy forces from killing them and resurrecting them against you.
If your Undead fail to successfully defeat the enemy and instead get themselves routed, then now the enemy has a full group of soldiers they can resurrect and send back against you. As a bonus, they're already equipped with all the equipment they really need.
You did equip the Undead with armor and weapons, right?
Your human soldiers, upon realizing they may be in a losing fight, and that they may be resurrected as Undead, and may deliberately either flee to make it harder for them to be resurrected, or get themselves stuck under crushing buildings or rocks, or deliberately try and break and destroy their lances, swords, and bows, such that they can't be used against their allies. At the minimum, they can start denting their weapons on purpose. Not ideal, but they can try and avoid giving an advantage to the enemy - maybe they cut off their sword arm just before dying, or their legs, or both legs and arms in a final act of defiance.
[Answer]
**They cause unrest**
In ancient times, empires often relied on expanding into new lands(usually by force) to keep their coffers in the black. Another answer has mentioned your own people objecting to the practice of raising the dead; unsurprisingly so, given mankind's longstanding views and taboos regarding the dead. In your own core territories, this a less of an issue since there you have a much stronger ability to influence people's views. But what about people in the newly annexed frontier? Dissent engendered by the presence of undead soldiers there can cause a very costly problem.
**They can't multiply**
After your armies have carved out a swathe of land for your Necropotamian Empire, you naturally want to hold on to the land. Emperors often rewarded soldiers who fought and bled(figure of speech when undead are involved, I know) for the empire with tracts of land parcelled out from the new frontier. This is one prong of a greater strategy to bring these new lands fully into the empire through ties of blood, culture, and trade. But if your troops are undead, they can't go forth and multiply. They'd lack the necessary apparatus.
[Answer]
**"Whilst they're dead though you can whisper commands into their brain and when revived they will follow that command"**
This makes it troublesome to field an army of the dead in a fluid situation such as war. Let's say you've raised an army of undead and whisper commanded them (prior to revival) to travel to the great plains, where there is a major battle taking place, and destroy your enemies. Since they have been whisper commanded they have an undeniable urge to do just that and they head that way, but while in route the enemy fled the plains and went to the forest. This is where the problem lies: the undead don't have the urge to go to the forest, they just mingle about the plains where their urge takes them.
Living human armies can adapt easily to the same situation and have their orders changed as needed.
**But where the dead excel**
Is during a siege. You show up with 1000 men and besiege a castle, 2 days later you have had 100 men killed yet you can still field 1000. 900 living men and now 100 undead with a stop at nothing urge to get inside the castle.
[Answer]
I like to think that they wouldn't use undead for a few reasons.
The command system might not be practical enough. For instance, a lot of warfare is strategy and even though this is early bronze age and you make us assume no other magic exist... In a world where this exists other magic would exist, we could therefor assume that most fights wouldn't even use regular soldiers to begin with since one spell could wipe a lot out if they weren't protected by some magic. So I'd assume that most battles would end up being some variation of the first world war with mages at distance throwing spells at eachother. Of course a lot of this depends on the societies work.
Another reason could be faith. Perhaps one faith believes that these undead are above other humans and thus shouldn't fight. Perhaps barbarians fight till then end and then rejoice as they get to fight again (think about how happy orks from warhammer 40k about fighting).
Society might hate these undead and think that they could only serve as miners or something like that.
In short you could use societal factors just as much as strategical factors to say that they wouldn't be very useful. However if you have a spell capable of making land mines... *whispers to corpse run in that field*
[Answer]
They use a mixture.
You'll have an officer corps. This may include undead, or even be dominated by it, with legendary generals brought back to lead people.
At the middle tier is almost all living humans. They vary from petty officers to NCO levels or privates.
At the bottom you are going to have undead conscripts. These have been whispered meta-commands to follow the orders of the middle tier living humans.
People are brought back from the dead in 4 modalities.
The top tier is your living god. Rulers who are killed in a pain-free way and brought back to rule as near immortal sovereigns. A given society could have more than one of these; they are brought back as a matter of status. These are the ones treated with expensive exotic substances to keep their body intact, possibly for centuries.
Next is the knowledge worker, the high end servant, whose death is too costly to waste. They are an expert in some subject. Possibly they are whispered words of self preservation and servitude while dead. These use a less sophisticated version of the living god model, and this is probably where the techniques used where practiced and perfected.
Under that are the citizen undead. When you die, you are brought back. Entropy is a bitch, so you decay over time, but it maybe gets you years or even decades. More expensive resurrection techniques in theory make you last longer, but maybe not. These are whispered words of loyalty and love to both the state/religion that brings them back, and to the people who pay for them to return, plus an inability to express the pain and suffering they are feeling (for marketing reasons).
Finally, the zombies. These are used as semi-disposable labor, and are whispered words that turn them into safe automatons. They use the cheapest kind of resurrection magic and preservation; they'll still be somewhat expensive, but they don't last all that long. People who cannot afford resurrection magic are recycled this way, including the already dead, as are dead slaves and convicts.
If we take this civilian use and give each undead sounding names, we have
Zombies: Automatons, basically slaves.
Ghouls: Undead citizens, brought back and paid for.
Reborn: Knowledge worker caste, often killed on purpose and brought back.
Neter: Ruler caste undead.
We can then map this back to the military. Zombies will be used, but they are disposable and stupid. Ghouls will be integrated with the common soldier, and exist in a squad or larger organization. Reborn would tend to be specialists or tacticians; your engineers who know how to build siege engines, for example. General class will be Neter.
Each of these jobs will be done with a mixture of undead and living, with the exception of zombies (who wants to arm a living slave?). If the living die, they are brought back. Foes who are killed are turned into Zombies and used in the next battle; zombies are the bulk of your losses, as they aren't very good at fighting (many are frankly suicidal, as their existence really sucks), but are better than nothing.
Note that the living troops **learn** how to fight, so when they die their undead ghouls still have the skills. A purely undead army runs into the problem that the "fresh" undead never learned how to fight, and using a slave caste to fight your battles is a good way for the slaves to take over the empire. Mixing undead with living, having the living in the command chain, reduces this problem.
As a bonus, the zombies can be used as pack mules. As they don't eat, they deal with the land-based "rocket" equation of transporting food for an army quite well.
[Answer]
**There is a lack of bodies**
Undead are good soldiers, but the problem is that it is not that easy to find good bodies to fight.
To start, the king would basically need people who died
* at a suitable age (and even in the antiquity, the death rate in the age of late teens-early thirties was still relatively low; the average lifetime of 30 years was so low because of child mortality, while the expected lifetime at 20 was more toward the 60 years)
* without a battle-impairing trauma (I think that some kinds of death, like drowning or because of fire, would impede somebody to fight effectively, if their effect can still be felt)
* not of plague/illness (the mages don't want to perform the enchantment on some potentially infective corpse)
This doesn't leave out too many options: an evil king could then decide to kill thousands of his subjects in order to have an undead army, but I don't think this would end well. He's basically creating an army of soldiers who would use whatever is left of their free will to hate him: if the "programming" during the enchantment is not all-encompassing, they would easily rebel and take revenge against the king.
The most logical option would be to fight with mortal soldiers, and resurrect the dead ones after every battle. This would mean that part of the gain of a victory would be some addictional soldiers from the enemy (provided it is possible to "program" them in a way that they couldn't rebel).
In this case, armies would still be mixed undead-human (with a growing percentage of undead as long as the campaign progresses), but I don't think there would be enough casualties to have more than half army composed by undead (probably a lot less).
This would also bring to another situation, where in order to avoid the risk to give more power to the opponent, the armies develop melee weapons that can kill a soldier in a way that doesn't allow to resurrect him (for instance destroying his head/body).
[Answer]
Depending on how the balance between biology and magic in your universe, the lack of ability to heal will be a major limiting factor in how long an undead soldier is usable.
If we assume that the undead soldier is powered by his own muscle movements (e.g. a zombie or mummy) as opposed to magic (e.g. your generic fantasy skeleton warrior), this will place a limit of the amount of activity they can perform without healing the micro-tears each action generates.
In order to contract their muscles, they need Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which can be produced from either stored fat or what they eat. Assuming you don't want your undead to starve within months, I would imagine they use some form of magic in place of their finite fat reserves- so calorie expenditure isn't an issue.
If that is the case, then the limiting factor will be the wear and tear on their muscles. Armies are required to march considerable distances with their gear to where they are needed- while living beings can repair this damage, your undead will end a march permanently weaker than when they started. As they become weaker, marches get progressively harder to the point where they waste away at the legs.
This would lead to the undead not being very well suited to being standard foot infantry, and instead being required to be transported or garrisoned close to where they are reanimated- however, assuming they don't have to move much at their post they would undoubtedly be very useful as sentries and guards.
[Answer]
## The undead are aggressively suicidal
They don't like being reanimated. **At all.** You describe them as feeling what killed them constantly which, combined with the likely scenario that the revival process itself is traumatic for them, will lead to them not wanting to live *again*, and seek any and every opportunity to return to the bliss of the afterlife (or the void of nonexistence).
They will follow your commands, but in such a way to maximize their chances of getting sufficiently damaged to nullify the revival spell. If you use them as an army for instance and tell them to attack the enemy, they will march, but then they will basically thrust themselves on the enemy swords.
This will make the undead to be largely useless without heavy supervision in any situation where getting hurt is even a remote possibility.
To not make them *completely* useless, you can have a small percentage of the undead that had a particular quirk of how they died an\or the way they thought before dying, who don't mind being resurrected and will be interested in *avoiding* being killed again. Adjust the percentage of those to suit your story needs.
] |
[Question]
[
I am writing a steampunk novel and am working on a scene where an enemy quickly overwhelms and destroys a US airship. The enemy has flying gyro sleds and a large airship of their own that is armed with rockets, air cannon and possibly electricity weapons. They need to destroy the US airship's communication and then quickly destroy the airship itself.
I am aware that during WWI, due to bullet holes leaking too slow, the Brits had trouble "shooting down" the German airships until they had incendiary ammunition but that worked because the Germans were using hydrogen. How would you all overwhelm and take down a helium airship?
Answers simply need to be plausible. I write from the H. G. Wells view point when it comes to tech.
Some specific background: Target airship is USAS Nathan Hale, a Military Airship designed primarily to fight other airships, but since Fixed wing aircraft has not been seen yet unprepared for an attack of flying Bob Sled like craft. Terrain: Over the American-Canadian border, near the St. Lawrence Seaway.
[Answer]
**Condensed Gas Bombs**
Popping holes in the gas cells won't do much. But, on the other hand, supposed you sent in a gas canister filled with a condensed heavy gas, like carbon monoxide. Put the canister in some harpoon-like projectile with catches on the side to the tip punches through the skin but the rest get caught on it, at which point the canister releases a massive amount of heavy gas, which vents out the helium and pumps in your heavy gas. The air cells are now filled with heavy gas, the helium is displaced, and the airship goes down.
*Notes on heavy gases:* I recommended carbon monoxide, as it's a bit less dense than carbon dioxide, (meaning that it displaces more helium at the same weight) but carbon dioxide can be stored as dry ice, whereas carbon monoxide can't, unless you dip below -200 Celsius, so it might be the better choice. (Credit to Logan R. Kearsley for pointing it out.) Then I did a search, and found [this](https://eugenebo.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/13-heaviest-gases/), which is a long list of fascinating suggestions of various fluoride derived gases, ending in WF6 or Tungsten Hexafluoride, all of which are highly reactive. So, maybe just something like SF6 if you want to go exotic.
[Answer]
The envelope of the airship is a red herring. As noted by other commenters, it is extremely hard to destroy because you're just hitting a giant pillow full of non-flammable nothing.
(There have been several instances in the modern era when stray aerostats have proven impossible to shoot down with 20mm cannon, rockets and missiles)
Go for the gondala. Go for the fuel tanks. Go for the ammunition. You are basically trying to down a WWII bomber: you don't try to make little holes in the wings to reduce its lift you kill the people on board and set off secondary explosions.
If you're feeling fancy, have chain shot to specifically target the attachments that keep the gondala suspended and cut it free from the envelope.
If you want to take out the communications first, your electricity weapon sounds like an excellent way of broadband jamming any radio signals.
[Answer]
You can use a method similar to what was used in the glorious time of sailing and wooden ships. Also in that case a single bullet was not enough to damage the shrouds and the sails, so the solution was to connect the cannon balls among them with a chain, shooting the so called chained balls.
When fired together the resulting bullet was much more effective at destroying the shrouds, the sail and the wooden parts needed for navigation.
In your case the chain made with cannon ball and their connection will:
* open a larger hole in the ship shell
* damage one or more gas cells
* take along any unfortunate crew member who happen to be on the trajectory
[Answer]
Large airships are made up of 'gas cells' held up within a support structure frame such that they displace more normal air than their own weight. Thus, they float.
However, they're not actually pressurized all that much, so simply punching a few holes in them doesn't do much. Adding more pressure to your lifting gas doesn't make it work any better, you need it to *displace* normal weight air for your lighter lifting gas, not stuff more of the lifting gas in so it weighs more...
If you do punch a hole in a cell, then the gas will slowly leak out and normal air will mix in, but unless you have some very big holes [or an *awful* lot of smallish bullet sized ones] that isn't a quick process. Crew members can wander around and patch holes after the fact.
---
So what do we need to do?
We can specifically target known crew spaces with heavy weapons:
* If you have some hefty cannon like weapons on your attack craft, and attack from the bow or stern to fire shot the length of the crew compartments with enough shots, then do you even need to bring the whole ship down? [If the crew is probably all dead, and there is no AI to run the airship, then is it even really an airship anymore?]
But that's not overly impressive, and runs the risk of some crew doing the ungentlemanly thing of not actually dying to the attack...
---
So what about attacking the air cells?
Simple bullets aren't that effective, but what about something more like a broadhead arrow, on steroids?
* How about "Aerial Torpedoes" - Launched weapons that are long and slender, but when their tips hit the skin of an airship large blades spring out to cut huge gashes. Some might get tangled in rigging/structure lines or frames, but a few lucky shots on several cells at once will have it sinking too quickly to recover.
* Similar attacks could be designed around slashing cables. Dragging bladed lines across the cells, possibly starting with two aircraft to wrap around, having one plane release their end so the other plane pulls a long gash.
---
If you have lightening weapons, what about 'frying the frame'? - Airship won't hold up long if you turn its light frame into puddles of liquid aluminum...
[Answer]
[Napalm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm), or a feasible technological precursor.
Wikipedia quote:
>
> *Napalm burns at the same temperature as gasoline, and for a greater duration, as well as being more easily dispersed and sticking tenaciously to its targets; these traits make it extremely effective [...] in the anti-structure [...] role.*
>
>
>
You can spread it atop the airship structure by means of boom-and-zoom flybys; dive from high altitude, release ignited payload. Now lighter, the airplane can climb back to safety in no time.
As the skin melts, falling burning debris will stick to internal layers and keep opening up cells until the fuel runs out.
The resulting wide gashes will allow helium to leak fast enough to bring the airship crashing.
In the case the enemy implement a more heat-resilient skin you can use [white phosphorus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus_munitions).
[Answer]
## Oh, we are going to crash an Airship! And make it fast! Yee!
**The Skin**
First thing you focus on with Airship is the skin, peel that away and the thing will not keep afloat.
1. Lot's of small bullets. Machine guns? Na, [gatling guns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun)!
2. Napalm, apply once, fire once!
3. Hooks on ropes, let it rip! (but silly, but why not?)
**The Innards**
A well build Airship is kind of resistant to a sudden drop off of gasses. And should not be easily set aflame. But cannon with exploding shells will do a number on it anyhow.
1. Exploding shells.
2. Incendiary shells.
3. Grape shot (hello a lot of small holes).
4. [Ball and chain shot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_shot).
**The Crew**
Simply put, bribe (a part of) the crew to set down the thing where you want. They will know catastrophic failure ways you cannot dream of.
**(Un) Balance**
(Note, not sure this will work) To be able to float in the sky, you need a fine tuned balance of being slightly lighter then the surrounding air, and to float up. And the other way around to get back to earth.
But what happens when you attach (with force) one or two auto gyro's to one end of the Airship? Unless I am mistaken, the extra weight will unbalance the whole thing and you have very little time before the whole thing plummets to its demise.
**Other Idea:**
And lastly, [Crimson Skies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimson_Skies_(video_game)) has something called [aerial torpedoes](https://crimsonskies.fandom.com/wiki/Aerial_torpedoes). Think of them like enormous rockets with way to much bang on the landing end...
[Answer]
Using this as a source: <https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/Airships>
Airships are extremely resiliant compared to most other aircraft even today. Even the hydrogen filled one's are actually hard to set on fire as you need to wait for the right hydrogen oxygen mixture. A helium filled one is even more resiliant as the outer covering of airships isnt flammable. With heat you could melt the envelope but you would at best melt a big hole for the helium to escape from but if the ship uses individual gasbags the damge is limited.
I'm assuming you are using either a ridgid or semi-ridgid airship. Rather than trying to let the gas leak out I would destroy the structural integrity. If the support structure of the gasbag breaks down then so will the airship.
So your best bet is to use canon strikes at key area's like the ring structure (if any) or whatever skeleton is required to keep the airship stable and in shape. If it loses its shape and stability it'll undoubtedly crash.
As for the radio you would have to do it seperately. A canonstrike into the radioshack? That electric weapon could electrify the area and function like a crude ECM. Cut the radio antannea, sabotage, a stealthy boarding action before the attack... its your call really.
[Answer]
Roman style ballista that was modified for crowd control/riot suppression. The ballista bolt would have a blade on each side up to 6 feet in length. Fire one of those at the lift cell batteries and you'd cut huge gaping holes in the gas bladders. Add a folding feature to the bolt such that it could increase projectile range and initial velocity and deploy the blades in flight upon proximity to target.
[Answer]
Here's an idea that I haven't seen yet. Slice the whole thing in half!
You want it to spectacularly come down quick? That will do it.
The way you could do it would be to drop a razor wire from above with heavy weights on both sides, or else fire a razor cable around the whole thing and hook it back on itself and start cinching it down. You could even have a cable that doesn't expose the razor wire at first until it is really tight, and then it breaks through it's own outer sheath at a certain pressure or maybe the razor wire also has little bombs within the sheath that explode fragments of the sheath into what it is cinched around (the balloon).
In that way they could time when they want to slice the whole thing in half remotely by setting off the charges whenever they feel like it, and the whole thing just falls apart in two pieces. That would make for some drama, especially if the heroes recognize they're being caught and have a little bit of time to try and remove the lasso or bail out before it takes them down.
[Answer]
The attackers' main advantage is surprise. Use it to maximum advantage.
Attack on a moonlit night, so your pilots and gunners can see the target.
Attack from above, so the target can perhaps see silhouettes, but cannot clearly identify or range the attackers.
Create a diversion, like a bright flare, fire, or explosion about 10-15 miles away to draw the attention of lookouts and officers while the attack group closes from above and a different direction.
The first attacking sled should use special equipment to identify and slice the radio antenna (often a wire suspended in the air forward of the rear stabilizer), then get clear to observe and control the attack. The raid commander should be in this sled.
The other attacking sleds should be divided into two groups. Both should wait until the radio is cut, then take turns attacking. Group 1 uses fragmentation grenades dropped on top to shred the gasbags from above. Their goal is at least 50 grenades on target, so they need to plan on many, many more on-hand and a bit of practice beforehand. Group 2 rakes the control cabin with machine gun fire to suppress the defenses. Again, they *alternate* attacks, controlled by the raid commander from their observation sled. The control method can be radio or flares.
Keep the dirigible in reserve, out of sight behind a cloud unless heavy artillery is needed (which means surprise has failed). One assumes it's your sled rearming/refueling and medical point, so don't expose it unless you must.
Oh, and you should plan a sled or two for rescuing downed airmen.
It will take a few minutes for the gasbags to leak enough to notice (hence the need to suppress defenses), but once buoyancy is lost, the ship will inevitably crash. Continue to attack the gasbags (and suppress defenses) to get the fall rate you desire.
Once the mission is complete, sleds depart upon a vector that gives no clue of their origin or destination.
[Answer]
Releasing the Helium would do it...
Ramming the air ship's lift cells would do it...and possibly not damage the ramming ship if it is designed properly...like galleys of old.
Naval Ram: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_ram>
[Answer]
Use a high explosive rocket. The rocket would be designed so the rocket catches on outside skin and seal the entry hole to some extent. When the rocket body catches, the warhead detaches and is fused to detonate three to five meters inside the airship. The warhead would be a shaped charge with two stages. The first stage would direct the blast in a narrow ring, and the second stage would be two cone shaped blasts perpendicular to the ring fired a fraction second after the first stage.
An ideal shot would be fired directly behind or directly in front. With luck the first blast cuts through the skin all the way around with the second blast ripping the two separate sections apart. Shrapnel could be added to aid cutting through the skin and any internal chambers.
[Answer]
The helium in the ship might not be flamable, but the diesel that feeds the electric generators and the propellers is. Incendiary ammo will do wonders if you hit a fuel pipe.
That requires finesse, and finesse is for the weak. You've got rockets. Fire them at the gondola. Once the gondola is gone the rest of the ship is just a dead balloon drifting downwards.
[Answer]
An updated version of chain shot. It looks like an ordinary large calibre bullet, but is actually made in two halves connected by steel cable. A fuse mechanism keeps the projectile together for .3 of a second after being fired, then the spin from rifling causes the two halves to pull the line tight just before it hits the target.
**Edit:** Since the activation time for the round is fixed and it has a pretty short range once the cable deploys there is going to be a narrow range of ranges at which this is effective: too close and it will be out of the other side before deploying the line, too far and drag will have slowed it down too much to do damage. Maybe the pilots have a sight akin to [the one used by the Dam Busters](https://dambustersblog.com/2008/05/14/the-bombsight-used-to-break-the-mohne-dam/) to tell them when they are at the right distance.
For added horror, consider what one of these will do to a crewmember.
[Answer]
Simple bombing should do it. Historically fighters would carry 'bomblets' (essentially aerodynamic hand grenades, which of course were time-fused not impact), but in your circumstances I would recommend a shower of small bombs like the 20-lb. Cooper bomb. Fly just above the airship from tail to nose, slightly faster than the target, and you should score several hits that send a shower of red-hot fragments throughout the structure. *Probably* this would just tear the gasbags apart and cause a controlled crashlanding, but it is not unlikely (since you are writing the story) that one bomb destroys a magazine or fuel store, or perhaps the control bridge or a vital structural part.
[Answer]
**Harpoon it and winch it down.**
One or more harpoons are deployed. Possibly these are small and the dirigible might not even know it has been hit. They might be attached stealthily. Once the ground-based winches get going, the dirigible pilot will realize they are losing altitude fast and look for a leak while jettisoning ballast. He will waste time doing that because the harpoons are directly underneath the gondola. By the time the crew figures out what is up the dirigible is on the ground and is being boarded.
Communications are disabled when the boarding party turns them off. The crew is captured alive which they appreciate. The attackers now have a mostly undamaged dirigible (and a lot of perfectly good sailors!) which will surely be useful for something later on in the story.
[Answer]
Use a fuel-air explosive, or perhaps several all on the same side of the ship. Airships tend to be rather delicate, and don't like being displaced from the side - so you set off your fuel-air bomb(s) close aboard one side of the vessel, which causes the entire vessel to bend - and hopefully to break. If you set if off close to the gondola or control room you might be able to tear the gondola completely off, and/or kill everyone inside due to shock effects. [See this YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ENL498PTK8) for an example of one in use (although not against an airship :-)
Also note that touching one of these off in mid-air will be relatively inefficient, as the force of the explosion will be expended spherically. This means either use a BIGGER bomb, or more of them.
Or you could use a tactical nuke. Or, what the heck, use the biggest dang nuke you can find, as long as you don't like anybody in the near vicinity.
[Answer]
# Fight helium with helium
Let's imagine a bullet that would pierce the envelope of the target, then explodes to release its content in fine droplet inside the said envelope.
"No point", I hear you say, "helium is not reactive and only and imaginary explosive would blow the envelope".
Yes, but the content of our bullet is liquid helium.It would then quickly vaporize inside the balloon, causing a quick drop of temperature, therefore pressure. That's more like an implosion.
The almost unarmed ship would then plummet from the skies. Possibly make a relatively soft landing as the gas heats up during the fall.
] |
[Question]
[
Imagine vast areas covered in sheets of a (preferably grey) biological waterproof material that is stuck to the rocks below it.
Humans come along at harvest time and cut these sheets into strips, peel them off together with their natural adhesive and use them for many, many purposes.
What I can't get my head around is how these waterproof sheets could evolve, grow and survive.
Can you help?
---
**Note in response to comment**
Why biology? I would like them to be alive at some point because otherwise, as a surface phenomenon, they will quickly be exhausted. I want new duck-sheets to appear each year where the harvesting took place.
**Why is it called duck tape?**
Some have queried why it is called duck-tape and not duct-tape. This is because ducks like to feed on it. There are duck wardens with trained dogs employed to keep these pesky creatures away from the valuable crops. **Edit** - but see the answer by @Chronocidal. This explains the presence of ducks more convincingly. (ducks eat snails)
[Answer]
Ok, so this is slightly on a tangent ( but I like it and you might too)
What if you had a tree (not a rock), which rather than bark which grows by adding a new concentric layer of bark each year, instead it slowly grows around the tree. Like myelin does on nerve cells.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VEEsm.jpg)
The trailing edge slowly forms into wood over time.
The DuckBark™ Tree has bark with an outer waxy side to protect it, from insects and the weather, and a sticky side which holds onto the layer underneath.
Your explorers just cut down a tree, slice it into 2 inch wide sections, and there you go duct tape on a wooden core.
[Answer]
**Barnacles.**
Barnacles make glue and stick themselves to substrate. It is serious glue.
<https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/researchers-develop-groundbreaking-process-to-study-barnacle-glue-could-save-navy-millions-300907760.html>
>
> These small but mighty crustaceans create a cement-like adhesive layer
> that is difficult to remove once applied. The adhesive layer, called
> barnacle glue, is made of proteins that have remained mysterious to
> researchers. Researchers believe identifying the proteins is the first
> step toward understanding the glue, and ultimately developing
> materials to effectively combat the glue's adhesive qualities. "If we
> can figure out how to make them not attach as well, they will be
> easier to remove or [ensure] they just won't attach," Schultzhaus
> said. "That would save the Navy a lot of money."
>
>
>
Your duct tape creature is similar to a barnacle. It lives in an area with powerful waves (or wind) that would otherwise break it loose. You want a lot of surface area so probably it is a photosynthesizer - lichen meets barnacle.
Your people prepare an extremely alkaline solution, of boiled stale urine or lye from straining water through wood ash, because the glue is pH sensitive. Rinsing the sheets with this solution loosens the glue and the sheet can come off. When neutralized with plain water the sheet gets sticky again.
If you can use the living tape in circumstances that keeps it alive, it will keep itself sticky and that is best.
[Answer]
This is the partially-dried [mucus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snail_slime) of a species of giant snail.
As snails (and, indeed, most other gastropods) travel, they exude a polymer gel mucus, which serves as a protective layer between the animal and the surface it travels. This gel ("snail slime") has qualities of both adhesives and lubricants.
Your oversized snails require a thicker layer of mucus to protect themselves. As this exposed surface dries, it forms a rubbery layer of silvery waterproof material, which is still sticky underneath. By virtue of "smoothing out" the sharp/rough terrain, this makes the area even safer for these snails to traverse in future.
This material may also have additional properties - such as providing nitrogen fixing or similar to encourage plant growth (breaking down the material), for the snails to feed on in turn. The material on the rocks, not being consumed by the plants, builds up into even thicker sheets.
[Answer]
## They're a variety of [sundew](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosera).
Sundews are a type of entirely passive carnivorous plant that rely on sticky droplets to trap and hold insects. It's not much of a stretch to imagine a version where the sticky substance only appears on one side.
[Answer]
### Spider webs
On Earth, there's a wide variety of spiders to pick from - or you can invent your own.
Tarantulas make large and dense sheets on the ground. The downide is, tarantula webs aren't particularly sticky, they're mostly for signalling. Another downside is - they want to keep those webs, and they'll let you know in a way that you might not like. The upside is, they make [even more web](https://www.thesprucepets.com/molting-tarantulas-1239522) when they're particularly vulnerable.
[There is a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7k6IdBw-Tg) of a thread that a golden orb weaver made to chill on. It can lift a hammer, even if only briefly. Those things aren't fragile. Perhaps this is what your men are harvesting - when the winter comes, old spiders are no longer able to survive, and leave their treasure behind. Your men collect the webs, layer them, add some debris on one side - such as leaves textile or paper - to make it not sticky and to add further strength...
...or better yet, they were lucky enough to find a species that likes to lay their traps on moss or lichen... or even leaves that already come in the "long stripe" form.
Coloring isn't an issue either - spiders love grey and brown. In fact - the top layer of an egg sac is a layer of coloring just for design! (Biologists call that "mimicry")
Later on the folk might even develop webtape farms - large parallel sheets of paper - one side slightly more affine to the web glue - with about 1cm gaps between them (tweak based on your choice of spiders), plus cobweb spiders, plus spider food. One year later, peel the sheets apart. The still sticky webs will remain attached to the paper. Remove eggsacs, and roll up for logistics.
[Answer]
**Nature provides**
Most of it has been said above, but here it is together.
Nature has many solutions to your problems. There are many substances that are "sticky" in one way or another. Think spidersilk, gecko feet or cleaver plants. What you need is a reason they grow strips.
The cleaver plant has many little hooks on it's outside. This is so the seeds can travel in the hairs or on the skin of other creatures, so it spreads far and wide. At the same time, they don't need their seeds to be small like many that are flying thanks to the wind. So they can make bigger seeds with lots of protection and nutrients.
Waterproofing is done as well in nature. Scientists try to find out how water lilly pads form for their great hydrophobic properties.
Finally lets look at why these strips are there so long. There are many plants that grow seeds that last for years. There is a plant that grows the seeds and only spreads them thanks to fire. If the seeds get warm they shoot out far away and start growing. But this can take years. Otherwise the gorse plant (I really hope I'm translating all these plants correctly). This one can have seeds that last up to 60 years before they start growing, making them live even after a few years that all of the plants have died.
*All together*
The plants grow grey or black strips, in which the seeds are held together with some nutrients. The strips have an adhesive side (some even both sides) so they can be taken way by other creatures. This natural adhesive stays for years. The strips are well insulated against the weather, preventing rain and other sources from entering, making a hydrophobic layer that is barely organic to prevent rot. They are strips, so that if the plant dies and they haven't been taken by a creature yet, they can still fly a bit on the wind.
They grow up each year, growing more of the strips. The strips are able to live years, so they don't lose their properties soon. Possibly the seeds can be removed from the strip so they don't destroy the strip itself.
[Answer]
Its their method of spreading seeds.
Imagine if a plant grows around a lot of species that build things, like birds that build nests and ape-likes that can create the simplest of tools. So this plant created a simple system for delivering its seeds:
It creates a strip of matter with seeds inside, similar to many bean types (1). On top of this strip it creates the duct-tape material that animals around will love to use. This material originally started as a tough, weather-resistant layer to protect the seeds against insects and would eventually split open, but the material started being used by the surrounding animals. These animals will want to get the most out of their duct-tape, so they want to take the duct-tape off when they are about to use it. This means they will take the strip containing the seeds along with them before discarding it, spreading the seeds around. This made the plant evolve itself to make the duct-tape layer as useful as possible, similar to plants that make their berries as edible as possible to ensure a bird will poop the seeds at a random location inside its living area and immediately fertalize it.
(1): <https://images.app.goo.gl/xsdHjeZ7a7Sdb9sJ8>
[Answer]
How about a moss-like hydrophobic fungus? It behaves sort like a moss in the sense that it grows in the rocks (like moss) but it is hydrophobic.
I found [this amino acid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrophobin) that is formed in molds that could do the trick. Think of it like a massive colony that sticks together and it is hydrophobic
[Answer]
**Duck tape is like *The Force***, it as a dark side and a light side and holds the universe together.
The cause is *clearly* [Midichlorians](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Midi-chlorian/Legends)
[Answer]
Originally found in the arid, wind-swept arsenic fields in the east, the ground-hugging plant evolved to produce an adhesive under-layer to prevent contact with the poisonous soil it was growing over, where growing roots would only serve to poison itself. Originally growing sporadically in the harsh environment, it has now become invasive in some areas, sticking to vast amounts of ground and choking out other competing plants. The odd gray coloration evolved because the chemicals found in its natural habitat react poorly with normal chlorophyll. The novel process evolved here is less efficient than chlorophyll, but solar energy was more than abundant in the original locations, and it's propensity to smother all other growth provides it with enough sunlight in it's invaded locations.
Alternatively, perhaps it's not a plant, but a very tough variety of fungus similar to a slime mold. It creates the lower adhesive layer, as well as a tough pliable layer on top, keeping the mold safe in the middle layer. In it's natural habitat, it "moves" around, gaining energy from other creatures that have fallen prey to the poison fields. But in it's invaded areas, there is enough organic matter below, and even from above (falling leaves, blowing debris, etc) that it can form much larger mats without dying off.
Or, even if the center layer is dead, the top and bottom layers remain.
Other creatures and plants colonize the top, in a symbiotic relationship that allows the ducks to live and build nests in an area protected by the poison fields.
[Answer]
It’s a form of slime mold. It’s evolved originally in an extremely wet environment, but as the continent moved the environment went from a rainforest to an extremely arid environment. The slime mold blooms after the rain and quickly covers the environment in a bi layered structure in order to preserve the moisture. Duck tape can only be found in areas where the ground is made of clay or stone where the water doesn’t get absorbed by the ground
It’s first layer is filled with extremely sticky and oily cells that adheres to rocky surface and absorbs moisture like crazy. The sticking is meant to deter predators, making it very difficult to peel the layer off without thumbs. There are some creatures like the desert duck with razor a razor sharp that allows them to poke a hole in the duck tape, and suck up the sweet nutrients. Of course the slime mold responds by drying out the area and forming a cement ring around the damaged skin the outer layer is a thick skin filled with many layers of dried cells, similar to our skin.
The sticky substance when dried forms a sort of cement that leaves the top layer tough. This forms a layer of an almost gel like material with a thick outer skin. The duck tape can be carefully peeled off the rocky floor and dried for a short period of time to create a drier adhesive. It must be quickly wrapped around itself in order to keep it from completely drying. However once unpeeled and stuck the polymers form a strong almost permanent seal.
The slime mold itself has a symbiotic relationship with a form of moss and is provided tons of free energy. after the rain. Very quickly a layer of moss springs up from the duct tape and uses the water to survive for a long period of time. Once it gets too dry, the moss rementants forms a seed of dried moss wrapped up in a thick layer of biofilm, and remains inactive until the rainy season starts back up. For the most part duck tape can usually survive between the rains but if it can’t it always has the ‘bacteria’ part of its life cycle
In fact the dead skin cells could actually form a water tight layer on the soil preventing water from leaking into the ground . Beneath each duck tape is a thick layer, often many feet deep of non sticky duct tape material
To Sumerize:
* a desert slime mold evolved form a thick duct tape like material to preserve moisture after rain. It forms a sticky layer of gel like material with a hard, plastically layer of dried skin. After a few days, tiny moss sprouts will picture the tape and grow out of the duck tape
* duck tape is only really usable before the moss sprouts and must be carefully peaked from the ground and allowed to dry in the sun just long enough to mostly dry up but not enough to completely dry.
* using this strategy the slime mold can survive many years between rains and if it runs out of water, the kiss dries up and the slime turns into a community of single celled organisms
Note: I realize my grammar is probably pretty off. I’m typing on my iPhone and I never expect myself to write as much as I usually do. On a iPhone this feels like a novel and spell check can be annoying. Plz forgive any grammar mistakes/spelling errors, but if it’s possible feel free to clean this up
Another side note, the idea is pretty heavily based on the anemonic sea, which you can read about here: <https://alienplanet.fandom.com/wiki/Amoebic_Sea>
No idea how to make a link on mobile but if I did know, rest assured Amniotic sea would be hyperlinked.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm developing a world where all car manufacturers must switch to producing only electric cars like Tesla, Leaf. All the other cars (gas, hybrids, whatever) will be banned. Vehicles already produced will have to be retired in 2 years, the owners will receive compensation for the remaining value of their vehicle, and the vehicles will be destroyed. There will be a financing plan for people to buy electric cars.
What would the cost for the economy be *besides* paying the owners for their used cars and enabling them to acquire other vehicle?
P.S.
I don't care about lawsuits, filibustering, protests, sentimental value of cars etc. I assume that the government could do it and people won't complain too much if they're not feeling ripped off.
[Answer]
Are you willing to let the technology mature a little more first or are you going for it now with current technology?
Right now we have a range problem, tied to an infrastructure problem. You get a few hundred miles at best then you have to stop for 24 hours.
## Infrastructure
Tesla have fast charger technology but no significant infrastructure yet. Something similar would have to be available basically everywhere there's currently a petrol station along with cafés or otherwise while the drivers sit around waiting for the car to charge. There's space for a business model there. Capacity on the stations would have to be significantly increased, currently you can refuel and pay within about 10 mins, even on a fast charger you're looking at minimum 30mins, to maintain the same capacity on the fuel stop you need 3 times as many chargers as you currently have pumps. I suspect an entirely different charging station model would need to be introduced compared to the current petrol station model.
## Power consumption
Currently the UK has a power supply shortage as well. If there are unforeseen problems at a couple of major plants and no wind, the [wholesale power price spikes](https://www.ft.com/content/0ac7d2e4-16b9-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e) due to shortage of generation. By pushing everyone to electric cars you're putting significant extra load on an already stretched system.
The UK does around [800 billion passenger miles per year](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/514912/road-use-statistics.pdf). At the efficiency of a 2009 Tesla, ([32 kW-hrs/100 mi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_per_gallon_gasoline_equivalent)) that comes to 256 TWh/year, Great Britain's [total generating capacity is 75.3GW](https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/ofgem-publications/76160/13537-elecgenfactsfs.pdf) or 660TWh/year. That increases load on the system by over 30% of total capacity (*disclaimer: numbers are very rough estimates*) *Unfortunately this is a killer for the project, nobody can increase energy generation capacity that fast, but we'll carry on regardless.*
## Primary cost summary
Once you've laid down the legislation to force everyone onto electric cars, these are your primary costs.
* Slower road transport due to limited range
* lack of charging infrastructure
* lack of power generation capacity
You have a couple of other considerations, including that electric cars are a thing, electric commercial vehicles are not yet. Perhaps overhead power lines on motorways for large vehicles could be considered, and the return of trolleybuses to the streets of our cities (this is happening in some places).
Next we get into the secondary costs that are not insignificant.
## Out with the old
You've just filled every scrapyard in the land with cars. In 2008, the UK government ran a scrappage programme that returned £2000 for each car scrapped over a certain age.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/eNHEI.jpg)
This happened. That's estimated to be a 14,000 car backlog in just one location that all need to be scrapped under the rules of the scheme. You're going to be giving up a massive amount of space to just storing these vehicles while they're waiting to be scrapped. There were [35 million vehicles](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/vehicle-licensing-statistics-2013) on the road in Great Britain in 2013, you're asking to scrap and replace almost every single one over two years. In the same year 2.75 million new vehicles were registered, this rises every year, just for one country you're going to need to up that to over 17million to fill the gap.
## Jobs
There are minor job losses here and there, the skilled workers, the old mechanic up the road who kept your family's cars running for three generations is now an unskilled worker. The big oil companies will shed jobs like water off a duck, the haulage companies will drop tanker drivers. Docks and shipping will lose jobs related to oil tankers. Lots of job losses for the old school, but job gains for the expanded and related industries, in theory it's probably a net balance on job numbers but it will be an upheaval all the same. There's going to be a big spike in employment in scrap metal and infrastructure that will look good in the short term.
## In with the new
Battery production is not up to speed by a long way, this will be hard to be hard to ramp up, but not impossible. Car manufacturing rates are also way off the mark and a surge like this will cause a massive slump for the next few years and then another surge at the end of life for this wave of vehicles. The boom and bust cycles you're going to trigger in the automotive related industries will take decades to settle.
## Environment
Finally and most damningly, the environmental cost is phenomenal, [it's going to massively outweigh any gains you might think you're getting from this programme.](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car)
>
> Berners-Lee estimates that a rough guide to the carbon footprint of a car is 720kg for every £1,000 you spend on it. So let’s take the example of a typical family car, a Volkswagen Golf. With emissions of 123g/km, running a brand-new 1.4 TSI S 5-door for 40,000 miles – or about five years’ use for the average private car driver – would produce a total of just over 7.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide. But with a list price of £19,400, producing the car will incur around 14 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, making a total of 22 tonnes, according to Berners-Lee’s theory.
>
>
> How does that compare with buying a 10-year-old Golf (right) instead, or keeping your old one? Let’s take a similar model from 10 years ago, the first of the fifth-generation models. A 1.6 FSI S 5-door emitted 163g/km of carbon dioxide. Let’s add on 10g/km to account for the engine going out of tune with age. Even so, the total amount of carbon dioxide produced in your five years’ motoring only adds up to 11 tonnes’ worth, half that involved in buying a new car.
>
>
>
If you multiply this environmental footprint up for all the cars you're building and scrapping before end of life that you wouldn't have done without this programme it'll swamp any benefits you would have gained had you run the programme over 20 years.
[Answer]
The costs and inefficiencies will be enormous.
Let's use the US as the obvious starting point. Current automobile registrations are about 255 million vehicles. For most people, personal transportation is necessary, since housing (rural or suburb) is widely separated from place of employment, place of goods purchase, schools, hospitals, etc. In the long run this can change, of course, but a 2-year deadline is simply too short to allow much accomodation. Let's assume that car-pooling and car sharing (such as Uber) allow consolidation to 100 million vehicles. As a further assumption, the first year will be occupied simply in building the factories needed for both parts production (especially batteries, but equally for all parts) and vehicle assembly. The second year will see actual vehicle production.
Current US vehicle production is about 18 million vehicles per year, with direct production employment of about 1 million persons. This means that the production year will require a vehicle production rate about 5 to 6 times as great as currently occurs. Additionally, an extra 5 million workers will need to be found, and it's not clear where they will come from.
The obvious choke point in terms of parts is batteries. I'll assume that lead-acid and nickel-cadmium batteries are off the table due to environmental concerns involving lead and cadmium. I'll further assume that lithium batteries will be the dominant technology. [This article](http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1826) suggests a lithium requirement on the order of 400 g of lithium per kWh of battery, and using the Volt battery pack (18.4 kWh) as a baseline produces a lithium requirement of
736,000 tonnes. Current world production of lithium is about 32,500 tonnes, so world production will need to be ramped up by a factor of 20. Just as with the production of the vehicles themselves, it is not possible to spread the production over the two years. Mining depends on heavy equipment, and these machines have a very long lead time. Additionally, operators will need to be found and trained, and processing plants constructed. Likewise battery production plants must be built and staffed. Given the short deadline, it does not seem feasible to invoke robotic assembly lines. This would require, in effect, the construction of large production plants to produce the robots themselves, and this will add to delays in achieving final production. This sort of infrastructure expansion is fairly painless over decade time scales, but 2 years is catastrophically short.
To make matters worse, these massive investments in upgrading capacity cannot be amortized over a long period. After the two-year deadline demand for the product will fall precipitously, although there will be a follow-up period when more than replacement levels will be needed to fill demand by people who are severely inconvenienced by car pooling and such. However, a second year of peak production will raise the number of vehicles available to 200 million, and demand will then essentially be at replacement level. Since at this point virtually all operating vehicles will be less than 2 years old, demand will drop catastrophically, and among other things you'd expect massive layoffs among production workers. Conceivably the government could intervene by stockpiling vehicles at the projected long-term replacement rate, but this has its own difficulties. To begin with, stored vehicles will deteriorate, and it would be an unusual government program of this nature which got the numbers right. Political pressure to either overbuy (to appease the manufacturers/miners) or underbuy (to save money at a time when the massive expenditures involved in ramping up production produce calls to cut back spending) would certainly distort any decision-making process.
[Answer]
Briefly, electric cars and associated non-fossil-fuel industries are on the verge of economic feasibility. To make it happen, you need a little more technological progress, and a vast amount of capital investment. The new infrastructure required could include:
* Cheaper and more efficient solar panels, or another energy source.
* Cheaper, more durable, and probably less-polluting battery technology.
* Huge quantities of installed solar panels, or another "green" energy industry, and a vast industry manufacturing, selling, and maintaining them.
* Resupply stations, where you could recharge or replace your batteries.
* On-road recharging, such as overhead power lines, or surface induction coils, where you could recharge on the move, plus an associated identification and billing infrastructure.
This list just contains some ideas. It is not complete, nor is it wholly internally consistent.
As others have said, two years is not long enough to build the required infrastructure.
[Answer]
*What would be the cost for the economy?*
To achieve the goal they need to build new factories - for cars, for batteries, infrastructure to support recharging cars in a situation up to a level where everyone will be able to recharge, build energy source plants of any kind, upgrade the currently existing energy grid maybe - all that is not a problem in general.
The problem is that they should do so in short time, 2 years, but ok - that is understandable when thinking about global warming, etc., but as for the economy - what will those people do, who did the work, after the work is done? Barely 10% of them are needed to maintain and develop that system further.
The problem for the economy will be solving the existence of those 90%.
# P.S.
Everything below is not the original answer, everything above is.
### Notes, not answer related, and not OP Q related, but about comments and other answers, and some thoughts about electric cars and electric grid, using the UK as an example.
**TL;DR** The electric grid is not a problem and improving it will cost a few percent of cars as a price. The existence of all electric cars can improve the current capacities of electricity production and it needs only a few million electric cars. To fully enjoy those improvements 100% autonomous mode has to be enabled in those cars, however, it is not necessary.
* People started to discuss *how is that doable at all considering the grid problems which electric cars will create*. I see many free internet points for an answer which depicts all those difficulties, so I decided to summarize my comments in this answer, as I did some research (as I think) and have come up to a slightly different conclusion. As the UK was the main example in the most liked answer I decided to use UK data.
## Grid
An interesting grid status for the UK can be found [here](http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/)
At the moment it looks like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LIXyS.png)
As it shows on the gauges 45GW is ok, 55GW is almost ok, 70 GW max. The grid has no storage system and has up to 3.5GW export/import capabilities. (the gauges are wrong a bit, probably).
CCGT - combined cycle gas turbines: they are used to compensate peak for demands and they generate 22.5GW, which is almost half of the consumption.
Thanks to @[Luaan's](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/899/luaan) comment we have some data about cars and people in the UK as to what they produce - *800 billion passenger-miles per year* or about 1,280 billion passenger-km per year.
Thanks to [this video](https://youtu.be/6cnu6L5VYdw?t=18), shot at a Tesla center, the average is 290Wh/km (119'350'654kWh, 410'139'703 km). 210Wh/km is also practically achievable with a Tesla Model S, with 90 km/h speed limits. (not for X though, but it is expected that Tesla Model 3 will be more efficient in terms of Wh per km - because it will be a smaller car)
1,280 billion passenger-km per year means the UK has to add on average +42GW to its current power generation. 2 times more than they generate at the *ok* level, or to add 4/7 of what they can generate at maximum power production.
In 2014 there were about 31 million of cars in the UK, according to this [source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/299972/average-age-of-cars-on-the-road-in-the-united-kingdom/).
Looking at grid graphs, I see the average energy consumption/generation is about 32-33GW (from CSV average for this month is 33.7GW, so my eye guesses are good enough), in January about 37GW, February-March - something around 35GW.
Maximum for October-November was 48GW power consumption, the minimum was 22GW.
The difference between low and high during a day is about 15GW.
31 million electric cars with a 100kWh battery pack each are capable of storing up to 4 days of the average (32GW) energy production of the entire UK. This is a lot of buffer capacity.
If each car is connected to the grid for 6 hours a day they can backup 1 day of energy production for the UK. (not just for the peaks, but for the total energy production. For the peaks maybe 2 hours a day will be enough)
## Grid energy production/consumption fluctuation, storage
The Wind can fluctuate from 0 to 8 GW - cars can average wind fluctuation completely for 16 days. Average wind for October-November is 2.5GW, dips in energy production are about 1 day long. Maximum for October-November was 6.6GW.
CCTG - average generation 17GW(Oct-Nov), 23.8GW maximum for the same period. This means they can produce +5.8GW on average and by that improve the cost efficiency of current installations. Potentially they can produce +30% more energy for the same installation price (which is about 1/3 of the generated energy cost, so about 10% improvement), and for higher maintenance cost, but they will work at a steady rate and that will improve their overall efficiency as a heat engine.
The nuclear average is 7.8GW, maximum is 8.34GW. The source says they work at maximum almost all time, energy fluctuations are the result of maintenance - so not much to gain here.
Coal - average 3.2GW, max 8.3GW - this source can produce +5.1GW, and used in average on 3/8 of its capacity, 100% use will increase efficiency in the same way as with CCTG.
Solar is not existing at the moment, so there are no numbers here.
Export - on average (October-November) the UK imports 0.6GW, peaks are -3.3GW:+3.3GW
### Total
The UK grid can produce in its current state +10.9GW (Oct-Nov) with an average production of 33.7GW at the same period.
With an average price (US) of 100\$ per MWh - 784'800'000\$ per month or 9'417'600'000\$ per year, with exactly the same production capacity. (it is not profit, just turnover)
Also, it would be possible to export +3GW more energy from UK energy importers (by using export/input lines just for import only).
*The UK could, with no capital costs for building new power plants, increase their power generation/consumption by about 14GW*
* I am not sure about the grid itself, how much it can redistribute, but it looks like 18 oct 2016, 12:00-12:15 Dr. Who was able to recharge his Tardis at 130GW consumption rate - seems like there is no problem here. Joke. No problems here, just from common sense.
For cars they need 42GW, so they should improve their production by 28GW. Peak production is 48GW (October-November) and those 28GW will be about 58% increase in power generation capabilities.
* An interesting document about electricity generation costs [pdf, page 16](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/65713/6883-electricity-generation-costs.pdf). CCGT time to build (2-year development, 3 years building), fastest of them all as expected.
* Wikipedia [List of offshore wind farms in the United Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in_the_United_Kingdom): it looks like 3-4million £ per 1MW power. The cost of energy is about 2-3 times more than for CCTG.
This way CCTG +28GW - will cost about 28 billion £ to build. CCS adds about 10% to energy cost(at the moment) and wind turbines +28GW - will cost... I don't know, considering that they produce about 2 times less then they can, I do not know which MW to use, but 100 billions or more.
* 28 billion £ per 31 million cars - is about 1000 £ per car, with current prices on models S it is only a few percent of the cost of the car. So producing a car is a major problem in terms of capital costs.
### Why a car is better than just a storage
Most of the time it is the end user, for that electricity.
With autonomous mode (google, amazon, Tesla) they can travel to a place where they are needed, and at a time when they are needed - to recharge themselves. They can be managed in a way which grid needs the most, at any given time day/night.
Where are people at the time, there is energy consumption increase - because they are at work (or at home) and it is very convenient if they (the people) bring not only themselves but also energy, for their work/home.
Parking buildings will be not just a waste of space for car storage, but also a part of the energy redistribution network, another way to stimulate solving a parking problem.
It is possible to share expenses of creating that battery on wheels between government/electric companies and the car owner.
Sharing a car as [tesla master plan](https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux) suggests, may reduce the amounts of cars needed to produce to cover transportation needs.
### Why electric plants, which burn oil, are better than gasoline car
A few moments here.
They can be more efficient than the combustion engine of a car.
No need to produce different varieties of gasoline, cracking oil, refine oils - reduce wasting of energy, improve overall efficiency.
No need for gasoline additives - less pollution.
CO2 can be captured and stored (CCS - Carbon Capture and Storage) from those plants(in testing) and used by growing plants (in use in the Netherlands).
This may stimulate the use of carbon conductors (NASA is working on that for air/space crafts). The motivation is not just to capture and store carbon, but use carbon (partial burning). Improvements in carbon CNT manufacturing will improve many technologies, including electricity generation and transfer. And may actually reduce Aluminum and Fe production and save energy we use to produce this stuff.
# P.P.S
Those notes are not necessary for this answer, but it just so happened.
[Answer]
You never explained which culture this was set in, its type, or its size. (Though some answers are assuming the particulars of whichever country they choose and showing that they are not suitable for this plan.)
The implication is that it is *not* a totalitarian regime, or in any case the economic success of the entire population is the goal.
Now it might very well be a *small* kingdom, not a continent-spanning superpower.
What is the previous situation? Suppose they don’t have “suburbs” and it is not a car-culture. Public transportation works. Most people don’t own personal cars: the shift will involve mostly commercial fleets and cars used for business.
The shift to all electric might be part of a plan to reap some economic *advantage*, in the context of its trading partners and neighbors. Maybe it is part of a political stance taken against petrolium import, and this has significance that overshadows the immediate economic issues.
So, common people won’t notice much, only that their taxi is new. Tradesmen that use a vehicle will need to work with the program, and they may be all for it if they come out ahead! In the old situation, fuel is probably very expessive and they’re already maximizing their efficiency via hybrids. In the new situation, electric charging will be *cheap*, supplied by other forms of local energy production. He just needs the buy-in for having to buy a new vehicle and the price of batteries.
Now this could go either way depending on the details of the program. Mr. Plumber may vey well love to get a new vehicle and ditch the fuel expense, but it's a capital expense and if he could afford that he would have already. If he’s forced to come up with this new expense he will be angry.
Now the electric vehicle pays for itself in some number of years, and the old vehicle would need replacing *anyway* in some number of years. If the deal is good enough that he sees an immediate *benefit*, then he’ll jump at the oppertunity.
There will be as many different stories there as cars.
The cost for the economy *as a whole* will be an investment in a drastic change of infrastructure. You asked for *cost* but the up-front costs will be applied against gains moving forward, so is that really the meaningful question?
[Answer]
# Electric cars will happen on their own. The real problem...
Fossil fuels are a huge portion of US energy consumption, but transportation only covers 27% of energy use. That's because most energy is used in construction, industry, and regular electricity/AC/heating uses.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m9moX.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/FjC1X.png)
Given the leaps in automated driving technology and solar energy collection in the past decade, it's not hard to imagine an all autopilot, all electric car culture in just a decade or two. The thing is...
## Cars are an easy problem to solve
Good enough batteries, good enough autopilot, and enough charging stations, and BOOM - the market makes electric cars an attractive option all on their own, no major cultural or legal interventions to force it to happen.
But the real problem is freight transport and grid-level power storage.
Renewable energy is great...as long as the source plays nicely.
You can get all the solar the sun gives you, until it's night time.
Until we have a good grid storage solution, all the subsidies in the world would pale in comparison to the energy stored in the superior fossil fuel batteries: oil, coal, and natural gas.
Likewise, the massive cargo ships that **overwhelmingly** dominate and constitute international trade **completely rely on diesel fuel** to make the long journeys from Shenzhen, China, to Long Beach, California.
Sorry to throw a wrench in your question here, but like I said, cars are an easy problem to solve. Enough improvements in existing tech will make them attractive to the market by themselves. But the real problem is replacing the sheer usefulness of grid-storage-capable fossil fuels.
[Answer]
Can't be done. In addition to the problems already mentioned, like producing that many cars and the related infrastructure in that short a time frame, you have to deal with the fact that a great many people either can't afford a new(ish) car at all, or are not willing to waste their money on one.
Take me as an example. I am, if not actually rich, certainly prosperous. Yet I've never purchased a new car (which is one of the reasons WHY I'm prosperous - I've never wasted money on car loans or depreciation :-)) My current vehicles are a 2000 Honda Insight (owned for 13 years), and a 1988 Toyota pickup. So even though I COULD shell out $50-100K or more for a new EV, I'm not going to unless you have me at the point of a gun. I think there are enough people like me to organize a successful revolution against anyone who tried it, too.
Then there is the fact that, at least with current technology, EVs do not have a long useful life. If the battery in my Insight hybrid is any guide, it will lose about half its capacity in a decade. Which means your industrial base has also be capable of producing replacement batteries, if not entire new vehicles, at an affordable price.
Finally, the current crop of EVs are basically suited to short (by the standards of the western US, anyway) daily commutes. A lot of (sub)urbanites could find one useful as a second vehicle (though far more energy would be saved by telecommuting), but they don't meet the needs of most of the rural population.
[Answer]
It is quite difficult to estimate the total value of all cars in circulation but [this article](http://www.british-car-auctions.co.uk/About-Us/Latest-News/10-September-2015---BCA-Used-Car-Market-Report-reveals-changing-landscape-of-UK-car-market-as-used-sales-exceed-45-billion/) puts the value of used car *sales* in the UK in 2014 at around 45 billion pounds although this is of course only a fraction of the total number in circulation.
With 7.2 million sales this gives an average price of around £6200 which seems reasonable.
[UK government statistics](https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/vehicle-licensing-statistics-2013) report around 35 million registered vehicles as of 2013. Which gives us a tenuous estimate of value of around 200 billion.
There is also a problem with compulsory purchase at the book value in terms of fairness. Many people, especially those on low incomes own cars which are worth little or nothing but meet their needs. But if you own a 15 year old ford worth £500 and you get compensated its full value how can you possibly afford a brand new car costing tens of thousands.
There is also the problem that you need to replace millions of vehicles in a short period at the same time as radically changing the technology they use. The investment in re-tooling factories will be huge as well as the financial losses associated with suddenly obsolete engine plants.
Another issue it that it takes energy and materials to build a new car so replacing every car on the road in a short time will cost a huge amount of energy which needs to come from somewhere not to mention that all electric vehicles require specific materials such as copper and lithium which are already in high demand.
Assuming you can find the cash to do this you might well have a short term boom in manufacturing but after the initial surge you are left with huge over-capacity which represents yet more waste and it would be almost impossible to attract the investment required to turn over production in such a short time with no realistic prospect of long term returns.
Even if you had a centralised soviet style economy and could source all of the materials required domestically this still represents a huge waste of resources as you are effectively throwing away the energy and materials used for 10+ years of car production. Even form a purely 'green' perspective this makes very little sense.
There is also the fact electric cars, in of themselves, don't necessarily achieve much. Electricity is a medium for distributing energy not a source of it and unless you have the infrastructure in place to meet the increased demand (in terms of both capacity and availability) through 'green' energy generation the whole exercise is pointless.
[Answer]
I am going to try to make this a lost of costs and not a lists of "why it can't happen yet", but some of the costs are from the same problems as the list of "can't happen yet".
1. Your financing plans. There will be a ton of defaulting on those plans. I currently replace a car about once every 10 years. So to have to replace a car again so soon, I would not be in a financial spot to do so, and if I resented having to do so, or didn't absolutely love the car, I would just default on the loan. Again because I am forced into it, it's not a question of ability to pay, it's a question of desire to pay.
2. Enforcement. You will have to set aside a LARGE amount of money for the enforcement of the no "gas cars" rule. Keep in mind that even if you don't license the car, people still drive it. Even if you pull over ever car you see being driven, those people still get their day in court. What are you going to do about a gas car that is sitting in someone’s driveway? Without local laws preventing it, your gas car could sit there forever.
3. Infrastructure. Right now, charging stations are few and far between. This would need to change. I need to be able to charge at the store, charge at the diner, charge at the office, charge at the movie etc. etc. None of these places support 100% of their user base charging right now. Some of the ones in my area may have 10 charging stations, in a parking lot ment to hold thousands of cars. What about automated garages, they will need to be upgraded and replaced to support charging. In fact the very way we charge would need to change, or parking lots would need to be larger to accommodate the charging stations.
4. Infrastructure. Right now the little extra electricity devoted to charging a car is minimal. In your future it would be substantial, requiring more electricity generation and better grids to get it where it needs to be.
5. Legal fees. Even if you assume no suing over the car swap itself, you are going to have a horrid mess when it comes to things like retail establishments rented a location because it has 500 parking spots. Now with the new machines it only has 450 parking spots. There will be other suites like a new parking garage that was supposed to be cost effective over 50 years is now 100% pointless because it can't retrofit the chargers, or the cost of fitting those chargers is too high.
6. Cost fixing, price gouging, fairness of distance. So right now my car can go 500 miles for $20. I expect my new, forced on me electric car to do the same. That means the cost of charging would need to go way down. Currently the cost is way too high.
7. Economics. What about the poor people that got their car for free from a charity? How are they supposed to afford a new car? Now the government will have to supplement them. Same on charging. The government will need to supplement charging. This isn't as big an issue if you have a little money, but if you have 0 money, then you can't pay for the charge home from work.
8. Logistics. What are semi-trucks going to run on? A lot of distribution in this country depends on trucks. What is going to happen there?
9. Distance, I frequently drive 400 miles or more. Best I can find in current electric cars is around 100 miles. In the US that will not get many people back and forth to work (though many people it will), and for a lot of people will not cover weekend activities. This means that distances to parks and other recreation will need to be shorter, more stores per square mile, and other such things. Keep in mind that the US is "wide spread" because we have lots of land. This is not true in other countries.
[Answer]
2 problems:
* There are about 1 billion cars in the world. With a remaining value of a few thousand dollars, that thousands of billions of dollars. Where would the money come from?
* In 2012, 60 million cars were produced. That means it would take 17 years to replace all the existing cars, with the current means of production. To replace cars with electric cars, we need to built 10 times as many factories as we have now, all dedicated to electric cars. What will those factories do after?
[Answer]
There's another cost of ditching petroleum based transport that hasn't been considered yet: **Geo-political Stability**.
As it stands, the world is addicted to Oil - we have a major reliance on it beyond using it for fuel - it is a major part of the Global Economy. In order to get rid of an addiction, it has to be weaned away slowly; going Cold Turkey may work in the eventually, but it causes massive short term disturbance - who knows what world we'd have when we got out the other side?
Consider this: there are large portions of the world that currently depend absolutely on Oil sales for economic stability (Graphs for percentages in [This Article](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/which-economies-are-most-reliant-on-oil/)). If the world (or even just a significant proportion of "1st World" countries) decides to ditch non-electric cars, that's going to have a massive impact on large swathes of the Middle East and South America, two areas of the world already under significant political stress.
While there will still be a market for oil (as pointed out by [rm -rf slash](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/60614/15882)), a 25% hit in oil consumption would have a potentially crippling effect on the economies in those regions. This could result in significant unrest and a huge step back for safe and stable societies.
This in turn might have a knock-on effect on the availability of Oil - if the countries that supply all the oil become unstable, oil supply dries up, and now the infrastructure using the other 75% of the oil is under stress all over the world...
Eventually, the cascade may well result in your aim: there will be no infrastructure left in the world that relies on oil, purely because there is no significant, stable source of oil left. But at what cost? Would the world that got out the other side even be recognisable from its current form?
] |
[Question]
[
Most people believe that H.P. Lovecraft was a racist, basing the monsters in his cosmic horror story on his fears of a modernizing world and prejudiced views on other races and cultures. However, the public is foolish and naive. The creatures such as Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, etc, exist in an outer dimension. They used the weak willed author as a conduit, influencing his mind and writing while making him believe that it was he who was coming up with these ideas.
The gods feed on belief, which helps them to grow stronger. The more people are aware of them, the more powerful they become. By use of his writing, the knowledge of these gods has spread to the corners of the world. Soon, the gods will be strong enough to cross over into our world and enslave us.
However, the stories about them are contradictory about their histories. They appear in one way in one story and appear entirely different in others. They have conflicting histories and abilities, and there seems to be no clear pantheon with a consistent heirachy or range of power for these beings. This doesn't bode well for a mythology which wants to encourage belief or worship when they eventually cross over.
What would gods gain from this constant inconsistency?
[Answer]
## Not every god has the same perspective of each other
Since each diety's story is intertwined with the stories of other deities, they each have different things to say about each other and themselves. Some of it is simply inflammatory lies or hyperboles. Some of it is self aggrandizing. Some of it is just an effort to fill in the gaps because they simply don't know everything there is to know about each-other.
Let's say you have two eldritch beings Cthulhu and Golgotha.
When Golgotha describes himself, he dictates "I am the greatest evil ever known, born of mankind's most horrible sins, I will rise up from below and engulf all of humanity in decay and darkness...". As far as Golgotha is concerned this is all true. But the one time Cthulhu met Golgotha he described the encounter, "Golgotha was born of a pile of shit. He is so pathetic I would have stamped him out of existence if I though my foot would ever be clean again."
One source says Golgotha was born of sin, the other of shit... in reality the gods are so old, none of them remember where they actually came from. These origin tails are just the gods just trying to use metaphor to describe one another which humans decide to take literally which creates the contradictory mythologies.
[Answer]
# The stories are inconsistent but all true
Lovecraftian horrors are noneuclidean and defy understanding. Why should they submit to something as pedestrian as logical consistency or causality? Sure, humans can look at the stories and say “I can’t reconcile these”, but humans also can’t perceive but a fraction of the ways in which these beings exist.
Not only can Cthulhu make a burrito so hot, Cthulhu cannot eat it... Cthulhu can then eat it anyways. And not eat it, at the same time. And have it be a cold fish sandwich. And have eaten it before Cthulhu made it. None of those are limitations on Cthulhu.
And Cthulhu doesn’t need humans to reconcile the stories, because as long as they believe in any of them, that is belief in Cthulhu, and that is enough.
[Answer]
# Consistency breeds testability
If there’s an inconsistent story out there, it makes it harder for science to isolate and analyze the gods, thereby deterring humanity from figuring out how to access the gods’ home dimension to kill them, take over their powers, or simply understand them and thereby diminish their majesty and worship. A tyrant fears truth because understanding decreases fear in the populace.
[Answer]
# Have your cake and eat it, too.
While Lovecraft stories are known for their unhappy endings, some of the horrors can be fought some of the time. Accurate origin stories would contain clues how to fight. But without origin stories, the mythos lacks some storytelling appeal.
It would be best if *only* one set of consistent, false stories got out, but if you cannot do that, throw up lots and lots of chaff.
[Answer]
Why do we have popular superheroes and supervillains with contradictory backstories? Merciful Deity and Wrathful Deity within the same religion?
To appeal to different audiences.
Some people might like the story of a Chosen One who is born great.
Other people might prefer a story of an ordinary person (or astral being) who rises up to become an Ultimate Being through difficult trials.
Some might like a god that punishes the non-believers and unworthy. Others might prefer a god who gives second chances.
And would you find it easier to worship a god that rewards your service on earth with wealth and power, or one who promises to reward you after you die?
By giving inconsistent stories, different types of people can latch on to a different visions that appeal to them. This has the potential to draw in more believers than any single narrative.
[Answer]
Competition on which god reaches our world first.
There's a huge advantage to be had for [the first mover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage), even more so it one god can picture some of the others in such dark colors that s/he can hope only the our world fringe - thus, few - people will worship or even think of them.
Some others don't care that much about reputation; there's no such thing as bad publicity, so better to have plenty of stories that contradict each other than have very few but self-consistent. Controversy and polarisation work great to maintain POTU... errr, a politi... (oh, shut up)... a god in the news.
[Answer]
First, an obvious point... Since we're dealing with Outer Dimensions, it may be impossible to convey an accurate origin story within the restricted constructs of human language that is understandable by the limited capacities of the human brain. It's like trying to visualize a [tesseract](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract): we can only make approximations and poor intuitions about the actuality of it.
But if you want a *purposive* reason for this, well... Assume that the Elder Gods are like authoritarians, fascists, and nationalists everywhere: they lie about their origins for purposes of self-aggrandizement. Such people (and entities) want to be perceived as mighty, boundless, perfect, inevitably victorious, etc, and so they make up histories that paint them in that light. It doesn't matter if they conflict with the histories of the others, or even if what is said at one point conflicts with what is said at another point, because anyone with the temerity to *question* the history will immediately be denounced and/or killed by other followers.
[Answer]
# Means of its destruction are tied to its origin.
The only way to destroy the One Ring was to toss it into the flames of Mount Doom. Imagine how difficult it would be to destroy it if there were multiple stories about how it came to be, and multiple supposed way to dispose of it, each harder than the last?
It's the same with powerful entities, the ways to destroy them (or severely limit their power and influence) are intimately and inseparably tied to how they came to be.
[Answer]
The important thing is belief that a god *exists*, not where it came from.
If you believe in Cuddles the Mindbreaker, Bringer of Chaos and Stolen Blankets, then it doesn't matter if you think he was born of the primordial soup of creation, or if she was birthed by 'P'str'ph's the Unpronounceable after a tryst with EïëïÖ of the Old Farm, of even if it was just always there, pre-dating the rest of creation.
Cuddles draws the same power from feeding on your belief in all these cases.
It neither gains, nor loses, anything from your mortal inconsistency. And once it arrives, you will be in no state to care or question which is true.
[Answer]
The gods exist,
but are beyond mortal ken.
Every story is based on reality,
but a reality that can never "fit" in the mortal mind;
thus they appear contradictory.
Only when viewed by a cosmic entity the truth in every story becomes evident.
Imagine the stories that ants might tell about humans.
Or the stories that a virus might tell about a human.
[Answer]
>
> This doesn't bode well for a mythology which wants to encourage belief or worship when they eventually cross over.
>
>
>
**The opposite is true.**
By having lots of different stories, believers may chose those that fits their preferences.
In fact, you can see it in the history of religions: whenever a religion appears, multiple interpretations begin spreading, each claiming a different meaning to the same texts and stories, and fitting to the group supporting it.
So if Cthulu did appear once when a cop was arresting a thief and he ate both of them, the thieves will adore Cthulu because he ate the cop; the fact that the thief was already eaten will be either downplayed ("Cthulu had no choice but to eat him to get to the cop") or directly erased from the story. Similarly, cops will cherish thief-eater Cthulu.
You could see it in the same way of some Christian preachers who, when trying to convert pagans, will start by linking Jesus to some of the local deities and giving it local attributes, or even "localized" religious depictions (a blonde Jesus in Scandinavia, a black one in Central Africa).
Of course, an important issue here is what "defines" a god, if it is its name or its attributes. If I worship a God by the right name but I am completely wrong about its actions, words and intentions... am I actually worshipping that God? E.g. if I worship Afrodita as the goddess of love but the entity that goes by Afrodita is actually the embodiment of war... am I actually increasing her power?
] |
[Question]
[
## **Alibi Tracker Improvement Program Announcement**
---
Today, October 1st, 2074AD, marks the 50th year since 2034, when Benevolent Brother freed all of humanity *on the only 2 continents of Earth*.
Since then, *for the good of the citizens*, Benevolent Brother mandated insertion of 'Alibi Tracking' implants, which can make sure innocent citizens are never wrongfully punished for crimes and soon, thoughtcrimes.
For your information:
* An Alibi Tracker is an implant that uses the [conductive properties of the body to send out wireless signals](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51466852_Wireless_Communication_with_Implanted_Medical_Devices_Using_the_Conductive_Properties_of_the_Body).
* technologies have changed little since 2026
* the tracker is implanted directly into the brain, with clean removal and re-insertion impossible without professional-grade technology
* it conveys an encrypted signal to nearby cell towers at 2 minute intervals
* the nearby towers log the signal and store the location to several distributed databases along with brainwave metrics, like emotions felt during Benevolent Brother's speeches
* Brainwaves serve as a unique ID for Alibi Trackers
* any interference or loss of signal is logged, and signal loss over 6 minutes will sound an alarm.
* Alibi does not hold if there is enough time to travel to the crime scene in the timeframe between logs
Is the alibi tracker fool-proof? That is, could someone fake an alibi despite personally committing a crime,say, for illustrative purposes only, wandering several kilometers from their normal route to contact a Railroad group, before heading back?
And, asking so that we may further improve Benevolent Brother's system, could a group of people potentially block or fake tracker signals, without anyone finding out for at least fifteen minutes,so they could make a daring escape via a Railroad boat?
Any responses from this FAQ that go towards *improving* the tracker shall be rewarded!
Yours Sincerely,
LXXXIV *Totally Faithful* Corps
PS: a kind reminder to dissenters that the 50th anniversary is 2074, 2+2=5, 20+20=50, so 2034 to 2074 is 50 years. Please do not be caught making basic math mistakes for history, the punishment is severe.
Edit: Best answer should be most widely applicable, and without being too high-profile. Clarity on the question requirements: it should also allow them to both fake an alibi, as well as not trigger the 6 minute alarm across the entire alert system.
[Answer]
**Spoofing**
Modern vehicles allow keyless entry and starting. What this is is an NFC token the person carries with a range of a metre or so that allows the person to unlock and start the car without taking the key from their pocket.
Car thieves have beaten this using a spoofing attack. One thief closely follows the person with a receiver and the second thief stands near the car with the transmitter. The receiver picks up the NFC signal and sends it to the transmitter fooling the car into thinking the owner is there. The second thief can then open the car and drive off while the first thief just wanders off into the crowd.
To beat the tracker, the people wear special hats with faraday shielding stopping the original signal. The hat also has a receiver that intercepts the signal and then transmits it to a transmitter at the person's house.
For all intents and purposes, the signal will show the person hasn't left the house. The encryption will be fine and everything will check out as normal.
**Bonus points**
There is no easy way to defeat this method without adding a secondary check system.
The way you'd do this is with machine learning. You transmit the heart rate and hormone level in the signal. The spoof hat would pass these on as expected but the heart rate and adrenaline levels of someone escaping on a boat isn't going to be the same as someone at home asleep. A machine learning system could pick this up and then request a second verification method for the person's location.
Amazon has just released the ["Always Home" cam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIQTR4qCoHU) which is a small robotically controlled patrol drone for your house. I could see BB wanting this in every house for "security" and "safety".......
To escape, people would need the spoofing hat and then to stay perfectly calm and relaxed while running for their lives which is no easy task.
[Answer]
Faraday cages.
There will be times when a citizen has to enter a building, room, or other structure where the signal is not transmitted. All such structures require the citizen to transmit the information just before entering, along with notice that they are aware that their alibi is insecure.
If the citizen happened to wear a portable Faraday cage while leaving, and returning, it might even appear that the citizen never left until the transmission restarted on leaving a second time.
This cage, being a metal structure, would be visible so the citizen might have to choose the location carefully.
[Answer]
**Brainwave pattern masking**
Brains are incredible in their adaptability (neuroplasticity) and functionality. With effort, you can train your brain to do all sorts of neat tricks, including but not limited to: math, driving, playing darts, and controlling robotic limbs.
This means, through coordinated or directed activity, implanted individuals could mask their signals in two ways:
* **Stealth in a crowd**: Get a large number of like-minded individuals to bring their mental state into alignment. This can be most easily accomplished through religious or ritualized proceedings. Have a crowd of people all chanting the same hymn, smelling the same incense, and feeling the same drumbeats. Music, in particular, can have deep effects on mental state and if enough people spread over a large enough area are projecting similar enough brainwaves (synchronized through music), triangulating individuals becomes much more difficult.
* **Stealth in an open field**: For the individuals most dedicated to the task of avoiding alibi tracking, there is a simple solution: have no (or very weak) distinguishing brainwaves. One must simply practice meditation and clearing ones mind until one is capable of moving around and performing actions without thought or emotional response in a permanent, zen-like state. Even if these "blank" brainwave patterns can still be tracked, a dedicated group of cultists should be able to achieve mental harmony to such a degree that the brainwaves of their operatives are indistinguishable and therefore untriangulateable.
[Answer]
Our company has been smuggling peopleand goods since before Benevolent Brother *started leading the world right way*, in 2026. Alibi Tracker is an added complexity and we correspondingly increased our prices but far for insurmountable. It is crucial however that you only trust professionals for such delicate task of leaving our Happy World.
We offer multiple services related to the Alibi Tracker, including the complete removal of the Alibi Tracker on a proper place with all health guarantees and even performed by a, ehm, *[doctor](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BackAlleyDoctor)* (don't worry, we have [good colaborators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Jack_(manga_character))). Although that's only recommended if you do not wish to come back into your old life again.
A much more popular service is one where we move you to a different place out of sight of the Benevolent Brother. This involves a place were you *supposedly* are (your home is a common choice, but a church, like other comments suggested do provide some nice properties). We then put you inside a Faraday Cage and transport you inside it with your tracker signal not (directly) reaching his receivers. We place a receptor inside the cage which transfers it to the outside, from which we send it via fast connection to an emitter located on your purported place. We then take you back (or not) and remove the signal blocking.
The extra transmission involves a delay, but it is a gradual one, and the receivers won't notice anything special. Your brain waves are reaching them every 2 minutes (note they do implemente a toleration margin), it's just that they were "thought" slightly earlier than they are made to think. For an higher rate, we also offer the option of a mobile purported position, where the emitter is carried by an agent (further complicating any analysis).
The crucial part -and reason why you should contract a with experience such as us- is to keep you isolated so that your Tracker signal doesn't reach the towers near your real location. We have a fleet of lorries suited to the task, and iolated hotel rooms where you can meet with your business associate, lovers, philosophy group, etc. even escaping via a Railroad boat. This would even allow you to perform a physical crime (within a Faraday cage, remember!), although we discourage attempting that. We have specialized for that type of needs. Clients interested in that type of result are welcome to contact our violent crimes department for a quote at 91xx....
[Answer]
>
> Brainwaves serve as a unique ID for Alibi Trackers.
>
>
>
I don't understand how that could work. Brainwaves are not something we think about when discussing biometrics. You generally can't look at an EEG and say "oh, those are Mike's beta waves!"
And this could be the breach you need. Record someone's brainwaves at a given time and context, you are able to simulate those later on a machine. Your copy does not have to be precisely perfect, it only has to be close enough.
Another weak point is the fact that technology has changed little in the last fo... I mean, fifty years. That is a big help to hackers. All the vulnerabilities of the technology will be known, so they may be able to obtain an implant's cryptography keys somehow.
Now all you need is some tinkering and you can send a signal that perfectly mimicries someone. They can commit crimes while wearing full body chain mail under winter clothing (an impromptu faraday cage under a disguise) without the fear that they will miss their biminutely ping, because a device somewhere else will be sending signals on their behalf.
Alternatively, flood the system with fake signals to the point where authorities cannot trust the system anymore. That would be more fun for hackers.
[Answer]
**Set a booby trap in advance**, but design it in a way that it look like the crime was committed in person.
This might require some clever contraptions, ways to hide them, and opportunity to remove them. But if you plan your crime well, you might be able to kill someone while you are far away, but convince an unskilled detective that the crime must have been committed in person by someone who was at the crime scene.
For example:
1. Obtain a firearm, preferably legally.
2. Develop and deploy a mechanism which points the gun at a door and triggers when someone opens it.
3. Trick your enemy into opening the door while you are close to the scene, but still too far away to have fired the gun yourself. I would assume that the trackers are also able to reliably log the exact time of death. When they are not, make sure there is a witness who hears the gunshot and can attest the exact time.
4. When you hear the gunshot, get to the crime scene, remove the mechanism but keep the gun at the scene.
5. Wait for the police to arrive (calling them yourself might make it even more convincing, but this might be unnecessary in a surveillance state).
6. Tell them you found your enemy dead and the gun on the ground. But you obviously couldn't have fired the shot, because you were too far away and your alibi tracker proves it.
A *smart* detective might be able to poke a hole in your story, find evidence and witnesses you didn't think about and still get you convicted. But that's [a story](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whodunit) to write for a crime fiction author.
Or if that's too complicated for your taste: **poison their food or drink**. When someone dies from a slow-acting poison, then it might be very hard to find out when they ingested it and even harder to find out when exactly the poison was planted and by whom.
Again, a *smart* detective might be able to narrow down the number of possible suspects to just you and dig up some incriminating evidence which proves you did it. But that's again another story.
[Answer]
### People have been bringing up Faraday Cages and other blind spots, so here's a couple of ways to improve the "Alibi" Tracker to remove these blind spots.
1. Two-Factor Authentication. While the "Alibi" Tracker is very effective at what it does, there are other ways to do it. Specifically, I'm thinking of that telescreen Mobile Errata Retrieval Devices ("MERDe") which everybody carries around in their pockets. Simply install some discreet tracking software to record all sounds, no matter how minute, and then periodically transmits them to you. It'll hog some memory, but nobody really *needs* all of it. It's a good thing that Miniplenty recently came out with these new-and-improved ultra-high-capacity 1G hard-drives...
2. Install a MicroSD in the "Alibi" Tracker. Just because the Proles have to use floppy disks doesn't mean that Benevolent Brother does. Sure, the MicroSD only has room to store 10 minutes of brain-patterns, but that's why breaks are required every 10 minutes when working in blind spots. Studies have proven that longer exposure to such environments tend to result in unfortunate "accidents".
[Answer]
**Record and play**
It depends on if the signals sent can be received by third parties and further security on it.
The signals can be caught by multiple devices, otherwise triangulation would be impossible. A device capturing the signals that you send out can record them, regardless of security. After you've got enough, you hit play and send out the same brainwaves of you doing good things. You yourself get a personal Faraday cage and do your stuff.
* What if they see my brainwaves being "bad" before that?
You're already able to avoid capture before you thought of this and we can assume some of them were bad before. Or maybe you're just doing a "harmless experiment" before you realise the evil or whatever. Alternatively someone else can rope you into it, capturing your signals without your knowledge, then putting you in a Faraday cage and hit play.
* Can't they put further security to prevent this?
They certainly can. Time stamps or security keys that get updated every x time can make such things obvious and prevent such tampering. The stream would need to be decoded and this changed to work, which makes it implausible.
*Alternatively:*
The technology is nearly 60 years old. In that time, many security weaknesses, both physically and digitally, must have been found. It is unlikely some people aren't completely dominating the technology and make it do whatever they want. Both for their own implants as well as the main servers. Can be prevented by "the technology behind it hasn't changed much in these years, although they do have frequent mandatory software and hardware upgrades".
[Answer]
Benevolent Brother,
We here at the glorious BB Mathematical institute have discovered a flaw in your brainwave recordings! We chanced upon brainwave records that we were doing for our statistical analysis of how uniformly we love you when we discovered something entirely shocking!
There are entire records with no information recorded! Unfortunately, we had to consign some of our own mathematicians to the police force as they were thinking heretically but, we may have discovered the lapse in your system!
If you concentrate hard enough on the wrong answer for 2+2, the station refreshes your Alibi Timer but crashes the recording of info to the system! We heretically recommend using a heretical numbering scheme in order to have the Alibi system catch those Heretics!
Sincerely yours,
A, L, E and X, The Mathematics 5
[Answer]
### Make the brotherhood stop trusting them and remove them for you!
Find a person who is willing to commit a crime regardless of punishment. (Eg jilted lover wanting to kill their ex, religious zealot, rascist, etc). Arrange for them to kill their target in public view in the centre of town in front of dozens of witnesses.
However their alibi tracker says they were 20km away commuting peacefully home from work. Everyone, brotherhood included, will start to distrust the system when it fails at it's most obvious function.
***How do you fake location data?***
You didnt actually describe how it's getting the location data. There are two ways:
* GPS (or other time of flight approaches).
+ GPS signals are weak, and can easily be overriden by a transmitter hidden nearby transmitting slightly different timing data, putting them on their normal commute rather than in town murdering.
+ After the first fix is found, most GPS systems will extrapolate positions when imperfect signals arrive, making this comparatively easy. (You may only need to fake a single satellite for the system to extrapolate a straight line route).
+ The killer calmly jogs his commute, hits play on the hidden transmitter, calmly jogs into town, and , between pings, kills victim, and jogs back towards his commute. Discarding the device once his real path converged with the recorded one.
+ (If the brotherhood think 2+2=5 they wont be able to debug the gps system. You need to understand special and general relativity to get a precise fix).
* Cell tower strength.
+ The killer has a portable cell repeater, which captures his signal, and forwards it over a different network (eg a chain of people holding wifi repeaters) to an accomplice walking the route.
+ The pings are logged with location data implicitly from the relative signal strengths of the retransmitted packet
After the alibi data shows that a clearly guilty person is innocent, the entire system will be called into question. You may need to repeat this kind of PR disaster a few times, but eventually the brotherhood will realise the trackers are flawed.
If the system cant be trusted to detect someone murdering someone in the city centre, they cant trust it to stop people escaping. Less value will be placed on the data, they wont monitor it as closely, and they may stop implanting it in children (at considerable expense) if they're ignoring it.
Or they may remove it from everyone to get their money back from the place they bought it from. (Since their maths knowledge implies they didnt invent the tech themselves).
[Answer]
As Angel pointed out, the system as you described is vulnerable to MitM and proxying attacks.
For a secure alibi, we need the process to work like this:
* Every 2 minutes, give or take a few random seconds to avoid predictability, the Cell Tower (CT) sends Alibi Tracker (AT) a "ping" request that contains a unique one-time code. This request is encrypted with AT's public key, so only AT can read it. To get AT's private key, you'd need to dig open your head and perform some serious hackery on the AT.
* AT replies with the code, the GPS location, the GPS timestamp, and the encoded brain wave signature, all encrypted with CT's public key.
CT then knows these things:
1. Whether AT has responded to this and/or any previous requests.
2. Whether AT has responded with the correct code.
3. The brainwaves that AT has previously responded with.
4. The triangulated location AT's response came from, accurate to about 1000m.
5. The GPS location encoded in AT's response, accurate to about 10m.
6. The GPS location of CT, accurate to about 1m.
7. The time it *should* take messages to travel between CT and AT at light speed, accurate to about 0.00001% due to variations in the refractive index of the atmosphere.
8. The exact amount of time it takes AT to encrypt and send its response, accurate to maybe a few nanosecs.
9. Any internal signal-processing time of the tower, accurate to maybe a few nanosecs.
10. The GPS time encoded in AT's response, accurate to about 10 nanosecs.
11. The GPS time CT requested a response from AT, accurate to about 10 nanosecs.
12. The GPS time CT received the response, accurate to about 10 nanosecs.
The following tricks are therefore avoided:
* 1 detects merely **silencing the response with a tin-foil hat**. This is probably the only trick that would get cops sent out in an obvious way to investigate.
* 2 detects attempts to **replay the response**, or to **generate the response before the request was sent**.
* 3 detects unusual thought patterns. Not something that would get anyone sent out obviously, but literally as an alibi: if someone was murdered where you were, you claim you saw nothing, but your brainwaves were very unusual for that location and time of day, then you have no alibi.
* Comparing 4 to 5 detects **GPS spoofing**.
* Comparing 4 and 5 to 6 gives the distance between the two, which gives item 7.
* Adding 7+8+9+10 and comparing to 12 detects the delays caused by **message proxying** as described in Angel's answer.
* Subtracting 9 from 7 and comparing to 11 detects generation or transmission delays between requesting the message and getting a response, such as might be caused when **trying to spoof the response**.
Light speed is ~300,000 km/sec, so 10km is 10/300,000 seconds, or about 33 microseconds. 66 for a round trip.
The inaccuracy of cell triangulation is quite high: only to the nearest 1000m (about 3 light-milliseconds). So we can only calculate transmission times to the tower with an accuracy of about 3ms.
Still, if a signal is delayed by 33 microseconds each way, that's 10 times the deviation we're willing to accept, and it means there's something up.
With a system like this, proxying as described by Angel could work, but only within at most 1000m of where you're meant to be.
You might be able to get a few more meters out of it, if instead of a single proxy, you put one on each triangulating cell tower, with a directional antenna to speak only to that tower. But it wouldn't help much.
Worse, the 1000m becomes MUCH less in areas where there are a lot of cell towers so triangulation is more accurate. And you can never tell how many towers there are, since they could be hidden. It would be in BB's interest to have lots of them.
---
**Benevolent Brother is not *stupid*.**
In the case of sophisticated tricks, no alarm would sound, no paddy-wagons get sent out. That's for people who just put on tin-foil hats and call it a day, not for sophisticated hackers.
Benevolent Brother knows that everything like this is an arms race: once people know that their clever tricks don't work any more, they go to ground until they can develop cleverer and cleverer tricks. So it's important to let them think they are winning the arms race, so they don't develop better tricks.
So, BB is unlikely to act overtly against someone using Angel's proxying trick, and instead will focus other surveillance methods on them until it's certain that everyone involved in producing the system has been identified, and he knows what they are planning... which he might even allow to continue. A little smuggling of goods is a small price for society to pay, for the ability to closely monitor all those who might be likely to cause problems to that society.
They then become the coalmine canary: if someone else more dangerous needs some trouble, he's bound to contact the local hoods, and so expose himself.
If BB does make any busts, he'll make sure to publicly credit "informants" rather than technology.
Since anyone who made proxying or spoofing equipment would be known, and all uses of the equipment would be of highest interest to BB, anyone getting hold of the equipment for a sophisticated trick would likely already be under very close surveillance before even using it.
---
**So, if you can't fool it, what can you do?**
I think the answer is obvious. They're tracking the movements of your head, your phone, your car, your public transport use, your creditcard use. They're using facial recognition on the surveillance cameras on every corner, and every cellphone and car is *also* a surveillance camera. They will know if you go *anywhere you shouldn't be*.
So if the smuggler's den is under a big farmer's market, take up an interest in fresh fruit and veg, and then you're just visiting the market. The resistance contact works in an art gallery? Well, it's the weekend, why not visit some museums and galleries? Why it's practically your civic duty to gaze upon those portraits and busts of Benevolent Brother every now and then.
**To evade the Alibi Tracker, you don't need fancy technology hacks. You need... an ALIBI.**
[Answer]
## Move the crime
The Museum of Brother Benevolent has been broken into, and his Kindergarten Lunch Box has been vandalized. Both the Box and its glass case was destroyed by a small bomb. This happened at night.
It is not clear how the vandal(s) got into the building, but it is huge and has many possible entrance points. There were no Alibi transmissions nearby at the time.
Investigators are puzzled.
What actually happened was that the sacred Lunch Box had been sent on a tour a few months earlier. Somebody took the opportunity to place the bomb in the Box then, and it was counting down until the fateful night.
This was inspired by the novel
>
> "Theft of Pride" by Jack Sharp (pen name of Andy Weir).
>
>
>
[Answer]
Tired of over-complicated plans to escape that will inevitably trip you up on some small detail and ruin your day? Sometimes the simplest answer is the best.
**Fake your own death**
This tried-and-true method has been working for people to escape responsibility since long before Benevolent Brother came along, and it can work for you too. Of course, the big double-B keeps careful track of people's death these days, so it will need to be done carefully. But accidents still happen and bodies aren't always recovered despite their best efforts, so fake death is still going strong for people just like you.
The most effective strategy seems to be the "lost in the wilderness" type of accidental death. Rent a deep-sea fishing boat and vanish far from land. Go climbing in some remote mountain range and take a wrong turn into a nasty storm. Or board your trusty Cessna for a routine test flight over the desert. Whatever you choose, just make sure you're somewhere remote when you don the Faraday cage these other answers are so fond of using. And if you're in a vehicle, make sure there's little left of it when you abandon it and head for the rendezvous point with your accomplice or getaway vehicle. And remember to keep that cage on until you get your dastardly deed done! (And you might want to wait some weeks or months "off the grid" if your victim is in any way linked to your former life to reduce suspicion. Just some friendly advice!)
Once the heat has died down around your nefarious deed, simply reemerge with a harrowing tale of survival. Or don't- you might enjoy being free and simply remain "in the cage" living an anonymous life. Or head out of BB territory and live a completely unmonitored life for the rest of your days. You're free now, so it's up to you!
Good luck and enjoy the many benefits of faking your own death!
[Answer]
## Mass sabotage
If only your signal gets lost, you stick out as the sole suspect. If you could sabotage the system so that hundreds of people's signals get lost, you're safe. So bring down a few mobile towers, cause a blackout, block radio signals or something like that and you have a time window to go anywhere you want. Just make sure nothing about the crime points back to you. And have an old-fashioned alibi ready.
[Answer]
The person to be smuggled steps into a steel shipping container on the back of a truck, and the door is closed. It isn't a perfect Faraday cage, but it is enough to stop the towers getting the tracker signal clearly enough to decrypt it, and it doesn't look suspicious driving around.
At a leisurely 50km/h, they can get 5km away before the alarm goes off. Or they can go 2km, commit a quick thought crime, and come back.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/54644/edit).
Closed 7 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/54644/edit)
Obviously it depends on the superpower. But which is the best way with "common" powers like **Teleportation**, **Super speed**, **Super strength** or **Mind reading**?
Conditions:
* It is very important that it is safe and not going to expose your powers.
* Earn money not doing illegal or unethical things.
* There are people/governments searching for people with powers, worldwide
I thought of teleportation or super speed to transport objects without effort, but still being only one person would not earn much money, and you have to "wait" a reasonable time to be credible.
Mind controlling and doing random people to give you money would be very suspicious.
[Answer]
Without question, mind reading is the best option here of what you listed. The reason is very simple: it's the most self-contained.
If you need to make money fast, just head to any poker room and clean the table. Since you're not playing the house, they won't care as long as you don't take it too far. And you can always move up stakes. There's no short supply of tournaments to make easy money.
If the government is looking for people with powers, this kind of power is very hard to prove, especially if you keep it low-key.
But the most financially successful super power is time travel. Obviously something like poker is super easy (go back to the beginning of the hand if you were going to win) but imagine day trading. Memorize the stocks from today, go back 9 hours, and enter in your timed buy and sells. Of course, changing the timeline has inherent problems, but if you're only going back a day at a time you shouldn't have too many big changes from your butterflies.
[Answer]
Mind-reading. Become a therapist or 'life coach' to celebrities. You'll always know exactly what's at the root of their problems, and always be able to offer the kind of advice which they find palatable. And you can charge a small fortune for your 'exclusive' services.
[Answer]
All in all I have to ponder if hiding from the government is really the best idea. I imagine if you went to the CIA and proved them you could read peoples' minds they would pay you *a lot* to go to a state dinner with the heads of foreign powers. You just have to be "trust-worthy" in their eyes.
Basically no one will pay you like a government can, it's just a trick of getting them to see you as part of them, rather then an outsider (and possibly dissected). If you work for them, then you don't need to *hide* from them, and you get all that effort changed from finding you to protecting you.
Super-strength is probably going to be the hardest to make money off of. You'd be able to mostly ... do construction better? Another problem you're going to run into is the 'ethical' requirement. Ethical for whom? You *could* run that package across the country with super-speed quicker and cheaper (while still making money) than a delivery service, but from a certain point of view you're being evil because you're depriving dozens of people the chance to earn their wages and contributing to the downfall of the economy. Another example: maybe someone with mind-reading powers thinks the current president is a moron and decides they could do better. That person has an uncounter-able advantage in debates and talks, even if their own ability to lead is less-than-optimum.
[Answer]
If the Government is actively tracking down those with powers, the way you use them has to be subtle. Using your abilities to supplement your career and make your life easier would be the best way to make extra money without being too visible.
This won't make you money but it will save you some, if you have super speed or teleportation abilities, you don't have to catch trains, buses or drive to work if you have a traditional job. You could simply teleport/speed run your way to work each day, perhaps bring a bike with you to make the fact that you don't use a car or public transport more credible. This saves you money in fuel, tickets, tax etc. so your fortune can grow faster.
Super speed could also be very useful for quickly debugging computer programs. If a program has thousands of lines, simply reading it takes time for a normal person, but with super speed you can get through programs much faster to find errors. You could do contract programming jobs, where you get paid more anyway than a standard programmer, and you'll solve problems quickly, as you'll, "take the problem home to work on" read it at super speed, and find the missing semi-colon much faster.
You could use mind reading for lie detecting. Often, when people lie, they are thinking about the truth, or the fact that they are lying. This could help in a variety of careers, such as investing, detective work and court law. If you already know the witness is lying, you can trace their motives and find the person who paid them to cover up the crime. Generally, private detectives can make a lot of money if they are successful as they can charge more with a proven track record. Most of the heavy leg work would be negated by having powers as you can read your "target"'s mind to find out when they'll be cheating on their spouse, or when they are going to be meeting their drug dealer.
In the financial sector, mind reading or seeing the future would be very useful as you can learn businesses plans before they're implemented. For example, if you knew Pokemon Go was coming out in 2-3 years time, you could buy stocks in Nintendo when their prices fall, and make a fortune selling them when prices are much higher after Pokemon Go's release. Of course to keep suspicion off of you, there would have to be times where you sell at a slight loss, to prevent people from thinking you have powers. I knew a woman who made a big enough fortune selling stocks to retire comfortably at 28, so if you want to hit big, quickly, this would be the way to go.
[Answer]
Teleportation, Super speed, Super strength and all physical powers will be impossible to hide if you want to make money without attracting attention. Any witness will be a risk to be discovered. Mind reading is less obvious and I'd stick with this one. So become a private investigator. And if your ethics allow it : steal from the people who stole from others. You can read criminals' passwords, card numbers, secret bank accounts... It may not be legal, but would be just. Other career paths include negotiator or a job in finance. Knowing which corporation will purchase another one, or foreseeing financial results can be valuable for your stocks. Ethics in finance is not a concern as its existence is still an open question :P.
If you're in the upper range of super-powers, like Dr Manhattan, just create money out of nothing. Or just stop bothering about money because as a God, you definitely don't care.
[Answer]
# Mind Reading
This one has the most potential for making serious money, while also being hard to detect. it's also the one that skirts closest to the ethical boundaries. Any businessman, or professional negotiator, or diplomat, or spy,would have obvious advantages if they could read the minds of the other participants. However reading minds in these circumstances is pretty ethically dubious.
**A mind-reader would be an extremely successful detective**, either police or private. Simply knowing if someone you interrogated was telling the truth would be a huge career boost. You could reasonably argue that probing the minds of suspects is ethically OK if you used it only to determine the truth, and never mentioned or acted on any information you got that was irrelevant to the investigation. Mind-reading would be helpful even in a uniformed police role - you could know if the suspect was armed, and where they had hidden the stolen property.
Related to this might be that of some kind of legal consultant - either a legal investigator (similar to a police investigator), or a jury consultant. Knowing at any time what the jury is thinking would be extremely helpful to the average lawyer, as would knowing which ones had prejudices, and jury consultants are pretty well paid. It might be argued that this is no less ethical than being an average jury consultant.
# Super-invulnerability
Lots of people will pay you to do dangerous jobs, and its no big deal if you know you can't be hurt by them. Stunt-person is an obvious choice, but any kind of rescue worker would have a much easier time if they knew nothing could touch them. You might have to do some quick-thinking as to why the falling building didn't crush you to death, but most people are likely to believe "I was lucky" most of the time.
# Aqua-powers
Aquaman would have a pretty easy time locating missing shipwrecks, sunken treasure, downed planes, or anything else that takes submarines or commercial divers to do now. As an added advantage, the deep ocean is pretty sparsely populated, so you don't have to worry about meeting people while you are out swimming. Ability to command fish would speed things up enormously. Successful treasure hunters make serious money.
[Answer]
**Super strength or super speed:** Electricity generator. Would be easiest to hide when you already own at least one factory which uses a lot of it, add your power somewhere after the power meter, make sure your employees don't check up on energy consumption.
**Super speed**: Well when working from home then no one should notice if you do your 8h shift in two minutes (depending a little on your job, maybe you need to turn your work in spread over the day, but surely nothing some software couldn't do for you). You could also do lots of jobs simultaneously this way. But really, I don't know why you would do this. You would experience lots of hard working days when in reality just one passes.
**Mind reading** really is the most powerful one for covert stuff. Other answers already contain suggestion for it. Also
* Teacher: Would know exactly what your students don't understand
* Student: Would know exactly what you teacher wants to say, would learn much faster
* Job interviews: Get perfectly honest feedback and know what the interviewer likes to hear.
**Teleportation**: You could get a space suit, teleport to various place in space, collect stuff, place it in an appropriate space above Earths atmosphere for which you have previously calculated impact location and then teleport down, get out of the space suit, find the exact crash site and finally sell what you have found. Needs some serious physics to calculate those crash sites, but maybe you could ask at physics Stack Exchange. :-)
[Answer]
Think about the professions that make the most money today, and imagine a super power that would make one a top performer in that field.
One career that immediately comes to mind is professional athlete. To give just one example, you could be a heck of a pro baseball player if you had any of the following:
* superhuman speed
* accelerated reflexes/slowed time sense
* superhuman hand-eye coordination
* superhuman visual acuity
* superhuman strength
* telepathy (you know what pitch is going to be thrown)
* telekinesis (if you're a batter, you could add extra "oomph" to the ball or change the angle; if you're a pitcher, you can give it exceptional movement as it crosses the plate).
Except for telekinesis, you should be able to hide these without much effort if your talent levels are low enough. For TK, you'd need to be very careful that the movement you put on the ball looks close to natural, and for that you'd probably be better off having a very finely developed control.
One problem with this idea, however, is that if superpowers are known to exist, one of the organizations most likely to check for them is professional sports leagues. Plus, it puts you into the public eye, and you'd probably receive extra scrutiny from the government. Depending on your personal ethics, it may also cross the line into an unsporting advantage.
Another high paying profession is physician. If you had a high level of Biological Psychokinesis (BioPK), you could potentially be a world class physician without need for much study or practice. You could diagnose puzzling diseases with less time and a higher accuracy rate than Dr. House, and cure them without super-risky surgeries. If you hire yourself out as a concierge doctor, you can cater to the ultra-rich and make even more money.
[Answer]
If the superhuman has any literary talent, they could write novels and short stories at super-speed. They would need to use several hundred pseudonyms to disguise the fact this was only one author producing this enormous body of work. Their chosen field of writing doesn't need to be restricted fiction as non-fiction can be lucrative too.
Writing for a living is safe, it is not illegal, and it won't, if done right, expose their super-powers.
Of course, if the superhuman also had mind reading super-strength and invulnerability among their super-powers they could become a major investigative journalist. Crime and corruption would be easily exposed. People might become suspicious when this journalist has a remarkable tendency to survive the numerous murder attempts to silence them, and even at point blank range.
[Answer]
## Coal mine owner.
can always work weekends and create cavities so your miners will have an easier time getting through rock.
With a side business of selling diamonds (crush coal into diamonds with your bare hands
[Answer]
In America, having lots of money is generally considered to be a superpower (Batman, Iron Man, Elon Musk), so I would go for the power that gets you born into a very wealthy family.
Also, the general public will be no more suspicious with you than they are with any other rich person.
This is not a satirical answer.
[Answer]
There is regeneration. You can sale your body parts to shady people for good money.
[Answer]
Is Killgrave's suggestion superpower fair game? If so, you could ask people to make you the CEO of a huge company. Then you subtly use your powers to make yourself successful enough. Earning millions were never so easy.
[Answer]
**Super intelligence.**
Do you have superpowers? Or are you simply a genius? Who knows? In the meantime, you can:
* become a nuclear physicist, as it would be a piece of cake for you
* ace any job that requires problem solving (e.g. programmer, production improvement chief in a billionaire company, and so on)
* perfectly complete literally any task that requires you to think, including poker matches or even horse races, as you can make physics calculations on the run to determine the condition of each horse.
* help a lot of people on StackExchange (lol)
* you could even ace some kinds of sports, like those that require good aim, as you can calculate wind, angle, force, and so on and so forth, but still fail sometimes because you have a normal human body, so you won't draw too much attention.
Or you could shoot for the stars and even solve one (or more?) of the [Millennium Prize Problems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Prize_Problems), currently unsolved problems in mathematics that will grant you a prize of 1 million dollars *each*, **and** you would help humanity along the way. Of course, the more of them you solve, the more suspicious you will be.
[Answer]
# Speculative Pre-cognition
Knowing the outcome of a certain action, before you decide to do it
Not only will this allow you to make a killing at things like the lottery, stock market, a casino, business planning consultant ("You may not believe this, but manufacturing pink unicorn plushies is actually a good idea")... but it also provides you with the ability to evade your pursuers.
[Answer]
**Super Speed**
The possibilities of becoming a world class sporting superstar becomes almost incomprehensible not to do. I will pick one simplified example.
Win the sprint Quintuple-Quintiple. Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter in history completed the Triple-Triple at the Rio Olympics this summer. This was winning gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m. He is worth $60m!!
Now, with your super speed (and I assume something like a good share of super human stamina\*) you could win the 100m, 200m, 400m, 4x100m and 4x400m. This would probably build your worth to over $100m. Instead of training for speed you would just have to practice making your 100m winning time look like you were trying your hardest. Then again, Usain Bolt didn't exactly do this and no-one tested him in an area 51 lab... yet.
You also be a household name and be loved by many people.
\*The assumption the having one super power e.g. super speed also gives you super stamina irritates me. People with super strength should be snapping bones as it's only their muscles that are super strong. Super speed might not think or see quick enough to actually travel that fast!
[Answer]
## Very, very quietly
You mention only ethical and legal concerns, completely ignoring moral concerns, so my suggestions will be structured in the same way. One critical factor is the nature of one's ethics and the legal structure they submit to. The detection methods of the searching people/governments are also left ambiguous, making an answer even more difficult. The option of a protective client is also left unaddressed in the question.
*LEGALITY*
As legality is nothing more than a group of people saying it has to be a certain way, and has some method of backing up their laws (physical, social, or otherwise), your "legal" options will vary from country to country, and can be changed by simply moving. Some legal structures even ignore or refuse to acknowledge other legal structures as part of the laws.
*ETHICS*
The ethical strictures (ethics being defined for my purposes as inter-reactions concerning others, and moral as intra-reactions concerning one's self) will be potentially more restrictive. However, I will be unable to give detailed answers without some sort of idea of what ethical code your theoretical individual(s) would subscribe to.
After all, some ethical codes only require "good" treatment of a select group of individuals, while the same code permits pretty much anything to be done to "outsiders", up to and including theft, deception, and even murder. Some ethical codes also only require you to follow the legal code which applies to your own kind, and actively promotes ignoring the legal code of any other entity or organization. (Which is where morals start tying in, as well, but again, we are ignoring morals for this question).
**Teleportation**
This partly depends upon how exactly it functions. LoS-Range (Line of Sight-Range), Any-Mental-Visualization-Destination, Range-of-Leap, Atmospheric-Bubble-Effect, Risk-of-Material-Phase-Overlap, Self-Only versus Anything-Touching versus Anything-Seen versus Area-Affect, Living-Only or Non-Living-Only, Feedback-on-"Failure", Weight-and/or-Size-Limits, and so forth, all will change how this power could be used for profit.
This power could be difficult to use secretly, as there is usually a risk of observation at either departure or destination point. The risk increases if the tech level support remote monitors such as cameras, specialized lifeforms, robots, or sensors of various types.
If the individual can teleport objects without having to touch them, then this can be more profitable. Being able to remotely swap, add to, or remove the contents of a drawer, locker, safe, or storage unit has potential as a secure courier, as well as a thief, spy, or saboteur.
**Super Speed**
Again, exact parameters of the power become important. If the power quick enough to emulate a timestop, then it becomes very useful. Mid to high tech levels cause increasing levels of risk of exposure, however, even at such high speeds.
A career as a stage magician is a possibility, so long as the tech level doesn't support high-speed recording devices. Even if the speedy portions are hidden off-stage, you'd need to be careful of witnesses, planted or otherwise.
**Super Strength**
Possibly the most difficult to hide, unless your physique is non-obvious. Circus, Olympic, or Professional strongman would seem obvious fits, so long as control over the strength is very fine, and the individual can control their reactions so that they still react to situations as a 'normal' would, despite their strength. Bouncer or Bodyguard is also a possibility. If the strength is accompanied by toughness and resistance to damage, then exposure risks increases.
**Mind Reading**
Powers that have "no obvious effect" and are "not traceable" are going to be the best options for covert action of any kind. Remote Telekinesis, Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Precognition, Psychometry, Danger Sense, Empathy, and all other such powers typically fall into this category along with Telepathy (mind reading).
Telepathy has a large number of possible uses - truth sensing, negotiations, manipulation, politics, entertainment, interrogation, search and rescue, language interpretation, psychic hotlines, 900 numbers, magician's acts, gaming, diplomacy, and more.
## Other sources
There are many more powers which could function covertly or are non-obvious. I suggest looking up a superhero based RPG (book, not computer) and look through the suggestions for how to handle the various powers, as those groups have done the most thought-testing of the subject of your question.
[Answer]
How about the less common powers?
Shapeshifting: You may work as a photographer and just transform into whatever you are supposed to photograph instead of finding it/renting it/or hiring it. I think this is particularly useful for a shapeshifter that transforms into animals. Another option is to be a solo model agency - in particular if we can pair it with bilocation/multiplication/replication.
Healing powers: A person with healing powers that also studies medicine, in particular a surgeon, may disguise his powers in his profession. The idea is to get to the top of your field - not too fast, as to not draw much attention.
Multiple voices: if your super power is to sound like different people - in particular if it comes with perfect pitch - you could be able to pass a multitude of digital musicians. Create profiles with pseudonyms in social media, and put your music for sale in digital platforms.
Mind control: a sub-power of mind control is attention manipulation. That can be useful to quickly build a fan base for some stage performance and to mislead people who may be investigating you. Another sub-power of mind control is to put ideas in the mind of others as if it were their own (a form of suggestion). Use it to make them buy whatever you are selling, to make them think it is normal, and to have them look elsewhere for superpowers.
Note: people often mean will control when they say mind control, and people often mean thougth perception when they say mind reading. I may be using the terms in an unusual way here... yet, I claim that mind control is broader than will control and mind reading is broader than thougth perception. I consider mind reading as read-only Telepathy.
Accelerated body development: the power is body building. The resulting strength, speed, and physiognomy are not super. The power is to archive them faster! It can be useful for actors/models/athletes.
Matter manipulation: the ability to convert any substance into another. Simply create precious crystals and sell them - if you are a mine worker/owner much better.
Memory manipulation: the ability to read and write memories of others. It is very useful to gain intel - for those who want to work in intelligence agencies, for example. And also very useful to make people forget about your powers if they come to discover them, or mislead them to make them believe it is somebody else by changing their memory.
Odd manipulation: the power to rule the outcome of random events (assuming there are random events in the universe). This power is great to win in roulette.
Animal connection/Animal mind reading: become the next dog whisperer.
Psychometry: the ability to get psychic information from objects/read the history of objects. This works for Retrocognition too. These powers can be very useful for a private eye, or even a bounty hunter.
[Answer]
If the government is searching for people with superpowers, your best approach is to work for them, in that department.
Assuming that they don't have a airport-security-scanner-type way of checking for superpowers, because from your question it appears as if they are searching by looking for superpowers being used.
First, no matter what your superpower, you can almost certainly use it for a positive effect while hunting for others of your kind.
Secondly, you are one step ahead of them because if you are spotted and a report of the "someone was seen doing X in this region" comes in, you are likely to be the first to get it.
And finally, since many superpowers will make the job of hunting such people difficult and dangerous, it can be assumed that it is well paid.
[Answer]
**Why not display that you have superpowers and work with the strongest & highest paying government/syndicate?**
After a while even how subtle or clandestine you are, your powers will be noticeable either advertently or inadvertently. An example of inadvertently is, "John is like Hercules" for super strength.
It appears the popular "undetectable" superpower is mind reading however it is not hard to detect and will eventually raise suspicion. After a pattern of 'predicting' the right moves or knowing everything, you will be subject to scrutiny. Obviously the first guess would not be that you have superpowers but the unwanted attention is there. "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."
Super speed would be even more obvious to detect. Given that Usain Bolt is known to be the fastest man on earth, if you can move faster than him then you either need to tryout for the Olympics or you have superhuman speed powers.
Bottom line: Show the world your superpower. You can make more money showing it then trying to hide it because in the *very probable event* that your superpowers are revealed, it is far better to have already revealed it than exposed. **No one likes someone who has a hidden comparative advantage over them.**
[Answer]
## Telemarketer
Most telemarketers have to make dozens of calls for each successful sale. Not you. You know whether the customer will be interested in the product or not *before* you make the call. As you're going through the list of numbers, you read the mind of each person to see if they're interested in any of your products. You'd better have a wide variety of products, so that it's more likely that any given person will want at least one. You can skip 100 useless names in a short time, because you know that none of them would have been interested.
Also, you know what's going on in their minds, so you'll know exactly what to say to keep up their interest. Alright, some may say this is unethical, and I somewhat agree. But we're talking about mind reading here. This is the least bad of the bunch. Don't lie to them or anything, just keep up a good sales pitch.
Be as independent as possible. You want to be some sort of freelancer, with your own phone. You don't want a boss snooping into your phone history and noticing that you have a 97% success rate on your calls. While such a boss may simply promote you, there's also a risk that he'll report you to the people looking for people with superpowers. So stay independent, without a boss.
You'll make dozens of times more than a normal telemarketer.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs to be more [focused](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by [editing this post](/posts/15508/edit).
Closed 8 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/15508/edit)
The last human alive is on the Antarctic continent and needs to find a way to leave the planet before Earth becomes unsustainable for life. (He would look for a planet orbiting a younger star. That target planet may have been discovered and selected by astronomers some time ago but nobody has actually been there. Let us suppose the travel time would take five hundred years or so)
For the sake of this question, suppose:
* That man can't die, so it's fine if it takes him ten thousand years to build the spaceship. I mean that he is fundamentally immortal and whenever there's a risk for some fatal accident or even desire to kill himself, something will happen to prevent it. He does not age and does not fall sick (or if he does, he will eventually get better). In other words, if in our universe some event would have three possible outcomes A, B, C with probabilities $p\_A=99.9\%$, $p\_B=0.0999\%$ and $p\_C=0.0001\%$, and A results in certain death for the character, then in that world, actual probabilities become $p\_A'=0$, $p\_B'=99.9\%$ and $p\_C'=0.1\%$.
* Runaway greenhouse effect has made the continent pleasantly warm in summer. They are covered in trees and populated by small rat-like mammals, but parts of the planet away from the poles are arid and unbearably hot.
* He could travel around the planet to find raw materials if necessary, but he'd need a way to protect himself of the heat.
* His body has been modified (artificial skeleton, etc). He has the strength and weight of today's average sixty year old man, not more. He can carry light objects, he needs to eat and drink mostly like a regular human being.
* The old research centres (and, elsewhere on the planet, ancient cities) are still there but have been abandoned for a thousand years, so there's no electrical device left in a usable form.
* He has an engineering and physics background. Based on the immortality principle, if happened to choose the academic education that would be helpful for him for this endeavour.
* The story takes place in the far future so we may assume that physics unknown today have been discovered, and new technologies have been mastered and are well understood by that guy. (No fancy space-time modifications or teleportation, or time travel. At most more efficient propulsion methods, or energy harvesting techniques.) However any actual artefact has been lost.
At this point of this story, he is growing plants, cooks his meals on wood fire and collects rainwater.
My idea is to replicate the technological development, skipping parts that are not necessary, and my main concern is how to bootstrap this development. To obtain raw materials he needs to dig into the ground ([wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica#Geology_of_present-day_Antarctica) mentions significant amounts of iron, as well as natural gas and oil), so he needs an energy source. Should he go for wind or water turbines? Is it possible to find in the ground materials for generating and maybe storing electrical energy? Once you have machines that can dig into the ground to collect any raw material, supposing he knows how electronic devices and fusion reactors work, does it become feasible to construct them given enough time and patience?
[Answer]
The project is far too big for him to do himself. So he needs to automate. If he doesn't start out with the knowledge needed to try the right things, he's going to be stuck; doing research takes an incredibly long time, and he'd need to recreate hundreds of years of work of millions of people.
But let's assume he knows the basics of how semiconductors work, and so on. Very soon he's going to need to build some. But for that he'll need precise machining. So he'd better start by building some machine tools. That's tough to do without regular tools, so he'd better start with metallurgy and so on.
So, he starts with tools and uses them to build machine tools (lathes, etc.) and so on. He might spend thousands of years perfecting the designs to be quick to make with the ore he can dig and burn on his own, so that he can replace parts much faster than the things wear out. (He'd also probably end up favoring more difficult-to-work-with alloys of steel that have superior corrosion resistance just because the ratio of time-to-corrode to time-being-used would be a lot higher than for a normal machine, once his time was spent on other things.)
Then he has to get some sort of really basic semiconductor fabrication facility, and some sort of electricity generation. Hydroelectric power is almost stupidly easy to use: you need some decent wire to wrap around things, and a few permanent magnets would help, and you're off to a start.
So, he's got metal and electricity and knows how to make motors. That's good, because now he can start with dumb automation of things: doors that open and so on. He might not need to bother with batteries yet; he can't walk that far anyway, so just leave power cords everywhere. Normally we'd use plastic to insulate them, but wax paper is far easier to make (or segmented clay wrappers).
Now that he has gotten to this point, if he's managed to remember any physics (I hope he wrote it all down!) he'll hopefully recall how to build a lot of common simple tools for use with electronics: voltmeters and so on. And he'll remember how to grind lenses (pretty simple, actually), and so on. Eventually he'll have a decent set of pretty basic analytical equipment, just enough to get started on semiconductors.
He really, really wants semiconductors, because, made robustly, they can last practically forever.
This would be the hardest part, though: you need to do chemistry to get the right doping agents, you need to have things clean to get good silicon crystal growth, and so on. There might be easier ways, but we haven't really found them. If he put all his effort into making simple circuits that would help him automate things he was doing by hand, he might just be able to bootstrap to the point where he could generate enough computational capacity to do something interesting: having machines designed to build machines that build those same machines and produce semiconductor facilities and so on.
Once you get to the point where you can automatically keep this process going, the man could focus his attention on each area that needs improvement. I'm not sure how many thousands or millions of years it would take one person with largely automatic factories to figure out enough materials science to make components enough tougher so he wasn't spending all his time fixing critical things that broke. Or to figure out programming languages in which he could implement enough artificial intelligence to get the machines to start e.g. selecting sites for mining, instead of him finding them and setting them up.
But eventually, maybe, he would. And then he sort of *would* be a god, a god of simplistic autonomous machines that would do his bidding to extract resources and eventually put them towards building a spaceship. That would, in all likelihood, not be the hard part, at least if he has time. He's got a whole planet full of resources (and robots) and as much time as he needs to set off rocket after rocket until he works it all out, and if he needs to spend a thousand years to send enough stuff into orbit to sustain him on a journey to another star, who's counting?
(I think 500 years is a serious underestimate, though; I'd expect tens of thousands.)
So, one person with just their own hands and no tools can't reasonably do it. But with machines, they quite possibly can, and one can build machines with one's own hands.
[Answer]
It may not be physically possible in a world with entropy.
<http://banjobasics.julieferris.com/Wolcott69/wolcott/space.html>
**15.5 billion man hours was spent on the Apollo project during its first decade.**
That still doesn't account for everything because the Apollo program was able to buy comodities from outside like steel. Its engineers didn't have to grind their own wheat to survive while doing it.
Let's assume he knew everything there was to know about space programs before the apocalypse and never made a wrong turn and knew exactly what to do so it would only take him 5 billion hours and he was really good at living off the wild and was able to dedicate 5 hours every day to nothing but producing things for space travel. It's still going to take him a billion days - **2.7 million years**
Think of it this way: he needs X number of miles of insulated cable, he needs many tons of fuel etc but he's only one man with limited equipment. If it takes him 10,000 years to make all the wires he needs then by the time he finishes the last ones the first ones have rusted/perished/rotted. He spends years making fuel but 10,000 years later the fuel barrels are rotting through with rust and some of the chemicals have eaten through the barrels.
Some things just can't be done with one set of hands.
[Answer]
**It would take him as long as it takes to selectively breed a sentient species, plus a few more years.**
Life evolves faster than a single man could replicate all of modern technology and construct a space ship. Even if his starting critters are all rats, the best bet of our lonely earthling is to obtain some help.
He'll need to help generation after generation of his biggest, brightest, most dexterous rats successfully breed. It would probably be a good idea for him to selectively speciate his rats to get a few breeding lines going, as well. This is all assuming that none of the research bases in Antarctica are home to more advanced animals that he could evolve into helpers.
A conservative estimate for the time that this would take would be the time it took for early tree shrew-like primates to evolve into humans: **about 60 million years**. Of course, selective breeding programs driven by an intelligent force may move a bit quicker than that, but anywhere in the tens of millions of years is still less time than he would need to build a fully functioning spaceship on his own.
Once his rat-men have evolved, the time it will take for them to develop technologically to a point where they can build his space ship will be comparatively short, a mere tens of thousands of years at most.
[Answer]
The human brain does not have an infinite capacity. I have a degree in mechanical engineering and am well read at a popular level in many technical fields, but I would have no practical idea how to locate and identify necessary ores and the chemistry needed to smelt needed metals. High tech materials even less so. I took materials science classes, but never studied in detail the actual manufacturing processes for say heat treating. I would simply specify the kind of steel I would need in a design. Even though I understand the differences in different kinds of steel at a relatively deep level, I have no practical experience in actually producing them. And the industrial engineer that knows these processes would have no idea how to design the needed machines.
I have only barely scratched the surface of the list of things I would not know. Just to achieve manned LEO with chemical rockets I would need many thousands of years of science and engineering. Having complete blueprints would not even make a real difference as there is so much in-depth knowledge missing from the blueprints necessary to completely understand and implement them.
I need somehow to build everything to work together at the same time. Eventually as I built more infrastructure, entropy would destroy things I have built faster than I could maintain them. I would have to create an army of automation just to put together all of the large scale systems to pull of a rocket launch.
I would need fairly large electric power plants, computers, refrigeration, cryogenics, telescopes, and many other technologies to make this practical. I would need to be a god with essentially unlimited mental capacity, not a man.
Antarctica is resource rich but not developed, as such it would have some of the richest resources on the planet assuming that they have not been depleted in the interim. So at least one point of good news. Global warming would have to be very extreme to make Antarctica livable though.
[Answer]
Like others have mentioned, it may be essentially impossible for a person to build all of the required infrastructure, even if immortal. However, your character possesses a rather unique "power" that he could use to his advantage:
>
> In other words, if in our universe some event would have three possible outcomes A, B, C with probabilities $p\_A=99.9\%$, $p\_B=0.0999\%$ and $p\_C=0.0001\%$, and A results in certain death for the character, then in that world, actual probabilities become $p\_A'=0$, $p\_B'=99.9\%$ and $p\_C'=0.1\%$.
>
>
>
If you allow your character to recognize this ability and use it to his advantage, he simply needs to set things up so that failure at each milestone means certain death. For example:
* The chances of properly building/securing/ventilating a mine without prior experience is low. But, if your character marches in to the deepest parts of his mine, periodically bellowing a horn or pounding a drum, his "ability" will guarantee that he got the construction right -- preventing a cave-in from crushing him and noxious gases from asphyxiating him.
* Time to learn how to forge super-strong steel? Give it a shot, and test your first batch by forming a chain with the resulting steel. Set up a rig so that, when triggered, the chain will be loaded with a platform of boulders. If the chain fails, the boulders would fall on your character -- which obviously cannot happen. The only alternative (no matter how unlikely) is that he gets the process right on his first attempt.
If done correctly, this could save many thousands of years to the required time.
[Answer]
So far, I like the answer about breeding minions; really that's the only viable solution. However I don't feel like the question of *whether or not it can be done* gets at the heart of your question, so much as *where would he start?*
I often entertain myself by thinking about what I would do if I were like the character in ***A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court***, who, after time traveling accidentally, and armed with only an almanac and knowledge of how modern things work, overshadowed Merlin.
If you know what you're looking for, certain ores can be found by walking around. Useful quantities of copper, iron, and other such materials can be found lying about on the ground. Softer metals, such as copper, can be smelted in a campfire. Harder metals such as iron take more heat, and therefore more sophistication, *but the source of heat can be the same fuel (firewood)*.
So, to your unspoken assertion, it's a straightforward thing for your immortal man to skip the ~3000 years from the start of the Bronze Age until the start of the Iron Age by reading a book that says, "here, smelt these ores using the following configuration of tools and materials that you can find by walking around." Steel is simply iron with a certain level of carbon (charcoal) added to the mix. Different amounts of carbon account for different qualities of steel, each of which is useful in different manners.
So, materials that can be found by walking around can be turned into advanced materials with a little knowledge and implementation. That said, minions would be helpful. Or some sort of magical ability to spawn another temporary instance of himself to complete a task.
```
Naked man in a forest can hand-construct a trap that catches a deer.
A found sharp stone butchers the deer and provides a hide, which can
be stretched, dried, tanned, and turned into clothing; meat to feed
him; antlers for tool handles; etc.
Clothed-and-fed man can rub two sticks together to make a fire. If
he's as lucky as you assert, the sharp rock he used to skin the deer
is flint, and he has another piece with which to make sparks, making
it easy to start a fire. But rubbing sticks works too.
Clothed, fed, warm man now has charcoal as an output of the fire.
Gathering some clay, he makes an oven in which to burn the charcoal
to make a very hot situation where he can smelt iron in a crucible
he carved from a rock using a copper chisel he smelted in that
campfire and a hammer made from some heavy stone and the deer
antler.
Some of the iron is used to create a wire draw, through which he
pulls copper until it becomes wire. He finds a lodestone, using a
piece of iron on a stick and waits for a rock to jump up and stick
to it, makes a truss out of some wood, wraps the copper wire around
it, then mounts the lodestone in such a way that, when the truss is
spun, electricity is created in the wire. On to a water wheel,
which he builds out of wood using his fancy new steel saw with a
wooden handle. He mounts the lodestone-and-copper generator to the
water wheel, and he has a power plant.
More copper wire and more lodestones, and he builds an electric
motor. This helps immensely, and the project continues. As you can
see, he's come a long way, but has a long way to go...
```
[Answer]
So, you need to bootstrap a million+ man-year intellectual effort by yourself. There is only one real option. You have to cheat.
You come from a technological society that has mastered nano-technology including the following that are embedded within you as part of your full medical package.
* [Universal Molecular Assembler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_assembler)
* [Memory implant with the complete tech. library option](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513681/memory-implants/)
* [Intelligence implant with the full AI and V/R options -- think Star Trek level of computer intelligence with an internal holodeck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_amplification)
Now you can command your internal AI to extrude new copies of these magically high tech versions of machines and start the bootstrapping process. The V/R option would be useful when the AI realizes that you would like to provide input re: priorities and design decisions, status updates, etc. If you are bored by the details, you can pretty much issue the commands and go about your life as a beach bum or whatever as your army of nano-machines do all the work.
With this level of tech, you could manage LEO within 6 months, or go straight to an pulsed Orion drive mega-launch (city sized) able to go the to nearby stars within a year. Exponential growth is truly powerful.
Resource shortage are not a problem at all. The earth is covered with all the rare materials you could ever want, they are just to dispersed to be economically mined given our current methods. You could just process seawater to get all the iron, gold, silver, uranium, titanium, etc. that you would ever need.
If you need the hero stuck for a longer period, just make it take longer via any complications that suit you. Of course, we don't have any of these technologies, but they is nothing in physics that preclude their existence.
[Answer]
Invulnerable, you say?
Total yield from a modern nuclear weapon is 418400 TJ.
If all of that force could be directed at the man, that would be
Ek = 1/2 mv^2.
60 kg person would be launched at 1.18\*10^8 m/s.
Lets assume that the force would not be entirely transferred to the person, even if 1/100000 of it was (presumably sitting on it would transfer at least this amount, probably much more)
Total energy transfered = 4.184 \*10^12 J
Velocity = 330 km/s
Escape velocity from the Solar system is 43 km/s
So you would be travelling to other solar system with 287 km/s velocity, which would get you to proxima ceturai in under a thousand years.
Sure, the vacuum might be an unpleasant way to spend a millenium, but this guy is immortal, and a possible event happening is Oxygen spontaneously quantum teleporting into his lungs (probability of this happening normally would likely involve the creation of new numbers to describe it), so I am assuming that will happen as all alternatives would lead to his death, so probability becomes 1.
The best guidance system would be a self destruct button set to trigger if he misses his target. Therefore, he would have probability 0.99999999999999999999 of missing his target and 0.00000000000000000001 of hitting, but that becomes probability 1 of hitting, as any option that leads to his death won't occur.
Building a nuclear bomb is MUCH easier than building a rocket.
[Answer]
My mental image of a technologically advance civilization is one of a pyramid. Each layer of technology relies on underlying layers of technology and labor. You might know loads about rocket science but know nothing about the production of the fuel that the rocket needs.
Your sole survivor also needs to feed, cloth, recreate, shelter, etc. himself while building that ship and he has to provide all the labor for that too (for most people living in primitive conditions, that's a full-time job).
I think if the OP changed the first sentence to
>
> "The last **technologically sophisticated** human alive is on the
> Antarctic continent and needs to find a way to leave the planet before
> Earth becomes unsustainable for life."
>
>
>
It leaves open the possibility that the few remaining humans have reverted to primitive living conditions. They can provide the necessary labor, infrastructure, and support. As your sophisticate masters one area (say iron smelting), he would pass the details on to his primitive neighbors and have them develop the necessary industry and volume of production.
Ultimately, he'd be the crazy undying hermit wizard living over the hill and passing out seemingly "magical" artifacts & spells.
By the end of the story, all of the remaining humans would live in a technologically sophisticated society again.
You might enjoy the **[Safehold](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safehold)** series by David Weber.
[Answer]
The other comments are fantastic, if you really are dedicated to keeping your person alone (note that even for a very healthy human that would take a psychological toll that might cause him to give up - but we will ignore that for the sake of this for now).
However, you said engineering and physics background. If he had been a robotics engineer, it might be reasonable to think that he could possibly construct helpers that mitigate the man hours involved (sentience is optional, and probably more trouble than it is worth).
Once he has some robots automating time consuming/dangerous tasks (initially possibly just tilling/planting/harvesting food for instance), he can make more incremental changes - improve the power supply, improve the bots to be more capable, etc, etc. This will still take an enormous amount of time, but it would allow you to build the factories and such you need (you just have to be really lucky and have few things break down until you have robots capable of diagnosing problems)
Note that this will not help (much) with leaving to the hotter regions since you do not have a reliable communication network until shortly before you are ready to head to space. Your final tests would be manned by robots and would be designed to set communication satellites and such in orbit.
To expedite the process you might have your character find a robot that is capable enough to repair itself and follow simple instructions - the self repair explains how it is still running and allows for plot turns where the robot has to rebuild itself and such (before the reader realizes the robot can repair itself). You can decide how much and how capable this robot is to bump things along better (for instance if the robot knows how to manufacture steal or put together another robot you have saved decades of work for yourself).
One other thing that could be helpful would be having a library that contains all the science you need - everyone is right on the time scale **if you have to invent the science from scratch**. But if you have access to a book on rocket physics or steel smelting, you have a lower learning curve. Still will take lifetimes worth of effort to accomplish, but you are not having to learn about gravity and optimal fuel requirements to get to LOE etc.
[Answer]
>
> My idea is to replicate the technological development, skipping parts that are not necessary, and my main concern is how to bootstrap this development.
>
>
>
Bad idea. I don't think you can replicate technological progress to the present by "replaying it" as a single person. In our world, everything requires maintenance and has a "service life". This can result in unresolvable bottlenecks for Immortal Man. Basically, if he gets to a configuration in which the stuff he's trying to maintain breaks down faster than he can fix it, he's stuck and can't make progress from that point.
In our history, we built things in a certain way that was "cost effective", in order to make profits. But Immortal Man isn't trying to optimize the same parameters, so his solutions should be different. So he really ought to choose the path of building things that aren't cost effective so much as they are durable. I think it would look very different from the way we do things.
[Answer]
The point has been made that one person cannot do this because one human mind cannot hold the information required. I think this is a valid point. Time has been eliminated from the equation, but the person is only of normal intellectual capacity and somewhat frail physical strength.
One approach would be for the person to study the most advanced records he can find about spaceships. Then begin to build one. Of course the plan will immediately run into problems- you need a piece of, say, machined titanium. The titanium ore will have to be found, then smelted, then cast, then machined. So our hero will have to start from a vague knowledge of metallurgy, geology and mining to become enough of an expert to identify titanium (perhaps it's easier to find some in an ancient piece of machinery) and then find or create *all* the titanium that the project will likely ever require. Once that is accomplished, the person can then forget about finding titanium and learn the next task. A task that would be accomplished by experts in a team sitting around a conference table may take years (or hundreds of years) because the person would have to learn and re-learn each specialty to respond to concerns from other roles in a development team. Since the person is assumed to be smart enough to learn each specialty in a finite length of time, and since the interactions of humans are discrete and of limited bandwidth, eventually every single task can be accomplished, in a recursive serial fashion rather than a massively parallel fashion, but it will eventually get done if it is possible and if this person has the willpower to make it happen.
[Answer]
So as others have pointed out, one pair of hands can't do it, nor can one mind hold all the information needed. Clearly if he tried to do everything himself it would be impossible. So he can't do it that way, he has to try something else.
After a thousand years nothing really useful will be left, so even going looting is a fools errand. If it weren't that long then go loot tools and equipment and books and materials that will save decades to possibly even centuries or more.
He has to use machines obviously to do everything for him, including the building of the machines eventually. Having one person do it is still pretty implausible, but he would have to focus on feeding himself, and iterating on getting basically a robot that is capable of performing other tasks including getting the materials to make other robots, and making other robots. So small scale and simple as possible is key; of course, when talking about robots, well, we don't know how to make robots that meet those requirements yet, and building the components involved requires as we currently understand some pretty high tech equipment, or getting pretty big (as computers don't have to be built out of microprocessors see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine>).
Of course, even once he had the computer of whatever form there is still the programming which is itself a huge task (~4 million lines of code in Windows 3.1 for example); and what of a compiler and monitor; your guy might not have those but be using stone punch cards in all likelihood to start out at least.
Once he is able to build self replicating robots that gather the material for their replication and produce a surplus as well as take command from him, well, then he would be in business; but he would already have to know how to build and program such things to start out with, and never forget across the centuries it would take to get to that point. From that point it would be a matter of having his self-replicating machines make enough of themselves to build his rocket ships, test them, and so forth.
There would be an extremely low likelihood of success and it would take a very long time; however, he is functionally immortal and virtually assured of success given the set up; so he starts working on his Analytical Engine and developing a small scale forge; still probably quicker than trying to breed intelligence into his rat neighbors.
[Answer]
Some of the answers to this question are being hammered out already in the [Open Source Ecology](http://opensourceecology.org/) project with the [Global Village Construction Set](http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/). It won't get you all the way to building a rocket, but you will be able to bootstrap an agricultural/industrial civilization starting with very few raw materials.
[Answer]
Even to design a space craft that just goes out of earth atmosphere requires precise calculation. Even a slight error might put the whole launch in problem. Space craft uses many materials that are not easy to produce. Even to get the materials needed for building space craft may take years of hard work. For building a complete space craft might take a really long time . Making building such thing almost impossible.
But if the technology at that time uses biomaterials found naturally and they have some how developed different method of mathematical abstraction different from any present methods that some how simplifies the present complex problems to be easily solved in low power computing devices . This might be possible (considering that these materials can some how processed easily to withstand the conditions during space travel) but still might take long time.
] |
[Question]
[
A supreme god has decided that reality has some serious faults. Supply lines are moving too slowly, technology has stagnated, and disasters threaten the planet's future structure. As such, they intend to introduce several patches to reality updating humans, the way biology and physics works, and lots of stuff.
They want to inform humans of this so that they can be prepared, offer respecs to people whose current builds might be negatively impacted by the patch. They also don't want to cause widespread panic or devastation or damage to society from things like having patch notes pop up in front of drivers so that they crash their cars.
How can they best give people patch notes without causing widespread disruption and death?
[Answer]
This isn't something that you can leave up to proxies that some might call 'prophets'. Prophets, especially in this day and age of higher education, are often seen as being unreliable charlatans, and people are more inclined to believe what they can experience for themselves.
So, with that in mind, you need to notify *everyone* with the wit to understand the message... but how to do it?
The safest way would be to pass on the message in people's dreams. While dreaming, people are typically in a safe place, unlikely to have an accident (other than one that they might have been prone to *because* they were sleeping) because a message from the upgrade team popped into their minds.
If the upgrade notice and patch details were transmitted to its recipients in a way that they would be remembered as if they were a long-term memory and not a mere ephemeral dream to be forgotten soon after waking, the fact that *everyone* has had an identical, unforgettable dream with the exact same content should be sufficient to convince even the greatest sceptics that something out of the ordinary has happened, and that the content of the shared dream is something that should be given serious consideration.
If the dream predicts some rare but unmistakable event, such as the supernova of a nearby (but not *too* nearby) star at a particular place and time, then that waking corroboration would put the message beyond any doubt, and at that point, anyone who chose to ignore its message wouldn't be able to claim afterwards that they didn't know or weren't told.
You might not be able to get 100% of people to pay attention, but you can at least make those who are ignoring the matter have to *work* at ignoring it.
[Answer]
## We already have the patch notes... we just don't call them that.
The whole Bible is just a bunch of user documentation and patch notes told in a narrative format. In the Old Testament, God describes all the things humans needed to do to work with Natural Law 1.0. All of the "Laws" of the Old Testament were in fact instructions on how use the world before the 1.1 update. No body knew about Chemistry back then because it did not exist, just a bunch of hard-coded cause and effects. You drink water, you stop being thirsty, you rub two sticks together, you make a fire, you sacrifice your first born goat, and the rest of your goats will be bigger.
Then you hit Isaiah, and the tone of the Bible changes. It stops being so much a user manual and starts being filled with all these prophesies about how God will change the world. Then somewhere around 5BCE, God released a local version of his patch in the area surrounding Jerusalem. As the laws of nature changed, all sorts of bugs happened. Some people went blind, some went lame, some died unnatural deaths, some became demonically possessed, etc. So he went around fixing the bugs and repairing the damage. Once the bugs were all resolved, and everything was made backwards compatible, he pushed the update to the whole world, and we are all now running Natural Law 1.1.38.
It was a pretty cool patch really, now we have chemistry and physics and stuff so that we can now mix and match things to create our own new cause and effects... although it would have been really nice if they would have kept the blood sacrifice stuff, but it turned out that system had some pretty nasty exploits.
Thereafter, the beginning of the New Testament serves us as the revised user manual telling us what features were depreciated and what features are new ... but ever since the current version was released, he's been working on a much bigger update: Natural Law 2.0. This is where the book of Revelations comes in. This one he expects to have some pretty major consequences so he warns us about the plagues, famines, wars, and death etc, but he also informs us of his plans to backup user accounts (the rapture) and restore them when all is said and done (the resurrection) with new bodies and a new world map. He's also warned us that a lot of user accounts will be getting banned after the Natural Law 2.0 update since better user account moderation seems to be one of the big key points of the new system. Since this next patch is coming with a world wipe, there is not really anything to prepare for... though it is highly recommended that you follow the current terms of service to make sure you don't get banned after the new moderation tools are in place.
*... for a less Christian biased version of this answer, just replace the Bible with whatever "holy texts" would be appropriate for your setting, and just have those texts already follow the theme of documentation/patch notes cycles. If you use ficticous holy books, you can in fact have a much more clear development cycle documented.*
## Why use something as unreliable as holy texts?
Because the god wants you to go about your normal life. Any god that needs to patch reality is admitting that he messed up something in the first place. Sure, he COULD come to everyone in a dream and explain everything he did wrong and what he needs to do to fix it, but the sudden confirmation that we are all at the mercy of a god AND that that god is fallible could have devastating consequences on society. Atheists and religious persons alike would have their entire identities shaken to the core. All the things we tell ourselves that help us cope with the daily stresses of life would suddenly be kicked out from under us resulting in a global case of mass hysteria. I mean, last time he tried confirming his existence to tell us about a patch he was doing, he got nailed to a cross...so, maybe full disclosure is not the best of polices.
No, he needs to release patch notes to cover his own arse, but he also needs to maintain order. So instead of announcing in an unmistakable manner "Here everyone is exactly everything that I got wrong!" the god in question can use holy texts and human intermediaries so that when things don't work out that god can just blame those silly humans who did not write it down properly, or maybe they did not listen right, or maybe it was a translation error... and for those who don't read the bible, even better! The “[But the plans were on display…](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on-display-on-display-i-eventually)” excuse is a handy way to cover your butt without exposing yourself.
[Answer]
## The Sky
>
> Hey, that comet wasn't there before! Wait, it's forming Markdown code? Oh, look at the top! A filename! README.md!
>
>
>
Scientists and laymen alike look at the sky on a daily basis. Just stick some large, hard-to-miss message in the sky, and teach the peoples of Earth all they need to know. You'll have to make it change languages depending on whos looking at it, but that's trivial for a god.
## Dreams
>
> It is I, your mighty God. I've come to show you the release notes for The Universe, v1.2. Here they are!
>
> • Deleted pain
>
> • Upgraded driver for the SENTIENCE system
>
> • Fixed bug that caused computer to overheat when spacebar was held down
>
>
>
A lot of people have covered this already, but yeah. Tell something to someone while sleeping. Some people might ignore it, but not everyone, and when everyone in the world has the same dream, things might get a little more (or less) believable.
## Thought Delivery
Now, a supreme god could do something physical, or dreams. Or he could just make everyone believe one thing. "Reality now works this way". Boring, sure, but effective.
## Food for Thought
>
> Yay! Our pizza arrived! Hey, there's a message on the box! "PATCH NOTES FOR THE UNIVERSE v1.2"
>
>
>
Everyone eats. Set it up so that all food has a message inside of it, weather it's a message on a pizza box, a paper inside a fortune cookie, or a change of the nutrition facts on a box of cereal.
## Probability is for losers
>
> "Don't knock over the milk, chil—", "Aw... come on. Seriously!" "Hey, daddy , look at the words in the milk!" PATCH NOTES FOR THE UNIVERSE VERSION 1.2
>
>
>
Make it so that it's incredibly likely that anything that happens will result in a message showing. Like, you drop milk and it forms words. Or a wall cracks and the cracks form words. You get the idea.
[Answer]
*Blink*
Just a moment ago, I had been driving down I-4pi, getting annoyed at the guy cutting me off only 50 feet from my exit. And now I was standing in a pure white.... nothingness. Nothing was underneath me, yet I was standing without falling. Nothing above me, yet there was light enough to see whatever there was to see.
And what there was to see was people.
And endless horde of people, stretching around me, before me, and behind me as far as the eye could see. Even as the image registered in my brain, the person in front of me took a step forward, and I did likewise without thinking.
"Oh, hey, it's you."
I looked around for the source of the voice. In the queue next to me, I recognized the guy who had just cut me off.
"Sorry about that," he said. "I think we were both trying to get to the same exit, and - well, I've been trying to get over for the last half mile, but you're the first person to give me anything resembling an opportunity."
I forced a noncommittal smile onto my face. "Yeah, I've been having the same problem." The queue advanced again, and I went with it. "I've been having a rough day, what with the kids not letting me get out the door. I don't think I'm going to make it to my interview on...." I trailed off, not sure how whatever *this* was was going to affect my drive time.
The guy grimaced like he had just bit off a chunk of the white nothingness and discovered that it was definitely not marshmallows. "So, uh, what do you think this is all about?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. I almost feel like I should be freaking out about this, but for some reason.... I'm just not. Like whatever this is, it's okay." A few murmured agreements sounded around us as the line moved forward again.
Our conversation continued as the line slowly advanced. I have no idea how long it took; it could have as easily been years as minutes. But suddenly I found myself at the front of the line, where a series of white tableclothed folding tables stretched off to the right and left as far as I could see. Behind the tables were a number of winged beings with bored looks on their faces.
"Next, please," the guy across from me intoned. I crossed the gap to stand across the table from him.
"Please sign here for your receipt of Form PN-1.1, notes on the upcoming systems patch of reality."
"I, uh-" I looked around. I didn't see any notes, only the paper he wanted me to sign.
"Sign here, please," he repeated, tapping the suddenly highlighted, underlined space with a pen that I was sure he wasn't holding a moment ago. I was halfway through signing before it occurred to me to demand to see the form I was signing for; and the moment it did occur to me, my brain was filled with a chaotic mess of data that mostly didn't apply to me personally, but I could almost swear I sensed some underlying purpose to it all.
And then it was gone, I was done signing, and the winged man was shoving another paper at me. He didn't bother explaining this one to me, as the rapidly evaporating release notes left me with some instructions on selecting compensation for the inconvenience of the upgrade process. I hurriedly selected a charisma and rapport boost to help me with my interview, and then suddenly--
*Blink*
My anger unexpectedly dissipated as I watched the guy who had just cut me off continue down the exit in front of me. I was sure he had his own life and problems, and -- My anger unexpectedly dissipated as I watched the guy who had just cut me off continue down the exit in front of me. I was sure he -- *Whoah. Deja vu.* I shook my head in confusion. *Did something just happen?* No, surely that weird hiccup in my perception of time had something to do with the feeling that my brain was shrinking, until it was once more small enough to fit inside my head.
*Weird, I don't remember taking any drugs last night.*
It ultimately turned out that not only was the guy who cut me off going to the same place as me, he was actually my interviewer. Normally this would have thrown me off my game, but for the first time in just about forever, I felt like I could handle talking to people. Also, I could swear that I saw the same odd feeling of familiarity on his face that I felt myself.
I ended up getting the job, but given how the rest of the world suddenly seemed to be on the upswing as well, I probably would have been fine without it. But I'm not the only one who had the weirdest feelings out of nowhere that day.
[Answer]
Select some key users and invest them of the role of "prophets". They will spread the word that "the change" is coming, while giving detailed descriptions of what "the change" will entail.
Make it with enough notice, so that the word can spread, and the "prophets" can gain some early adopters to help.
Maybe you can also release a limited beta in a test environment, calling it "miracles", just to be sure that your Agile WOW hasn't screwed things up. You still remember the BSOD at the presentation of Windows, right?
[Answer]
Advance warning. Do unrelated things first. Make them very nice things, without putting people under control, because while some people will still suspect that the nicer they are, the worse they are being gulled, bad things will make everyone suspicious.
Though it may be well to make some of them stern. Forcibly detoxifying drug addicts and marvelously preventing them from getting high ever again may convey the message that not listening may have unpleasant consequences.
To provide explanations that people will understand, use words. Instead of hijacking electronics, change printed words, such as signs. Illiterate people will need verbal messages. Sea shells and other hollow objects that can not speak, perhaps.
[Answer]
### Invent brane collisions, then give humanity the means to detect them, then throw a brane at them and let them figure it out.
(Also, drop some hints that it's happened before.)
One of the foundational principles of modern science is that the rules of reality don't suddenly *change* for no reason. Unless there is a specific reason to believe otherwise, anything that is happening now is assumed to have always been happening, and anything that happened in the past is expected to continue happening.
If something changes (there are humans now when there weren't before, technology advances, stars and planets formed, the universe came into existence) it is only because it was caused by a more primordial, less changeable law (evolution, thermodynamics, quantum fluctuations).
Throw away this principle, and you basically throw away all of science. How can we guess what happened in the past based on the present, or make plans for the future, if there is no foundational rule that isn't suddenly going to change for no reason?
Since the question asks for an answer that will not cause widespread disruption, you definitely don't want to resort to mass revelation, prophets, or a sudden change with no explainable natural cause. This would reveal the presence of the supreme god *and* make people less confident in science's ability to predict the future. Major disruption.
So you invent a more fundamental law that you pretend is the "real" cause for the changes, put hints for these changes happening in the past, and set them up in just such a way that scientists can plausibly explain why they didn't notice before.
One mechanism that can do a lot of heavy lifting and work with a modern understanding of physics: create evidence for "brane collision events" where collisions with parallel universes (that you just invented) can suddenly alter certain cosmological constants. This has been part of speculative physics for a while, although there isn't any evidence for it actually happening...yet.
Use subtle, subconscious revelations to guide scientists to create a device that can detect nearby branes, and plant a few clues in the fossil record that can be understood as brane collisions that happened millions of years ago (or better yet, put some clues in relatively recent history - like, once every few centuries - so they think that these collisions have already been happening fairly regularly without destroying human civilization, and therefore don't immediately panic).
Then you can just let scientists figure out on their own that these events happen - and that there's a brane heading right for us. Also give them a way of predicting the new rules of that brane, so that it doesn't cause undue panic and they can prepare for the change (and update technology so that it still works with the new rules). With any luck, you can get away with the update and cause no more disruption than the Y2K bug - in addition to creating a mechanism that will allow you to apply more updates in the future.
[Answer]
Ok so your gods are going to intervene sticking little (yellow ??) patch notes on windows and doors..
**500 years ago it worked**
It could work, when religious directions can solve the issues. Maarten Luther stuck 95 theses on paper, on a church door in 1517, which changed a quite lot in modern Christianity.
But what Luther did was only a reminder to the church, rather than humanity in general. As I understand your question, these "patch notes" should solve issues in real life and improve society. Belief systems are not good at that, they mostly fight symptoms rather than providing real life templates that solve problems.
**.. modern humans prefer to solve their issues without intervention**
Since technology advanced and magic declined, "gods" and "humans" diverged and the gods became impopular, or viewed upon as primitive. Lots of humans would choose a path 180 degrees different from a god's advice, just to show they don't believe in gods. These little patch notes come from the government, in their view.
**Subliminal patch notes**
A modern god would probably choose some secret method for this: to whisper the patch note words in our ears, while we sleep.. or mix in subliminal messages on certain websites. The human would wake up, or "invent" a solution and leave the gods out of it. Humans are soo difficult to manage !
[Answer]
# Dreaming
Sometimes you dream. Sometimes you have the great spirit of innovation, understanding more.
God intervenes. Everyone that goes to sleep has a dream, explaining what needs to be explained. Afterwards they just *know*. Anyone not falling asleep in these weeks will have microsleeps, still gaining the knowledge.
The advantage of dreaming is that they can apply to anything. A concept or idea, a smell or feeling. Anything within the understanding of humans and a bit outside. On addition, the person started sleeping, giving away conscious control. So the god isn't making it more dangerous than the himan who started sleeping.
If anyone doubts it the truth of it will be seen as soon as the rules change. Things work differently and this is most likely noticeable. Humans 2.0. Eyelashes don't randomly fall into the eye. You don't enter a room and instantly forget what you were doing. Calculus is finally easy.
[Answer]
Everyone "just knows".
People believe they always knew (or at least, have known for a long time). It's not news. No shock. No trust required - everyone knows it for a fact. People would be surprised that it's not actually written down, but then everyone knows, so it's not particularly important.
[Answer]
It's in my head.
It's in your head.
It's in everyone's head.
It's like a shared conspiracy theory but nobody is complaining.
We all know it's happening.
We all KNOW it's logical that things happen this way.
We all seem to recall that this is always how change occurred, but we can't think when it last did - but we don't care.
It's not really CHANGE after all.
It's just reality again/still.
Business as usual.
Tomorrow and today are just the same but different.
Just different but the same.
Y'All take the Red pill AND the Blue pill together NOW but there are no actual pills and they take themselves itself and nothing will ever be the same again and you wake up tomorrow morning and nothing has changed.
] |
[Question]
[
Imagine a generation ship heading for a distant star. Humanity had means to observe that star up to a point, that it is 99.9% sure the star has a colonizable Earth-like planet (with water and atmosphere). So sure enough to send the ship in the first place.
On the way to this star the ship needs to refuel its fusion engine and passes some other stars that have Jupiter like planets. It is going to collect the fuel there to continue its journey. When it approaches this intermidiate star system, it discovers an Earth-like planet in the colonizable area.
Now the question. Is there a plausible explanation as to why this Earth-like planet in the middle-station star system wasn't discovered before (from Earth, when planning the expedition)? Which [future] technology could allow on one hand to predict the conditions on a far away planet and simultaneously completely overlook another planet?
I was thinking that e.g. the Earth-planet is kind of always behind the Jupiter-planet when observed from Earth, so always covered by it. Are such trajectories of two planets even possible?
[Answer]
A simple answer is that the planet is on an orbit with a high inclination relative to our line of sight. The other planets in the system may appear, from our perspective, to be in line with us and the star; we could then discover them through transits. This new planet, on the other hand, would never produce a transit as seen from our vantage point on Earth.
If the planet is habitable, it's likely low-mass and thus unlikely to produce strong radial velocity shifts in the motion of the star. This, combined with its orbit outside the plane of the system means that it is unlikely to gravitationally affect the other planets, making it hard to detect it indirectly (e.g. by transit timing variations).
Plus, [as Luke suggested](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/169478/plausible-reason-not-to-notice-a-planet/169479#comment530112_169479), the lack of transit observations would have made it difficult or impossible to perform spectroscopic observations of the planet's atmosphere. Non-transit methods wouldn't have revealed much about its habitability from an atmospheric perspective.
[Answer]
It depends on how the planets were discovered.
One way of finding planets orbiting distant stars is to observe the oscillation of the star caused by the bodies orbiting around them.
A large planet like a Jovian one can plausibly hide the oscillations caused by an Earth-like planet, which would instead be noticeable in a system with no gas giant.
[Answer]
The planet may be habitable but has been ruled out for other reasons. Perhaps it is poor on metals or its sun is prone to massive solar flares. Either of those factors would limit the planet's usefulness to a high-tech society. So the planet was noticed during the mission planning but ruled out as a final destination.
From there, it just takes a clerical oversight to neglect to tell the generation ship crew about the planet and why it was ruled out. That leaves the crew believing that they have discovered something new and wonderful. And since they are multiple light years away from Earth by then, any queries that they radio back concerning the "overlooked" planet won't be answered for many years.
[Answer]
The earth like planet orbits the star at the L4 or L5 points of the gas giant. That would hide any effects of the terrestrial planet's gravity on the system, and if it does not transit the star, you would not notice it. From far away any light that you might see from the planet would get swamped out by the star and the gas giant.
My hasty checking suggests that the Earth like planet would be safe from radiation from the gas giant in this scenario. The L4 and L5 points near a Jupiter like planet at 1 AU from its star would be about about 149 million km away. Our Jupiter is about 5.2 AU from the Sun. The bow shock of its magnetosphere is about 9 million km away in the direction of the Sun. Moving the Jupiter closer to Sun would shrink the size of its magnetosphere and move the bow show closer to the surface, but even with its current size it is unlikely to reach the L4 and L5 points in the hypothetical solar system. Outside the gas giant's magnetosphere the star's radiation is dominant. An Earth like planet would be able to handle the radiation at 1 AU from a Sun like star.
[Answer]
This is a rogue planet that was only very recently captured by this star system. This would also mean that it is in the process of thawing out after its recent interstellar wandering, but it could be in the habitable zone.
[Answer]
**The planet became Earth-like only recently.**
This planet is being rapidly terraformed. The humans have arrived shortly after the oxygenation of the atmosphere, and newly seeded plants are spreading over the surface.
The aliens responsible will probably not be too pleased that humans traipsing around their planet have introduced a bunch of earth germs and hookworm eggs. Or possibly the terraforming entities are automatic robots fulfilling some ancient directive, and so will not be pleased or displeased.
[Answer]
If the habitability is determined using spectroscopy, that gives only approximate abundancies of chemical compounds in the atmosphere (or surface if it is visible). If the planet had some very unusual atmosphere chemistry, it could mask oxygen and water - and the planet would appear uninhabitable or not having right temperature. Perhaps the planet could be enriched by helium, which would make puffy envelope around it and obscure the breathable atmosphere below it.
[Answer]
This is a fun question. The reasons why an Earth-like planet could go unnoticed for so long generates some interesting ideas.
In our own solar system, the main reason we discovered the non-classical planets (the classical planets being Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), is because we were actively looking for things in the night sky. (This is especially true for Neptune and Pluto.)
It's important to realize that things do slip through the cracks, in that some observation was misidentified, and it took a while to realize the mistake. This happened with Uranus, in that Uranus was seen by the ancients, but not recognized as a planet until [until 1781](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#History). Pluto also has a history of having misconceptions: [In 1931](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto#Planet_X_disproved), Pluto was thought to be as massive as Earth; finally, in 1978 it was shown to be only 0.2% as massive of Earth. And from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, we assumed that our sister planet, Venus, could [likely harbor life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Venus#Historical_views) with an Earth-like environment.
We assumed Uranus was a star, when it was actually a planet. We assumed Pluto was Earth's rival, mass-wise. And we guessed that Venus could easily support life.
We didn't make these assumptions because we were stupid; we were just going with what we knew, based on the other things we knew at the time. And our assumptions occasionally cause us to incorrectly think about certain things for a long time, until we finally discover more of the truth.
We often speak badly about assuming things, but when you have so much information to process, and so little knowledge to go off of, sometimes you don't have much choice but to make certain assumptions. (And, believe it or not, often assumptions can be pretty accurate.)
That's why I say that it's pretty reasonable that certain things can "slip through the cracks." For instance, a solar system could have many, many planets that orbit in a exceptionally flat and circular plane. Therefore, it would be easy to miss a planet that circles its sun nearly perpendicularly. If you're only looking at the ecliptic for planets, why would you look elsewhere? That might not make sense to you or anyone else -- but that doesn't mean that there can't be a planet outside of the ecliptic plane.
It's not easy to find planets from one snapshot of the night sky, so a common technique is to take several photographs over a period of several days/weeks/months/years, and try to find points of light that move predictably, independently of the stars in the sky. But there may be literally billions of objects that move. How can you identify whether one is a sizeable planet, or just a relative speck of dust?
Often, these points of light are identified as asteroids, comets, or a [Trans-Neptunian object](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Neptunian_object). And since there are so many, you can't spend a lot of time investigating every single one, making it easy to assume that a cluster of moving points is just a cluster of rocks in an asteroid field.
Conceivably, your planet could have been previously seen off the ecliptic of planets, but since it was surrounded (or in the path of) asteroids, it was just dismissed to be tracked as "just another asteroid." When, in the future, it is noticed again by a younger astronomer, he/she would look it up in the archives, learn that it was classified as an asteroid, and then move on and forget about it.
It would take several of these sightings, and a realization that this asteroid is being noticed more frequently, before a theory develops that something is different about this asteroid, making it deserving of a closer look.
Just like Neptune, Pluto, and Venus, something was misidentified, and it takes a while to discover the mistake after we dismiss this important planet as an asteroid. There could be many reasons for this dismissal/assumption, such as:
* In a solar system of so many gas giants, it is unlikely an Earth-like planet could exist.
* We've scoured the ecliptic plane, and we're 99.99% sure there are no planets we haven't already found.
* If there were any other planets out there, we'd surely have found them by now.
Regardless of how invalid these reasons are, they're still reasons, and they all work against discovering any new planets.
[Answer]
I'll answer the:
*I was thinking that e.g. the Earth-planet is kind of always behind the Jupiter-planet when observed from Earth, so always covered by it. Are such trajectories of two planets even possible?*
No, but kind of. It is impossible for two planets but a habitable moon of the gas giant that has the same orbital period as the gas giant does could hide behind the gas giant long enough and have been hard enough to detect before that. The orbital planes also have match with each other and line up with direction to Earth.
] |
[Question]
[
The cold fusion generator is ready, loaded with tons of heavy water. The scientists stand by ready to measure the energy output of the amazing new technology.
They turn it on, and as expected, get streams of helium and oxygen gas emerging from the reaction chamber, as two deuterium atoms fuse into one helium nucleus, leaving the oxygen atoms to sort themselves out.
Unfortunately, the expected power output fails to materialise. In fact, they record exactly zero energy released or emitted from the fusion reaction. Curious.
They also notice a plausible but unexpected contaminant in the gas output: radioactive fluorine-18, formed from the fusion of deuterium and oxygen. As they try to fathom how such a reaction could possibly occur, a precipitate starts to form in the water which turns out to be sulfur, formed from the fusion of two oxygen nuclei. While reaching for a cloth to mop up his spilled coffee, one of the engineers knocks the handwavium dial and the sulfur vanishes instantly along with a significant portion of the oxygen, leaving a cloud of atomised chromium and an overabundance of free hydrogen, which promptly overpressures and bursts the reaction vessel.
Once they put the pieces back together and work out how the plebotium works, the scientists realise they have built the first Elemental Transmuter. It can take in a batch of source elements, and perform *any* nuclear fusion reaction without consideration of conservation of nuclear binding energy. Charge and lepton number must still be preserved, so the same number of protons, neutrons and electrons must appear on each side.
Inevitably, the machine is then purloined by a Mad Businessman who intends to use it to maximise personal profit.
**What are the most profitable reactions you could perform using this machine?** By profitable I mean the market value of the end products greatly exceeds the cost of the raw materials.
The machine is capable of producing several kilos of output per hour, from a reaction vessel that is a few litres in volume. The cost of acquiring pure raw materials (or of processing any impurities which would be left in the output, if necessary) would be a factor.
[Answer]
Maximizing short-term profits will be different than long-term profits. A rare element synthesized will lose value faster as the relative amount put into the market will depress the price faster as opposed so something less valuable but more common. It will probably involve some speculation and calculations of what is in demand and what you can get the best prices for.
The ideas below are likely not the most valuable, but they have low (or no) materials costs.
For reference, first is a list of what the device is observed to be able of, and as such, what the rest of the answers are based on.
### What we know about the Device:
* Any two atoms of a substance can fuse into a single output element comprising the entirety of the matter (22H -> 4He and 216O -> 32S)
* Two different atoms can be fused into a single atom containing the entirety of the matter present (2H + 16O -> 18F )
* Only one new product can be made in a reaction -- no side products are created. That or any side products that are created when molecules of the original product are split. Where the hydrogen came from the Oxygen/Sulphur reaction in the story is a bit nebulous.
* The Transmuter cannot fuse protons and electrons into a neutron, ass evident by the starting product for helium being the rarer deuterium as opposed to the more common protium. It is also indirectly stated in the question itself.
* We do not know the energy cost of elemental synthesis so ideally what we make should take a single step wherever possible.
* It is stated that any reaction is possible, which means it could be possible for more than two atoms to be involved in a reaction, though that is not explicitly stated
* It is unknown whether or not it transmutes an entire element or just a single isotope of an element.
This suggests that the limitation of what we can actually do is the neutron count of the atoms we want to make. While the lighter elements have a lower proton to neutron ratio, the higher up the periodic table we go the more neutrons we need in order to create a stable atom.
So our unwritten cost limitation is how cheap can we get elements with a higher neutron to proton ratio to get the capacity to synthesize the heavier elements.
Since we can't do the reaction 1H2 -> 21n as that violated the rules stated in the question regarding conservation of subatomic particles, it is actually a bit trickier than it looks as we can't just create what we feel like by zapping enough hydrogen into neutrons to solve our problems.
### Easy Small Change
The atmosphere we breathe is primarily made up of nitrogen and oxygen, of which the primary isotopes are 14N and 16O. From those two, you can easily make Silicon, Phosphorus, and Sulphur by fusing the main components of air together. Silicon-28, Phosphorus-31 and Sulphur-32 are stable isotopes so you are likely sticking with Silicon or Sulphur for that one.
Your input materials are essentially free (atmosphere) so there is no worry about pesky questions about why one needs a large quantity of element X. Plus, your detritus of this is some noble gasses, carbon dioxide, and methane.
The downside is that this does not necessarily maximize profits by creating the most expensive thing. But this is something you can do in secret with only your energy bills and a large pile of silicon/sulphur to give you away. However, if the energy costs are too much, you won't actually be making a profit.
### Nickel and Diming
Iron is cheap, and helium is not terribly expensive either. Nickel-60 is thus not an outrageous thing to create and can sell for a good price compared to the base cost of the materials. The primary reaction is 56Fe + 4He -> 60Ni.
Your primary benefit to this is that the other natural isotopes of iron, Iron-54, Iron-57, and Iron-58 also make stable isotopes of nickel through this process which means you do not care about what isotopes of iron are in your ingot, just that it is pure iron.
Again, you aren't likely making mad money doing this, but it is something you can do with little additional people or resources.
### Previous Answer(s)
[This previous answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/158605/whats-the-most-profitable-use-for-an-elemental-transmuter/158616#158616) mentioned Rhodium at a rather impressive selling price. I do not know if this is the most cost-efficient way to do it by the rules as I understand them, but you can transmute it using Krypton and Fluorine in the following: 84Kr + 19F -> 103Rh.
While there is only the one stable isotope of fluorine (19F), the krypton is a minor issue as the most common isotope is only a bit over 50% of the naturally occurring krypton.
A brief bit of research shows that the other isotopes of krypton will create rhodium isotopes that decays into either palladium or ruthenium.
### Humourous Mad Science/Business
If you can crack molecules of something apart for your reactions, one can take the generally unwanted gas carbon dioxide, and fuse the carbon-12 atoms into magnesium-24 and have oxygen as your byproduct. Well, the magnesium might oxidize first, but you are still basically converting an unwanted greenhouse gas to a sellable metal and oxygen by the following reaction: 212CO2 -> 24Mg + 2O2
Magnesium is also stable at atomic masses 25 and 26, so if you happen to have carbon-13 or carbon-14 in there, you are still good for the most part. There is the option to fuse the newly created magnesium with a third carbon atom to make Argon-36 which is also stable if the noble gas is more your style.
This concept also works for methane, only you release hydrogen gas instead of oxygen. Alternatively, you can react the methane to make anything from nitrogen to neon, using some of that bonded hydrogen.
If you have some control over what form a transmuted element takes, then transmuting lithium into diamonds might be an option steeped in profit and madness. With a roughly 90/10 split of lithium-7 to lithium-6, there is the slight problem of getting almost half of your diamond as carbon-14, but the other two carbon isotopes (12 and 13) are stable. An interesting record for the future archaeologists.
On something that is a bit more Mad Science then Mad Business, with a machine that can fuse anything, you are in a unique position to research transuranium elements. The issue again is likely neutrons, but if you can directly make something in quantity, then it can be easier studied and a potential use for it could be found. Then you can corner the market on its production as only your plebotium-powered device can make it efficiently enough.
### Ethics Optional
Depending on the exact interactions with molecules and other more complicated things, your Mad Businessman could have a rather shady business of body disposal. Just ensure that the chunks of body can fit in the machine and transmute its [Elements] into [Another Element]. I suspect it would be hard to find the body if all of its carbon was transmuted into magnesium for example. They pay you for disposal, and you can sell the resultant products.
This does depend on being able to break down molecules with the transmuter device though, which it might not do.
### Minor Challenge
A thought is that by direct transmutation, the Mad Businessman will have pure samples of any element they desire without going through a complex manufacturing process. The most profitable thing might not be to sell the pure element directly to a consumer, but to use the created element in a process to synthesize something else. Depending on how the machine is powered and its consumption, you could market your product as "green" or "environmentally friendly", and potentially charge a additional markup for it
Nobody needs to know you make this product with the tears shed by the laws of physics when you run the machine.
[Answer]
# [Shorting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance)) gold
You don't actually need to make the gold, you don't strictly even need to have access to the machine. Just short the gold and then let people know the machine exists. The simple fact that someone now has an unlimited supply of gold will cause the market to crash and the profit is already made.
Note that if you do this with company stocks you'd be in big trouble for insider trading.
[Answer]
Depending on the power requirement per kilogram,
# **You may have created an infinite energy generator.**
From your question and one of your comments:
>
> It can take in a batch of source elements, and perform any nuclear
> fusion reaction without consideration of conservation of nuclear
> binding energy.
>
>
> The energy required to power the conversion of 1kg of source to 1kg of
> product is constant regardless of the reactions involved
>
>
>
If you can use the product of your transmuter (say, a very heavy radioactive element) as fuel in a reaction that (1) leaves as waste the same elements you transmuted your product from, and (2) yields more energy than it took to convert your source to your product, then you can perform this cycle over and over again, generating unbounded amounts of energy (and ultimately, matter).
If this is the case, then the most profitable thing you can do with it--at first, anyway--is to **make more elemental transmuters**. :)
[Answer]
Do you have any ethical constraints? If not, consider building nuclear weapons (ideally immediately after secretly moving to, say, a nuclear bunker somewhere in Iceland). Uranium-235 is probably the best way to do this. While Plutonium bombs give you a bigger bang per kg of fuel, they also require complex arrangements of conventional explosives and extremely precise engineering. All you need for your Uranium-235 weapon is a way to [smack two chunks of it together](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon) really hard.
It's not entirely clear to me precisely how your magic fusion device works, but in a comment, you mention combining two atoms of Yttrium to get Platinum. This seems to imply that your device simply corrects to a stable number of neutrons somehow. That means all you need to make your U235 is Lead and Neon. Or any other pair of elements that give you 92 protons. Heck, you could just use 92 Hydrogen atoms and build it up from single protons. Pb208 is a stable isotope of lead, and if you add 7 atoms of Deuterium and 3 of normal Hydrogen, you'll end up with some wonderful nuclear goodness without having to correct neutron number. Essentially, the stuff isn't hard to make if you have this device.
Since you're selling 100% pure U235, it's pretty difficult to get a market value for this stuff. Instead, we can look at the [total wealth of ISIS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_ISIL) and the [net worth of Kim Jong-un](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-un), for a total of 7 billion US dollars for two weapons. Alternatively, you may be able to set up an exclusive contract with the US military. I feel they would probably be willing to pay you a few hundred billion $US per year for you to give them all of your weapons, as opposed to ISIS and North Korea. Essentially, at this point you are capable of blackmailing the entire world by just planting a nuke under every city over the course of a few months, so I don't think wealth is really a concept that applies to you anymore (as a side note, you now have the ability to provide extremely cheap power on a massive scale, as all your nuclear fuel is now free, and you can simply feed all that nasty, radioactive nuclear waste into your machine to turn it back into fuel).
You have an infinite source of nuclear weapons, so... do whatever you want with them. It's not like anyone is going to be able to stop you.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/l7jAO.jpg)
[Answer]
**Californium.**
Synthesis will be a little tricky - [Californium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californium) (Element 98) can be synthesized cheaply from two [Indium](http://www.chemistry.pomona.edu/Chemistry/periodic_table/Elements/Indium/indium.htm) atoms (Element 49), except we run into trouble. You see, Indium is stable as Indium-115, except Californium, an artificial element, *starts* being stable at Californium-248, meaning we need an additional 18 neutrons. Fortunately, I happen to know a remarkably good source for neutrons: deuterium, aka heavy hydrogen. A ration of 2 parts indium to 18 parts deuterium or just 1:9 will supply the proper amount of neutrons and leave over some Californium-248 and some normal hydrogen.
It's now that I note that you can make a more stable variant by adding more hydrogen (and thus more neutrons), just be forewarned to never produce Cf-251 in bulk, despite it being the most stable of the stable isotopes (half life of 898 years) - it has an estimated critical mass of 5kg. Honestly, from a business perspective Cf-254 would be best - a half-life of two months means a lot of repeat customers, and Cf-253's half-life of under three weeks will get people annoyed. But I'm sure a Mad Businessman would know more about exploiting scientists than I do.
Indium is rather cheap, only a few US dollars per gram. How much is Californium? 25,000,000 US dollars *[per gram](https://moneyinc.com/most-expensive-elements-in-the-world/)*. And Cf-248 is has a half-life of 333 days, making it stable enough to transport and sell in quantity. Unlike the actual most expensive element, Francium. Francium is theoretically 1 *billion* US dollars per gram - except since the stuff has a half-life of 22 minutes, good luck *getting* a gram of that stuff. And, unlike Californium which is a great portable neutron generator, it has no practical application, which means its price is really only a function of it's rarity and mass producing it will sink the price.
[Answer]
# Disaster Relief
I'm sure cleaning up someone else's mess can be profitable.
* [3-Mile Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident)
* [Chernobyl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster)
* [Fukushima](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster)
* [Others](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents)
# Until Next Disaster ...
Renew everyone's old fuel rods into new ones.
Now, will the (purposeful) impurities of your refurbished fuel rods cause the disaster?
[Answer]
One of the biggest problems would be controlling the reactions with multiple isotopes present and with potential side reactions it would be easy to end up with a precious metal that was also contaminated by radioactive isotopes of the same element or of other similar elements as can be seen [here](https://www.technology.matthey.com/article/14/3/88-92/):
Assuming that this is not an issue with your new process the First thing you must do is keep the discovery a secret! Then make sure you have good contacts amongst the dealers in precious elements so that you can dump an appropriate amount into the market from time to time.
You would also need a way to “fence” the materials so that they could be sold without attracting too much attention. It would probably be a good idea to involve the government to ensure that everything is as water tight as possible and prevent unwanted interest from the powers that be.
Then start production. Why not start with rhodium? At £40,000/kg and a world-wide annual production of 35,000oz it should be possible to dump a few hundred kilos into the market over a few years. But the secret would be not to concentrate on one element but to target a wide range of elements to prevent price supression. Nuclear reactions for forming some platinum group metals can be seen [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#Precious_metals_produced_via_irradiation):
Whilst the rhodium sales are under way you could use the proceeds to target the other platinum group metals and then branch out into a range of other expensive elements. Very large sums could be made if gold could be synthesized. The reason being the market for gold is huge as it played such an important part in world finance until as late as the 1970’s. Many thousands of tons are produced every year and hundreds of tons could probably be absorbed by the market over a few years without too much price impact.
100 tons of gold is worth around $4.8 billion.
[Answer]
# Energy
I refer you to *[Watchmen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen_(film))*, *[Iron Man](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_(2008_film))*, and *[Captain Marvel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_(film))*. All of them had energy and power sources at the heart of their plots. It was not dominant, but it was central.
One of the big causes of war today is argued to be oil, which cones back to *energy*.
ENRON was caught in a scandal of accounting, but it was all built on the idea that energy was imoortant enough to be able to barter. As the story notes, [Tom White](https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Thomas_E._White) had interesting connections with ENRO 's manipulation of energy prices in California.
Today, we are in an energy race.
## What energy?
If choosing a particular element is a problem, you could just use raw energy by disrupting the process. Just stop the process part way through, containing the raw energy output with a stabilizer based on quantum quark vibration theory. (This might require more research, but could be simple and could give your Mad Businessman an edge over the original researchers because they wouldn't have the full technology.)
[Answer]
Another angle that I don't see considered here (unless it's in the depths of TLDR Land) is that you have freed our mineral supply chain from the happenstance of where the various minerals are located, and for some minerals you have eliminated the hazards involved in mining.
The list of minerals on which any particular nation has a monopoly has greatly shortened.
Everything depending on these minerals is now cheaper, which means that everyone's money has more buying power.
Except for the people who were profiting from the scarcity of these elements, everyone is now richer.
An additional benefit is because certain elements are no longer scarce, the freer nations no longer have to play footsie with corrupt and/or oppressive governments of the nations where these formerly-scarce minerals were located.
[Answer]
For the people suggesting nuclear weapons--I think there's a different route here. This appears to be a fairly simple desktop machine. Thus, if I want to kill a city I don't build a nuke, I ship a transmuter to the city loaded with ordinary lead. When triggered the reaction is Pb + Pb, yielding a supply of element 164. This is going to be way past the proton drip line as well as way past anything that can hold together long enough to be seen outside an atom smasher. It will undergo a huge amount of radioactive decay in zero time on a human scale. The "end" product will probably be somewhere in the transuranics, but there will be no induced radioactivity. Note that a Geiger counter can't see this bomb as it's not radioactive until it's turned on.
There's also the issue that I can't figure out how to make fissionables with this device. You need the right number of neutrons and I see no way of supplying them. Just about everything in the lower part of the table is off limits unless you can get there from somewhere close nearby.
For a reaction that can be profitable for a sustained period, assuming the machine can crack elements:
1) O16 -> C12 + He4. C12 + C12 -> Mg24. Mg24 -> Ne20 + He4. Ne20 -> O16 + He4. (Note that you can't use C12 -> Be8 + He4 due to the exceedingly short half life, same as stars can't use He4 + He4 -> Be8.)
2) N14 -> C12 + H2, then as per #1.
Helium is expensive and has substantial ongoing demand, you can sell quite a bit of it without crashing the price.
[Answer]
Your device simply violates the first law of thermodynamics. It's a slightly less obvious variant of the perpetual motion device.
Actual fusion reactions have diminishing returns and stop releasing energy when they reach iron synthesis.
Each heavier element requires heavier temperatures. Even before reaching iron synthesis, the device would hit some hard physical limit like power requirement or heat resistance.
As for creating gold or such precious elements, the kind of power delivery needed to synthesize nuclei heavier than iron only occurs during the few initial milliseconds of a supernova explosion.
A world where people would command such kind of power would simply have no need for money.
They wouldn't even need nuclear fusion at all. They could use mechanical work and plain chemistry to procure and recombine any kind of existing atoms to their heart's content, for a tiny fraction of the energy cost of nuclear fusion.
Anyway, this magic world would very soon be blown to bits, either by absent-minded scientists botching an experiment or the military putting that energy to good use.
[Answer]
**Antimatter**
You have said Elemental Transmutter. Down there somewhere you can find how to make positrons and related stuff to produce antimatter OR you can keep it vague so that your audience can focus on story and not get too much into "technical" stuff which is handwavium anyway.
Coming back to the meat of your question, antimatter is the most expensive material, gram for gram, both economically and energytically speaking. Here is why:
1) When combined with ordinary matter it produce 100% mass to energy conversion. Antimatter is charged and so "want" to combine with ordinary matter (which almost always have some residual charge left in it, because molecules rarely fully "satisfy" each other electromagnetically) so no effort at all is needed for combining the two; just shut down the electromagnetic field in which you are containing your antimatter and it go and interact with walls of its container.
2) Antimatter is one of the perfect weapons, in line with micro blackholes. As stated above, antimatter can be used for total annhiliation. Ofcourse you have to deal with enormous amount of energy thats released, but if you are attacking enemy planet or want to destroy a pesky asteroid on course to hit your planet in 5 years (that is, if the planet and the asteroid are far enough) you dont have to deal with that massive release of energy.
We never produced antimatter in sufficient quantity to test whether it interacts with gravity same way as ordinary matter do, or oppositely. May be we discover antigravity once we have grams of antimatter.
Once we have antigravity sky is the limit, literally.
[Answer]
The real benefit for this sort of thing will be doing stuff on demand.
Consider a several stage machine set up to reduce Nitrogen to helium. A second machine to do the reverse. Now the operating costs of zeppelins is removed. You make helium on demand.
Look at space craft. Hydrogen has the best specific impulse. Take hydrogen accelerate it with a linear accelerator and spit it out at fractional light speed. Storing enough H2 for a long voyage is more difficult. So store the matter as sand. You have a several stage machine that processes sand into hydrogen.
Look at lunar colonies. The big problem is life support. Make enough H2 and O2 from dirt. Make water by reacting those two. Make carbon. React carbon and hydrogen to make methane, combine two methane to make ethylene. Now you have the starting material for a raft plastics.
[Answer]
It probably depends on how much money the people of the world are willing to pay to avert global warming. (You might want to wait until they get more desperate first).
Because you have the world’s best CO2 scrubber. Even if the device doesn’t let you go straight from gaseous carbon to solid carbon, it should let you go to something that *is* solid at room temperature like titanium (though you’d need to pick up some neutrons) or calcium (and some low weight gas).
[Answer]
money is a tool for controlling access to scarce resources through a social contract
this invention makes money obsolete as it solves the same problem better
actually, this invention breaks money because it breaks the supply side of most commodity markets, making price discovery meaningless
i suppose money could have a niche role in organising labour but this would get weird and the economy would quickly be unrecognisable relative to what we are used to now
] |
[Question]
[
Dark elves, a vampire-like species, exist on a plane known as the fae-realm and must feed on other creatures to survive. Their souls are constantly being drained of mana by their deity, who ironically despises them. This makes them old and decrepit, and slowly drives them mad with starvation. To avoid this, they must replenish their mana by releasing it from other sentient species and absorbing it. They do this through suffering. Other races constantly replenish their own mana naturally, and the dark elves have developed techniques and technologies to keep their prey alive for centuries or even millennia to get the maximum amount out of them.
These elves occasionally raid the mortal realm in an event known as "The Wild Hunt", in which they capture alive as many different sentient species as possible and drag them back to the fae world to become slaves or to be tortured. These raids are often successful, as they are unpredictable and far more advanced as a civilization than others. Elves do not reproduce naturally, and must use artificial wombs to grow new children. They do this to replenish their own numbers and their slave stock. It is a cheap and inexpensive method, and people are grown in batches to save time.
Since they have the technology to literally grow new slaves, it stands to reason that they would be able to use this method to avoid having to risk their lives in raids to bring back people to torture. Why would this not be the case?
[Answer]
>
> they must replenish their mana by releasing it from other sentient species and absorbing it. They do this through suffering
>
>
>
For the same reason that game meat is not the same as industrial poultry: flavor and texture.
A human captured from their free state produces an agony and a pain which are far more nutritious than those produced by a human grown in captivity and used to assist to the atrocities committed by these elves. How many murders does one have to see before becoming insensitive to death? Hint: not too many.
The effort needed to raise a captive adult is not worth the net result.
[Answer]
**Clearly babies from artificial wombs do not replenish mana.**
The humans born to artificial wombs have therefore very little mana throughout their life, compared to "infinite" from the self replenishing humans born naturally. It can also be cost ineffective for the same reason.
- But they are still useful as slaves.
Which also explain why the elves don't naturally replenish mana themselves. Since they are all born from artificial wombs.
[Answer]
>
> Since they have the technology to literally grow new slaves, it stands to reason that they would be able to use this method to avoid having to risk their lives in raids to bring back people to torture. Why would this not be the case?
>
>
>
Because then you have to raise them to adulthood (or at least late teenagers) before you can start feeding on them, and that's more hassle than it's worth.
Besides, the dark elves **like** the Wild Hunt.
[Answer]
Given that they only occasionally go on the wild-hunt it's possible that they DO clone the majority of mana-slaves but need regular influxes of new human D.N.A. in order to prevent the D.N.A. they use from becoming degraded. Think of it like a photo, The vampires need photo's of David Hasselhof, lot's of them. They could simply take photos of the ones they already have (and they do, cloning the clones) but everytime they do that the quality drops (random mutations in the clones D.N.A.) so every so often they need an orignal photo so they go and papparazi david hasselhof, knowing they risk getting punched in the face (going on raids.)
This then begs the question "why don't they just ask politely for some D.N.A." a question that I can't really answer.
[Answer]
Humans need to know love and comfort to create enough mana output to feed the elves.
The dark elves are born and grow up in the fae-realm, but do they suffer? Not by their own standards. Humans (and slaves) that are born there are so used to the basic level of torment in the fae-realm that it is simply "normal" for them. To get enough mana output from them, the elves have to torture and injure them so much that they cannot survive for long.
"Free" humans, on the other hand, know the loving arms of their mothers, the proud smiles of their fathers, the security and safety of their families and the warmth of the sun. Bring them into the fae-realm and they start suffering enough to feed an elf on their own. Add a little poking and prodding and they realiably create huge amounts of mana for a very long time. You don't even have to injure them, a little reminder of "I killed the rest of your family" is enough for a delicious elven meal.
[Answer]
Slaves don't need souls, mana sources (read torture victims) do. A creature that generates mana does so because they have a soul that is fed by their passions and their pain. To borrow an idea from [Unknown Armies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown_Armies) IVF babies have no souls; apparently because they are conceived in a process that is without any passion. Therefore, in this case, artificially created creatures can be used for slave labour but not for mana generation.
[Answer]
# "Mana" is the new oxygen.
Living beings do not actually generate it, it is harvested from the environment and stays in their system (for a short time, until death, until they receive pain...). A creature can survive without mana only for a short time, and will suffer the effects you described otherwise. Cloning new creatures in your oxygen/mana-starved environment is just going to make your situation worse, because your finite amount of mana now needs to suffice for more of them.
Capturing creatures from other, mana-rich realms, is a way of using the captives as mana containers to move the energy from A to B, instead of creating a source of mana in your own realm. Dead matter might release its mana only if converted by plants, buried in sacred grounds, shone on by sunlight..., which is a condition not present in the fae realm. They might've not realized this causality, or they might've found out that it's impossible to replicate there.
As to why you can keep organisms for a long time to tickle more mana out of their pain ridden bodies: a creature's body will convert some of their muscle mass/caloric intake/emotions/faith/whatever fits your story into mana, to meet its mana needs. This is of inferior quality though, and takes its toll on the body. Mana-starved creatures might suffer from something like [scurvy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy).
[Answer]
**Mana replenishes slowly.**
Animals and humans start off life with hardly any mana. As they grow, the mana increases. However, the mana also decreases slowly. When the Dark Elves feed off of slaves, the mana slowly drains, which is why the elves have to return to the human realm every so often- because the mana of the people and animals they brought last time is depleted.
**Mana is not restored in the dark realm**
In the dark realm, mana is not restored, which means growing slaves there will not provide mana.
[Answer]
## Entropy
>
> Since they have the technology to literally grow new slaves, it stands to reason that they would be able to use this method to avoid having to risk their lives in raids to bring back people to torture. Why would this not be the case?
>
>
>
Entropy (and associated concepts like conservation of energy; the concept of theoretical Heat Machines and such) works just the same in your universe as in ours. This means that to grow dark elf babies into full-grown, real adults (not just slaves) would require to put mana in.
That is, to create a full-fledged elf, you'd need to make the trivial, cheap baby cocoon, and then add mana from whatever source. The elf parents have none to spare, and it doesn't appear out of thin air in their fae realm, so they need to get it from external suppliers (in terms of science, they'd need to cross the system border).
This entails a further need for explanation: why *does* mana appear in the non-fae world? I wouldn't bother with any too technical explanation here. You can do a lot with the usual dark-light ying-yang concept; i.e., the real world (the "light" world) is the source of all mana, and all mana eventually passes on into the dark world, and from there into their deity, which quite literally sucks the life energy out of both universes, in the whole process.
Add a deity of the light world (some Gaia type of "source"), which can provide limitless mana to the inhabitants of the light side, especially to babies, and you have a very natural tension between light and dark, and natural mortal enemies, the need to balance everything out, and so on. Add a crisis which somehow limits the rate of mana infusion; an evil master plan of the dark deity to kill the light deity (without noticing that that would eventually starve/kill the dark deity as well); a wicked way to circumvent the light world and beam the mana from Gaia directly to the dark deity; ... and you have many nice plot points at hand.
Good luck with your story!
[Answer]
# Too expensive to raise a human and grow its food.
There isn't enough of a resource to grow food for growing humans. Open space, healthy Earth dirt, water, light, oxygen, heat, etc. The dark elves do have an unhealthy liquid that will barely keep a human alive, but has no nutrients for growth or repair.
# Humans take two decades to produce mana in an efficient manner!
Imagine wanting paper, where a single tree costs millions and takes 20 years. And also there a large natural forest nearby with 7.6 billion trees that will naturally reproduce and are fun to cut down. The tress are not fun to raise.
Who'd be crazy enough to make a tree farm when the trees make, manage, and pay for themselves in the forest for you? In fact you might want to influence that forest to reproduce faster...
[Answer]
## Genetic Degredation
Artificial wombs still need a "parent" to provide DNA/lifeforce/spark-of-life etc. However, the artificial womb also results in an inferior specimen that what was used to fertilize it. So after multiple generations, the new stock becomes crippled, pathetic and useless. They need fresh blood (lines) to replenish the bredding/cloning stock regularly.
This could apply to Dark Elves too, and be an additional cause for their numerous issues. Or because they're naturally inclined to artificial wombs, the negative impacts don't apply to them.
[Answer]
Their deity drains mana from the fae realm, leaving the mortal realm as their only source, and they can't survive there very long. Only beings born and raised in the mortal realm have mana to drain. Their cloning process is too involved to run in the mortal realm given their inability to stay there for very long. Even something as quick as the Wild Hunt is difficult due to the cross realm issues.
[Answer]
## Fear of getting diposed of by their own deity
The soul of *any* sentient being born to the fae-realm will be owned by the dark elf deity. Human's natural mana replenishment, shorter lifespan (the humans simply die sooner than drained completely) and higher population would make them *much* better worshipers than the dark elves could ever be.
Even though their deity did never drained humans directly and humans kept worshiping their petty god, the possibility -and fear- is still there. What would happen if the deity just chose adopt humans and get rid of the dark elves?
Hence the raids of sentient creatures of realms which souls cannot claimed by the deity and strict breeding regulations of non-elves.
[Answer]
Your dark elves are saddist. Who knows if they were saddist to begin with, or became saddists because their deity forced them to feed on other creatures through torture ?
The result is all the same, by now your dark elves have learned to take pleasure from making others suffer, it is not only their main mean of survival, they just can't help it. Hurting others is what makes them happy.
You might think this is good to torture clones, created exclusively to suffer but how could such a pitiful creature know true despair ? How could a creature born in capitivity understand everything it will never have, like freedom, a family, friends, belongings, happiness and so on ?
On the other hand... capturing living creatures that used to be free is much more fun for such deviant elves. Shattering them is what they like, seeing them drowning little by little into madness and despair as their mana is slowly eaten and regenerated, keeping them alive far longer than their usual lifespawn just to suffer endless physical and psychological pain.
There are not many fates that are more horrible, than being a tortured slave in the hands of such horrible and saddistic torturers.
All in all, cloned creatures can't suffer as much as naturally bred ones.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I get it opened?](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3300/49).
Closed 1 year ago.
The community reviewed whether to reopen this question 1 year ago and left it closed:
>
> Original close reason(s) were not resolved
>
>
>
[Improve this question](/posts/235484/edit)
Reference [this thread](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/235448/support-equipment-for-a-time-machine) for more on the putative time machine.
So my intrepid time travelers set out in their DC-3 in late September 1962, not really knowing where they are going or how to get back. Their first jump, where they badly overshoot their mark (this was supposed to be just a test), lands them in 1519. Using astronomical observations they recognize and compensate for their error, next emerging in 1885 (all of these jumps are within ~100 mile radius of Perth, Australia) where they land well clear of civilization, flag down a train headed into town, and find a current newspaper which lets them calibrate their position in time more precisely. They next land in 1929, again covertly...the lead scientist wants to tell his twelve-year-old self how to travel through time and hopefully save some trouble for the next go-round. But, as they are headed home, their jury-rigged stabilizing field generator burns out and they are dropped into the night sky above Perth in July of 1944...and [spoiler] in this timeline, Japan did invade Australia and is pushing south trying to split the country. The front lines are well away from Perth but the RAAF is extremely paranoid about strange aircraft.
Fortunately, the protagonists (who both served in the RAAF during the War) recognize this. One remembers a base a short flight away where he was stationed briefly which might be a bit lower-key. He doesn't know the current recognition codes but lands at the base using "radio failure" procedures. The welcoming committee, fortunately for them, is led by an old chum who recognizes him. Upon being told that they're using the DC-3 to deliver a secret research device the chum obliges them with petrol, paraffin (kerosene, for their APU...they don't explain why they need it, just that they need it), and a surplus 25 Hz synchronous motor which can be adapted to replace their burned-out alternator and give them more fine control of their travel through the time continuum. They return successfully to late September 1962, arriving four hours after they disappeared.
With that as the setup, here is the question: **Given those stops and the location in the vicinity of Perth, what object or objects could the protagonists bring back with them to demonstrate successful time travel into the past to all but the most hardened skeptics?**
[spoiler] For those skeptics, traveler #1's next move will be a solo jump to November 1st to bring back next month's racing form...only to find upon his arrival there that the USA and USSR have nuked themselves into oblivion....
[Answer]
1. What about taking a telescope and movie and still cameras?
Photographs of the night sky should show what latitude they are in. Photographs of the positions of various prominent constellations, the southern cross, the Magellanic clouds, and the Milky Way would establish roughly what time of day and/or season of year it is.
If the Moon is visible photographs of its phase and what stars appear near it will be helpful.
Photographs showing the positions in the sky of all visible planets will be useful. Photographs of the more visible moons of Jupiter and Saturn would be very useful compared to other astronomical images. It is possible to find the universal time by the positions of the moons of Jupiter. I believe that the Cassini compared the time from the positions of the Jovian moons with the local time to find the longitudes of many places in France for their great 18th Century map.
So film of the positions of as many solar system planets and moons as possible will be very helpful in establishing their date. I think that the positions of as few as ten solar system objects will be unique, never to be repeated in the entire history of the solar system.
2. Getting a sample of air would be a good idea, since the air in 1519 would be free of radioactive fallout from atomic tests. The nuclear test ban treaty banned atmospheric tests was signed only 11 months after September 1962, and it was discussed a lot in the previous years.
Biochemist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov pointed out the dangers of radioactive fallout in milk. Nobel prize winning Chemist Dr. Linus Pauling became one of the main advocates of ending atmospheric nuclear testing.
>
> Pauling also supported the work of the St. Louis Citizen's Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI).[98] This group, headed by Barry Commoner, Eric Reiss, M. W. Friedlander and John Fowler, organized a longitudinal study to measure radioactive strontium-90 in the baby teeth of children across North America. The "Baby Tooth Survey," published by Louise Reiss, demonstrated conclusively in 1961 that above-ground nuclear testing posed significant public health risks in the form of radioactive fallout spread primarily via milk from cows that had ingested contaminated grass.[102][103][104] The Committee for Nuclear Information is frequently credited for its significant contribution to supporting the test ban,[105] as is the ground-breaking research conducted by Reiss and the "Baby Tooth Survey".[106]
>
>
>
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus\_Pauling#Nuclear\_activism][1]
It seems to me that it would have been impossible for scientists in September 1962 to be unaware that 1962 air had more radioactive fallout than pre 1945 air, and so taking air samples would be very obvious to them.
And of course the farther back in time they went, the less air pollution would be in their air samples.
3. Water samples taken from a specific place in the past could be compared with water samples taken in the same place in 1962, which should show differences in pollution.
4. If there is a specific famous tree at a specific place in Perth that might be old enough to be alive and recognizable in the past, they could bury a message with a small piece of modern technology like a watch in a time capsule in a specific location relative to the tree, planning to have scientists unearth it after they return to 1962.
[Answer]
**Bring back An Extinct Animal With You**
Just bring back an extinct animal back with you, animal species go extinct all the time, so just bring back some animal that is extinct in the present. [Australia has confirmed at least 13 animal species that have gone extinct since European Colonization of the continent,](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/03/australia-confirms-extinction-of-13-more-species-including-first-reptile-since-colonisation#:%7E:text=The%20Australian%20government%20has%20officially,been%20lost%20since%20European%20colonisation.) and Europeans discovered Australia in 1606, your time travelers will at one point be almost a hundred years earlier than that when the only people present on Australia were the aboriginals. But most of the 13 animals went extinct between the 1850s and 1950s, which is where the time-travelers spend the majority of their time, so they don't *have* to collect the animal in the 1519 jump.
**An Example of An Animal:**
I looked at [Wikipedia's list of extinct Australian animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_species_extinct_in_the_Holocene), and one animal stuck out from the rest: The [Paradise Parrot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_parrot)! some say it was the most beautiful bird in the world. It was fairly common in its area, and extraordinarily colorful, even by parrot standards, it was around 30 cm tall(so it could probably fit in time machine.) Its nests were in hallowed-out termite mounds, commonly at ground level, and was fairly easy to catch. It started to decline in population after the 1880s(so it should still be fairly common in 1885, and especially 1519), the last live specimen was sighted in 1927, so it would be known to be extinct in 1962. It seems to fit the bill! However, The Paradise Parrot has a big fatal flaw, it is native to eastern Australia. Which is on the other side of Australia from Perth, which is in Western Australia. Maybe you could handwave that it somehow was brought over to Perth from people. It could also be a problem keeping it alive, as its diet is limited(According to Google it ate grass seeds)
[Answer]
**Missing child rescued.**
The child went missing in 1929 and was presumed to have been murdered. In fact the child was abducted and would have died where she was abandoned in the bush but the time travelers intervene and rescue her. They bring her to a hospital in 1944 where her injuries are treated and she lives.
It has only been 15 years since she disappeared. Her family is all still alive. The public remembers because it was in all the papers. And the girl remembers her family. She tells her story.
They believe it is time travel because she has not aged at all. She is still 10.
For a fiction this is as dramatic and heroic a time travel exploit as one could hope to have. Also, in 1962 the rescued girl will be 28, done with her studies, and a fine addition to the time travel team as depicted in the movie.
[Answer]
# Evidence of the Present, Left in the Past:
This can be a bit specific to whom they are trying to prove things to. So the actual details are up to you.
Write a letter while in the past and leave it with someone who will pass it on, OR in a place that is unimpeachable. Without a chain of custody on the message, it can be challenged or questioned. But if it is a hand-written note in a first edition original of a book in a library (where the book is secured and not available to the public), then even the existence of the note will likely be historically documented (and possibly documented everyone who ever looked at the work as well).
Similarly, leave a message that can be authenticated today in the past. For example, if a coded message is published in a newspaper before the code existed (like a message in a military code that can only be decoded with a machine or a computer) then the very existence of the message is a matter of public record.
How anyone would make the message, or know to bring it with them, is another matter.
You can leave something modern and organic in the past. What is up to you. Radio carbon dating was invented in 1946. A Tommy gun buried in 1519 might be faked, but how did the handle and powder get to be 400 years old?
And if the old chum is the one who they are trying to convince, then perhaps he has a burned out alternator in his basement that is stamped “made in the USA 1956.”
[Answer]
This was the theme of a Black Adder episode: [Black Adder Back and Forth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzHn2H2V8N4)
Black Adder bet his friends that he could go to the past and return with a variety of items as specified by his friends. He had a large variety of things prepared in a closet, chosen on the basis of knowing his friends. He had a fake time machine set up in his basement and planned to sneak into the closet and return with the various items and win the bet.
Oddly, Baldrick had produced an actual time machine from Davinci's drawings. And they then had many adventures retrieving the specified items. Returning to the basement they find that his interference with the past had affected the present in a disagreeable fashion. So the return to the past and arrange that Black Adder was the King and married to an absolute smashing lady.
Now, being King may not be the goal of every young school boy. But there is a lesson here. If you can make minor changes to the past then you can tweak things so that the outcomme is as you would wish. Money, fame, power, all are available to the person who can make minor changes in the past.
So, the thing one would bring back from the past would be enormous wealth and power.
[Answer]
## Nothing
You have the time machine. Time-travel with the skeptics. It is the smoking gun that proves time travel.
[Answer]
**Edited**
A fresh slice of a tree, for [dendrochronology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology).
The sample should be obviously fresh. It should demonstrate it has been cut down recently from a growing tree. A small branch with not-yet-dried leafs would be a good proof.
Of course the sample should contain the final year ring, to reference the cut year. A sample from the trunk center will not satisfy, because we wouldn't know how much year rings have been left outside. Also the sample should contain enough year rings (20 would be enough?).
The tree should be endemic for the region (in this case - Northern Australia). Tree species that are ubiquitous for many regions can be useless. Year ring signatures can differ for different regions for the same epoch, because of climate differences etc. But for endemic tree the region can be determined without doubt.
The only my concern here - was dendrocronology developed enough in 1962? At least for modern time it would be good sample to proof you have traveled to the past.
[Answer]
What if, instead of bringing something back, they mailed a letter to a trusted friend that reads "Do not open until instructed." The letter, which is sealed and has a postmark of 1944 (or whatever), reads "Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945. Russians launch Sputnik, 1957. Yankees defeat Reds in 1961 World Series," etc.
[Answer]
Any high profile, handwriten document or piece of art.
For example, if you went to the year 1600, bring back the Mona Lisa. We know it was painted circa 1506, and radiocarbon dating would easily prove your version is 100 year old when it should be 500.
A meticulous comparison of your Mona Lisa and the one in the Louvre would show they do match perfectly, which is technically impossible.
Just replace the Mona Lisa with whatever high profile piece of art your character can bring back from 1885 Perth.
Of course, actual time travel is so improbable that it will always be more rational to believe in some sort of forgery, up to somehow altering the results of carbon dating. But you will have to somewhat handwave this objection, whatever your character brings back from his trip.
[Answer]
People. Ask your friend for volunteers. He probably can't spare able-bodied soldiers nor would most people be willing to go, but maybe someone who has no family and recently acquired severe disability through a war injury is hanging out in camp waiting for extraction.
People identical to some well-recorded person but 18 years younger would be hard to explain away, even if the 1962 version vanishes as the younger one leaves.
[Answer]
Time travel is a very implausible claim. Whatever evidence for it you present, it will only be "proof" if all other more plausible explanations can be eliminated; and time travel is so implausible, that there will be many alternative explanations for whatever evidence you present which are more plausible than time travel. "More plausible than time travel" is a very low bar to clear.
You have a photograph, or video, of the night sky with all the stars where they should be 100 years ago? Unconvincing, it must be a fake, even if it is very accurate and there is no evidence the film has been manipulated in any way; at best you have proved that photography was invented much earlier than previously thought. A missing item that was stolen 200 years ago? Well, it had to be somewhere, perhaps one of your ancestors was the thief and your family kept it hidden until now. An extinct animal? Evidently, that species is not really extinct. A letter postmarked 1944 predicting major world events? Even if the postmark can be established as unimpeachably genuine, you might have sent 20,000 such letters to yourself and thrown out all of the ones whose predictions didn't come to pass.
Of course any of the above will get you *some* believers, to a greater or lesser extent, because many people are credulous and *want* to believe. But these things will not convince skeptics; they are not proof beyond reasonable doubt. You could bring back a human being and do a DNA test to show that this exact person died before I was born, and I would sooner believe the DNA test is inaccurate or the people who performed the test are stooges. To be honest, even if you took me on a trip in your time machine, I would only be convinced that you have the resources to put on a very elaborate and immersive historical reenactment with a huge set and a large cast of actors. Implausible, but not as implausible as time travel.
Personally, if you wanted to bring something from the past to convince me that time travel is real, you would have to bring *me* from the past. An hour or two of conversation should be sufficient to establish that the person I'm talking to really is (was?) me; but I don't think there is any other artefact which I could identify with enough confidence to really be convinced.
[Answer]
Heopps has half an answer. Likewise, M.A. Goldring has half an answer.
Bring back a fresh chunk of tree from both of your earlier hops, as big as you can handle.
However, it's not just the ring sizes that you're interested in, but the detailed composition. The C-14 ratio for the two samples will be substantially different. The 1885 chunk will also show shifting ratios, neither will show the same ratio as 1962 and neither will show nuclear weapons isotopes.
[Answer]
That depends a lot on how skeptical the people are that you are trying to convince.
You claim you took these pictures of the night sky in 1885? I think you just created some fake pictures. The best photographic experts say they can't see any evidence that they're fake? That just proves that you did a very good job of making the fakes.
You show us an animal that went extinct decades or centuries ago? Huh, I guess it didn't really go extinct after all. There must have been some small colony of survivors somewhere. The theory that a few examples of this creature survived in some isolated place is a lot more plausible than your time machine story.
You produce this person who claims to be from 1885? Obviously they're just acting out a role. They are an accomplice who is in on the scam in one way or another. Anyone can SAY "I am from 1885." Again, which theory is more plausible: That you paid someone to claim to be from 1885? Or that you invented a time machine?
Etc.
Of course other people might be easily convinced. Showing a newspaper with an 1885 date on it might convince some, and the idea that you had a fake newspaper printed would never occur to them.
I saw a "documentary" once about ghost hunters. They introduced various members of the team. They described one as "the skeptic", and he says how it will take solid evidence to convince him that ghosts are real. Then at the end he hears a strange noise in the haunted house that he can't explain and he announces that he is convinced. I laughed and laughed. Either he was a fake from day one, the script said he was supposed to call himself a skeptic and then end up being convinced by the lamest evidence, or if this program was at all real, he was extremely gullible.
On the other hand, I've had plenty of conversations where I present someone with what I consider a pile of evidence on some controversial subject, they have no rebuttal to any of it, but at the end they declare they are unconvinced.
[Answer]
You could probably just take an ice sample from antarctica from the past, then compare with one from the present. Its uhh... not close to perth, but ill let you figure out how the characters get down there.
When a layer of ice forms in antarctica, it traps some air in it. As layers continue to build, it continues trapping air. What you end up with is layers of ice with air from different time periods trapped in there. You can dig up a rod of this ice, and then measure the different layers and what the air trapped in different layers is like to gain info on the climate of the time this air got trapped in.
Think of it like newspapers. If you put down an old newspaper, and then continue putting newer newspapers on top of it, eventually you could drill out a section of newspaper, and see the change in the newspapers over time from this sample.
So if you get an ice sample from... lets say 100 years ago, and its a sample that measures lets say 100 years of climate, bring it back to the present, you could get a second ice sample that measures the past 200 years, and we would see that the bottom half of that sample is identical to the ice sample you brought back. We have to get a larger sample in the present because more ice has formed, we have put more newspapers on the stack, so the stack is thicker, but it would be really hard to fake something like trapping air in ice.
Of course, someone can say "Well they just took two ice samples and broke off the present half of one". It would likely be obvious that one of the samples has been broken somewhere though. And if you preserve the top layer of ice on the past sample, we could probably see that that top layer is fresh, something that would be impossible if the sample was found in the present.
] |
[Question]
[
In my story there is a parasitic viral life form which infects multiple species and has the capability to hijack the entire host body as well as communicating with the host. **Essential to the story is that this life form has a clearly defined consciousness and intelligence, even outside of a host, and that the virus has an extremely long life-span.**
How plausible is this?
I don't necessarily mind some hand-waving but I want to lean more towards hard sci-fi. So even though consciousness is more of a philosophical concept, if we model our understanding of it on ourselves and the way we are constructed (neurons forming the basis for consciousness), what could be a reasonable parallel to neurons for a viral life form that would allow them to have consciousness and intelligence on par with human beings?
If this is too far-fetched, is there some other microorganism that might be more plausible to use as basis for this life form?
[Answer]
There is no agreement among scientists if virus are life forms at all, because they are basically just a proteic capsule containing nucleic acid. In order to reproduce they need to hijack some other cell which, using their nucleic acid, will produce new copies of the virus.
I think it is straightforward to say that a sentient virus is impossible, for the simple reason it has no structure from which sentience could arise.
A similar reasoning holds also for other unicellular life forms, they are too simple to have sentience. As far as we know, a brain is needed for that.
[Answer]
A virus itself doesn't have any independent processing power - it's just an inert list of instructions. It requires a living cell to carry them out.
But one possibility would be for a virus to recruit cells of the body and turn them into neurones. All the code to develop into a neurone is already in every cell of the body - all you have to do is activate it. Essentially, the virus triggers the body to grow extra brains. Getting random neurones scattered around the body to connect into a coherent whole is a much bigger ask, though. And if you want the personality to have a longer lifetime than the host, you will also need to posit communication between the parasite brains in different bodies, in some massive hive mind. Memories are passed on from generation to generation.
There are many options for such communication, of course. Chemical signals (like pheromones) are slow. Biological radio might be possible, (or some future-tech version of it,) but radio is easy to interfere with. Bioluminescence could be used within line of sight. But perhaps the most elegant and virus-like method is to hijack the organism's own methods of communication, and overlay their signals in hidden, encrypted 'covert channels' of communication, in voice tremor, twitches, itches, pauses, blackouts, and so on. Or you could handwave and say 'telepathy'.
[Answer]
Too far-fetched ...
While sentience or consciousness is notoriously badly defined, it probably requires **complexity.** Humans, whales, or even cats have more complexity than worms or flies, and they display more sentient behaviour.
**One** virus will not be sentient, no matter how long it lives (for virus values of "living").
**Many** viruses would be hard-pressed to interact in a stable pattern.
[Answer]
Self-aware conscious microbes *can* be plausible, but only if they're capable of forming neural-like structures outside of the host (And it will most likely cause their consciousness to be born anew each time, unless they employ writing the information holographically into their DNA while they're sapient, but then their DNA will be truly massive, and it will bring in the usual troubles caused by mutations via imperfect copying).
But viruses? No, I don't think you can justify that without some massive amount of handwaving.
[Answer]
A outside a host cell is *not* alive, it is merely a set of instructions but incapable of itself executing those instructions. A Virus has no metabolism of its own. At all.
But inside a host, or in a suitable growth medium? YES
It is very believable that a collection of identical, very simple, organisms can work together to make a functional higher grade organism, even sentient life.
The trick is that complexity can arise from the *structure* of a system, even when that system consists of very simple elements. (or even just copies of 1 simple element)
Consider the utter simplicity of the system called
[Conway's game of Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life).
A cellular automaton with ludicrously simple rules.
Yet.. It has been proven possible to build a Turing Complete machine using this simple ruleset. And with a Turing Complete capable construct, you can build any computer. And from there it is just a hop, skip and jump to full sentience.
If you insist on a more physical example of complexity arising from simple roots, look to the humble [Slime Mold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold).
This is a sort-of fungus, that consists of very simple cells, that can group together in very complex ways.
As for how this viral infection of yours can form a neural network to think with?
Firstly, who says you need a set of neurons to think with? Chemical triggers could work well too.
However, in your example the virus is infecting another being that *ALREADY* has a fully functional neural setup that is quite capable of thinking with. ALL the virus has to do is hijack a tiny portion of the host's brain, implant its own personality and worldview into that, and your scenario is fully set up.
Actually, your idea is not exactly original.I think the patent for this concept is held by the [Cordyceps Ant-Zombie Fungus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis).
This is a fungus that attacks an ant, completely changes the ant's behavior and makes the ant build a "nest" for the fungus to propagate.
It may not be sentient, but it surely does initiate a rather complex set of instructions using a very simple infections and a creature that should be incapable of that level of planning doing the work.
[Answer]
**I don't think it can be done sans contact with a nervous system.There was an old SF Novel Called 'Three to Conquer' by Eric Frank Russell that addressed this issue.**
In the story 3 crewmen of a returning space mission are infected by an alien virus that had evolved on its home world to infect a local intelligent native species there. (I think the planet was Venus). It was also implied (again I think) that the species concerned had in turn evolved means of detecting infected individuals so as to try and avoid them.
Unlike your story the point was the virus was not in and of itself intelligent *until* it managed to infect the central nervous system of a suitable host. At that point it rapidly divides/replicates inside neurons without killing them. Hijacking them instead for its own purposes. Outside of a host it was completely inert.
Once it had infected someone it had access to the brains innate consciousness and all the memories of the victim but the process destroys the previous 'inhabitant's' conscious mind. The victim ceases to exist and can never return.
The virus had one overriding priority - to spread and take over new hosts. To do this it 'mimics' the mannerisms and personally of the host until it can maneuver someone the host knew into a position where it can infect them.
Very old story and pure bunkum biology but you might be able to posit a **bacteria or a protozoa** that does something similar to the virus in Russell's story. Viruses destroy the cells they infect during replication. You might instead create a life form that grows inside a host inside its CNS and which parasitizes the hosts neurons for its own benefit. Certainly there are examples (as mentioned) of this on Earth.
[Answer]
You could approach insane levels of information processing technology.
Each "virus" particle isn't the same virus. The viruses each unique pieces of a biological computer processing system. The infection has multiple tiers.
Tier 1 is biological compatibility. The same way that most dog viruses do nothing for humans, but moreso; your virus has to be capable of infecting the target and delivering a payload.
Tier 2 is hacking their biology. Unlike traditional viruses that are trying to infect, reproduce, and jump to a new host, you have work to do in their body.
Tier 3 is building a new consciousness.
Think of the Von Neumann interstellar probe problem. Here you send a star wisp to a new star. It starts off with next to no resources, and starts bootstrapping by finding a metal-rich asteroid and building a small factory to build more stuff.
Eventually it builds enough infrastructure to decompress and run an actual intelligence in this new solar system.
Your virus infection is a Von Neumann "interbiological" probe. It builds a system to decompress and run the viral intelligence in in the alien biology of the host body.
The viral intelligence payload is expensive to carry. So like a Von Neumann probe, you might just send enough intelligence to build a giant communications dish, and then upload the consciousnesses afterwards.
In the viral case, you'd invade the body, take over its biology, then arrange for a high-bandwidth transfer or copy of consciousness from another host.
Tier 4 is building a collective consciousness.
Humans have high barriers between each organism, but we still have a multiple "collective" information processing beings; from cultures, to religions, to corporations, to families, to polities. A viral consciousness with the ability to stream itself from one body to another might have a long, slow over-consciousness that isn't confined to a given body.
The thought processes of each individual infected would matter much like the state of each neuron in our brain matters. Individual infected could even go rogue, much like cells in our body can go cancerous or otherwise misbehave. We have an immune system to identify and deal with that problem that works exceedingly well.
We also have a reproductive system that attempts to isolate the noise of each lifetime from damaging the next too badly, cleaning up entropy by gestating a new being every 20-40 years; most cancer and other biological system "wear" problems in the previous generations isn't passed onto the next iteration.
---
Building such a viral consciousness is difficult to imagine using natural selection pressure.
But a ridiculously advanced information processing civilization (like, Matryoshka brain scale or crazier, like ice giants from a heat death universe) could plausibly design such a thing.
For a plot, imagine ice giants, consciousnesses spread over galactic scales, in a universe long past the stars going out, thinking huge slow thoughts as they extract the entropy of fading black holes. They know they are doomed, but they solve for how to send extremely small (compared to their size) fragments of information to a warm universe. Extremely limited, they find a warm intelligence, and build "Von Neumann probes" out of existing viruses. These infect creatures, modify them to receive yet more data. Slowly (in our time frame) they send extremely compressed images of pieces of their consciousness in an attempt to escape the long, slow death of theirs.
Even planetary-scale hive intelligences are not nearly large enough; to transmit and store even a small fragment of the universe-scale intelligence that they are, they need to swallow the universe.
The physics of this universe are going to be relatively alien, so they also need to develop local intelligence (or hijack it) in order to build a higher bandwidth communication device. In this young, hot universe, consuming even a fraction of its entropy (say, converting an entire galaxy into a inter-dimensional radio receiver) would be a wealth far more than they can afford to spare back home.
[Answer]
It could work if:
A- It is a colective (like ants, like Borgs)form of sentient life.
B- It is a virus, but it has a big DNA.
Remember you, and any one in this world started like two microscopic cells getting together.
[Answer]
Individual bees are dumb, beehives are smart.
Ditto ants/anthills.
Analogously, each infected host acts as a neuron. Whether it's on or off depends on genetic markers on the viruses in it, with criteria for changing based on markers in new incoming individual viruses. Optional: non-binary states. Non-binary states seem better for plausible state-transition criteria. The global mass of infected is a smart "individual", reasons very slowly, and reprograms the faster viral properties strategically, making tradeoffs.
Optional: multiple of these large "individuals" compete and/or cooperate.
For more plausibility, have far more hosts (more "neurons") than present day Earth humans, maybe hundreds of billions.
I can't think of an evolutionary path leading there, but seems stable once it exists.
For a related fictional example of a planetwide mind made of dumb individuals, in this case unicellular bacteria, see: (hover to show spoiler)
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(Asimov_novel)>
>
>
>
[Answer]
As others have pointed out, sentience of a virus outside a host is not possible. Viruses have specifically evolved stable configurations when not infecting a host, and sentience as we know it requires changing state.
However, it's not far fetched to imagine a virus that has a characteristic and significant effect on infected hosts' behaviors. For example, [the rabies virus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies#Fear_of_water) can cause agitation and (ostensibly) fear of drinking liquids. If the change in behavior is significant enough, infected hosts might be considered to have a consciousness distinct from their pre-infection consciousness. Colloquially, this might be called the consciousness of the virus. For example, the fictional virus N. Machiavirus might induce hosts to carry out Machiavellian schemes to spread itself.
A virus that induces total behavioral change would probably need to evolve over thousands of years starting from something like rabies. It might evolve over a long period in non-human mammals, then transmit to humans in a shorter period of time.
Note that the virus would impart a fixed behavior pattern on the host. It would not be able to "remember" anything when infecting to a new host. Memory between hosts would require untenably specific feedback from the host's nervous system to cellular reproduction of infected cells (using some form of epigenetics). I'm not aware of any viruses that do this.
[Answer]
As others have noted intelligence in the virus outside of a host is problematic. But once in a host, I can see it being plausible for a virus to be able to unpack its thoughts and memories from an encoding within its genetic structure. The DNA of the virus particles would reflect the current thoughts and feelings of the virus within the host producing the virus. These memories/thoughts/feelings are transferred to the new host upon infection.
For a virus that is intelligent outside of its host... This requires some sort of metabolism, viruses do not have this. If they did they might be considered more of a parasite, with a free-living phase. "The thing" is a monster that has some of these properties, a single cell can infect a whole organism and carries the memories of previous incarnations of the entity. Perhaps you could imagine a viral bourne version of the thing that converts its host over time into its own form. This form is intelligent and releases viral particles to convert other creatures into this form.
[Answer]
In my humble opinion, it would be presumptuous to rule out the possibility of future sentient viral life forms. We still lack knowledge about the functioning of life forms in our deepest oceans. According to current knowledge, box jellyfish have a central nervous system and sensory neurons, and are able to chase prey among other things, without having an actual 'brain'. Does this amount to a level of sentience, however minimal? It's plausible, so I don't think it should be completely ruled out that other life forms without an actual 'brain' could have some level of sentience.
Source: <https://boxjellyfish.org/do-box-jellyfish-have-brains/>
[Answer]
In addition to what has already been said, a virus that co-opts its host's nervous system, or that makes the host grow an additional nervous system, could encode its experiences into the DNA carried by new virus particles. There is no real virus or other biologic organism that does this, but there is no physical reason why such an encoding of information into DNA (or RNA if you prefer) could not work. It requires biochemical pathways that don't exist, but nothing that would be (biochemically/physically) impossible. Virus particles would be a bit larger than typical viruses, but viruses are so small that that wouldn't matter. The only question is how such a virus could have evolved. You'll be hard-pressed to come up with a realistic scenario. But an easy cop-out is that the virus was designed by a very advanced alien species.
Virus-infecteds sharing experiences and memories by encoding them in virus particles have some interesting characteristics: multiple infected persons can infect a new victim at the same time. In that case the virus personality of the new victim could have the memories and experiences of all its 'parents' (assuming the virus was programmed to properly merge such different experiences together). And, as infected individuals constantly produce new virus particles, two virus personalities can share memories if they are in each other's neighborhood. Not instantly, and depending on how the virus works it might not be all memories or not in high fidelity, but over a few hours to days one virus personality could acquire memories and experiences from another in this way.
So for plausibility: not plausible at all if you assume an earth-like evolutionary environment and the virus must evolve naturally. But physically there's no reason why this couldn't exist, if you hand-waive its evolution. (Or if you want to, figure out a realistic scenario. Figuring one out is hard, but evolution can go in so many directions that I'm sure some theoretical way exists in which such a virus would evolve.) Another easy creation path is that the virus was designed by some intelligent species, which is also possible.
[Answer]
You just reimagined the **zombie virus**.
The virus reprograms hosts for its own goals. The standard trope makes human hosts much dumber, but you can make it different. Hosts remain as smart as before, they just change goals. The virus' neurons are the hosts' actual neurons, used in place.
[Answer]
[Adam Warren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Warren_(comics)) gave one interesting example of a conscious *[meme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme)*(!) in *[Gen-13](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gen%C2%B9%C2%B3)* #43–44 (Vol. 1, DCWS period): the [earworm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earworm) "So Happy to be Happy". **Apart from** this rather being on the soft side of sci-fi (since happening in a superheroes universe), I would say it quite nicely matches your requirements of long life-span, clearly defined consciousness, and intelligence, as well as not being confined to a single host and allowing humans to hold conversations with the viral consciousness.
 
The catch is of course how to justify the necessary communication between different parts of the viral consciousness. As far as I can recall, Warren never addresses that point, but pretty much the only solution that would make sense in *that* story would be for infected hosts to develop a certain degree of telepathy (for intra-consciousness transfer of information, not for spreading the infection further). Whether this solution would be applicable also in your setting depends of course on how you want to play it.
[Answer]
It's quite possible for a parasite to behave like a virus, i.e. trick its host into making copies of itself rather than reproducing in the normal way. It's also possible for a parasite to survive for a long time outside its host. While others have suggested (not unreasonably) that a brain is required for self-awareness, in reality we have no way to know that, and indeed there's no agreed test for self-awareness. If there were, one might create a device that was clearly not self-aware and yet still passed the test, if only to demonstrate that the test was flawed. It's probably reasonable to say that a self-aware organism would need to have something equivalent to a half-decent brain, and possibly that could be implemented at the atomic rather than cellular level and so it could be *reasonably* small, rather larger than a typical virus but perhaps still small enough to invade a single cell of a host.
] |
[Question]
[
A person is sent back in time 30 years to 1993 and they still have their phone. The phone is an iphone 11. It is on a contract. The battery is fully charged. The phone has a number of apps on it including the most popular social media apps and some local apps such as a step counter, camera, voice recorder. The person does not have a charger. They do not have access to a modem. They are in a very remote area but can travel to a large city (eg London).
[Answer]
**”What would the screen display be”**
I’m going to assume you’re asking here about what would the display show on your phone, as in the OS it would display. If that’s the case, it would be the last version of iOS that the phone was updated to. (It’s important to note here that you won’t be able to update the phone OS version while you’re back in time, because obviously iOS doesn’t even exist yet). Any files stored on the phone’s built-in storage should still be accessible, and things that don’t require internet like the camera app, calculator, clock, etc. should definitely still work. I’m going to say that Social Media apps will likely not work, because all of the infrastructure they use hasn’t even been invented yet, so there’s no server host for the app to contact. It would still show the app, but it would likely give you an error message something like “failed to connect to server” for trying to use any functionality that uses internet connection. For a good real-world test for how the phone would function, assuming you have an iPhone since you include a specific model type, test its functionality with Airplane Mode on. Make sure that both Cellular and WiFi are toggled off (you can do this in control center by toggling on Airplane Mode, though I like to also toggle off Wifi and Cellular in Control Center as well). If you try this, it will give you a very accurate idea of what your character would be able to do.
**“The Person does not have a charger”**
Just to clarify, they can’t get a charger no matter what city they go to. The lightning cord that the iPhone 11 uses for charging has not been invented yet. Neither has QI wireless charging. So your person will not be able to recharge this phone. Now, if they have a bit of electrical skill, they could possibly make a wireless charger for the phone, or possibly even a plug, but the wireless charger would actually be far simpler mechanically to build provided the character has the knowledge required. Alternatively, maybe a tech savvy person from that time period could make a wireless charger or charging cord for it provided they know some basic things like voltage and amperage limits.
I hope this helps you out! If you have any other questions related to this, feel free to comment and ask, and I can try to provide more ideas and info.
[Answer]
Forget apps.
## It can turn on the torch
The bright white LED is a miracle of science in 1993.
## It can take photos and videos
The digital camera is also sci fi in 1993.
## It may have some offline maps
Turns out you know what roads, stadiums, etc, are going to be built where. Maybe only in your part of Pennsylvania/Zagreb/Wellington, but still.
## It can play music and videos
Maybe someone has sent you a whatsapp video that you downloaded. Congrats, you have that video.
If you're really, really lucky, it has Ricky Martin or the Macarena or OK Computer and you have next year's biggest hit.
Failing that, there's still ringtones..
## It can store 64GB of data
I had to download DOOM (or was it Wolfenstein) over 4 successive nights on my dad's 4800 baud modem. The split zip files were 1MB each. I had to delete some other games. Too bad USB hasn't been invented yet.
[Answer]
In the [history of mobile phones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones), 1993 had GSM networks in Europe.
>
> In the 1990s, the 'second generation' mobile phone systems emerged. Two systems competed for supremacy in the global market: the European developed GSM standard and the U.S. developed CDMA standard. These differed from the previous generation by using digital instead of analog transmission, and also fast out-of-band phone-to-network signaling.
>
>
>
The iphone11 seems to be capable of [using GSM network](https://www.devicemag.com/how-to-tell-if-your-iphone-is-global-or-gsm/#:%7E:text=Yes%2C%20the%20iPhone%2011%20model%20A2221%20is%20a,is%20used%20in%20most%20countries%20arond%20the%20world.)
>
> **Is the iPhone 11 a GSM Phone?**
>
>
> Yes, the iPhone 11 model A2221 is a GSM phone, also known as the Global Version. GSM stands for Global System for Mobile Communications and is a digital mobile network that allows users to make calls, send texts and access the internet. This type of network is used in most countries arond the world. The iPhone 11 model A2221 operates on GSM networks, meaning it will work with most cellular providers.
>
>
>
Therefore, maybe calls and SMS would be possible. However, the operator will need to recognize the SIM trying to access its services.
There will be no other working apps, I am afraid.
[Answer]
1993 is not the Middle Ages and you could do a lot with such a phone provided you find people geeky enough. If you dropped by my university (in France) I could point you to a few people.
If you are yourself a techie you will make their life much easier but even without that they will find out.
Charging the phone is the easiest. You would either tell them about the voltage, or they would try slowly from 0V both ways and finally got the threshold.
Communicating with the phone is more difficult but doable. It would take time to reverse engineer, though. (EDIT: see @Abion74 comment below. As I mentioned, I was looking at my Android phone when replying and missed out thee iPhone part)
* There was no WiFi so bad luck here.
* Ethernet over USB is conceivable if Ethernet is present (it was rather the time of 10Base5, but at least the standard was in place - so who knows)
* Data transfer via USB would be fine
If you would consider upping the game by also bringing USB documentation with you, you would open the gates of sleepless nights for these guys and gals. It would be Christmas coming early for us.
You may also consider having an Android phone, which will be easier to work with.
[Answer]
I don't think the other answer is correct.
the iphone supports GSM which was launched in 1991, so at least in metropolitan areas in Europe and asia it will be able to make emergency voice calls. The united states did not adopt GSM until 1995 so this will not work here.
Making a charger out of stuff available in 1993 is trivial. 5v power supplies are easily available, and a knife and wires would be enough to physically connect the power pins. This is enough to charge at 0.5A.
Getting it to register to a gsm network of the time my be hard, unless you take a sim with a valid contract.
Although a sim of the time may be cut to fit, all sims at this time used 5v signaling, and I'd be surprised if the iphone supports this. Modern sims support 5, 3.3 and 1.8v.
Nevertheless, making electronics for this voltage shift is doable, though probably not fitting inside the sim slot.
Anything available in airplane mode will also work.
[Answer]
Who are you showing your phone to in 1993?
Suppose I worked for Sony. The had made the standard CRT video monitors for years. LCDs were not going to challenge them for dynamic range for another 15 years. If I were to see the display, I would want you to turn it off immediately. I would then arrange a microscope / spectrometer to get as much information as I could. You could tell me it was an OLED. I would know what an LED was, but the blue ones had not happened yet. We had not yet got to the point where CRTs would have rivals, but it would surely come. There was also a firm belief that semiconductor resolution was limited by the wavelength of near-visible light. But, once you are shown that the firm limits were not so firm, you can start thinking of alternatives.
When I was born, there were perhaps 48 Kbits of memory in the whole world, and 12 Kbits were in ENIAC. I remember clock speeds first going above 100 KHz, then 1 MHz. It is a huge leap of faith to make the first atom bomb, or the first hydrogen bomb. But when someone else has done it, and you know it is possible, figuring out how it might have been done is easier...
[Answer]
## Flip your phone to airplane mode.
Boom. You are in 1993.
By doing so, you just turned off the cellular data modem, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity to other things, which are the key to everything that makes a phone *a phone* and not an iPod Touch, and none of which exist in 1993.
Whatever still works on the phone, will work in 1993. You can (at the risk of this turning into "how to use a phone"):
* browse emails you already downloaded, but no new ones will come in
* use files that are locally downloaded on the device (cloud will be unavailable)
— use apps like notes and calendar that are able to work offline despite being unable to sync.
* watch/listen to media in local phone storage, but not media "on the cloud"
* play games that don't need to bang a server for anything
You can give social media apps and always-connected games like Diablo or Pokemon:GO a try, but you'll find they complain about "no internet" and that's that. If 10 of you brought your phones, Facebook and Tiktok will not work among you because the server infrastructure is not there.
The phone will not know what date it is, because the cellular data network and internet it gets the time from are not there. Speaking of that,
GPS will be extremely slow and less reliable, because phones use augmented GPS, which improves reach in complex geography and greatly speeds up GPS fixes, but reqires the cell towers be involved. Old GSM towers aren't set up for augmented GPS. GPS on phones (and embedding that in 911/112 calls) is a long, long way off.
## Recharge
If you did not bring your charging block, the phone will deplete completely in 12-24 hours because every minute it is trying every generation of cellular it is capable of, notching up transmission power to max to try to reach a tower. If you have the foresight to switch to Airplane Mode almost immediately, you may get a week or two of standby time out of it, minus usage of course.
Supplying 5V to the port is simple enough, the problem is coming up with a workable substitute for the advanced USB-C or Tesla - I mean Lightning connector.
If you went to a competent lab and said "I know I can charge this by applying 5V to two pins of this heretofore undeveloped connector", they could probably X-ray it and figure out which pins from trace thickness and PCB markings. Disassembling a modern phone non-destructively is a PITA unless you know the tricks.
5V or 3.3V would be an easy guess, since PCs of that age are already using that. Any PC power supply will give you the 5V. So you could eventually develop a charging cord that goes "PC keyboard port to Lightning" with a T-connector so the keyboard could still be connected.
At that point you would get basic boring USB charging at 0.5 to 2.5 watts. No fast charge because no handshake.
## But GSM, though
Maybe you could make that work. But you'd only get talk and TXT, they aren't really doing data over GSM yet, but it doesn't really matter. First, the system is not designed for the volume of data the phone would ordinarily use, and second, literally zero of the servers it would talk to are there yet. Most likely the Internet connection would be saturated by the phone's ordinary housekeeping traffic, and the carrier would get mad and turn it off. Also, GSM takes unbelievable amounts of battery power compared to G5; they've been shrinking battery sizes accordingly and the result is much shorter runtime when on older networks.
Also, if you hadn't already installed a telnet/ssh app, you won't even be connecting to MELVYL or Compuserve, or a shell provider like Netcom or WELL. That was how you did the Internet then. Hope you enjoy command line lol.
Here's a twist, though: if you can get someone to support Internet data on GSM, **email will work**. It should be able to talk to POP and SMTP servers of that age. Unbelievable. And that would be compatible with the constrictive data limits of GSM, since people weren't exactly mailing videos then.
[Answer]
To me, it sounds like you would pretty much have a pocket-sized fancy calculator/computer that can also play music and media stored on the phone, and has a working torch, a camera, a voice recorder, and can play games! It would impress the hell out of anyone encountering it. It would look (and be) superior to the Game Boy, the Walkman, Cd Players, portable TVs, etc.
But I don't think it would function as a phone as it would not be compatible with the networks of the time. Maybe if you took it to a research university and explained what it was, then maybe someone could figure out ways to make it work. But it's a big maybe.
[Answer]
Also consider that if the phone can't find a cell to successfully connect to, it will turn up the transmit power and "yell harder" in case its just out of range.
The phone will use up the battery's store of power much quicker than normal. If the phone lasts 24 hours of "normal" usage you might expect it to be flat in half that time.
This could be a plot point where the device turns off unexpectedly at a critical moment.
---
In airplane mode, the battery lasts a lot longer. However the time-traveller would have to remember to change into this mode, and it may or may not allow GPS reception still.
[Answer]
# At first you won't be able to read any emails. But with some work you could read everyone's
The iphone 11 comfortably outclasses the largest supercomputer of the era, at about 6 times faster (690GFlops, vs 100Gflops). In addition, the NSA had mandated a relatively low strength encryption standard (DES 56), which would later be trivially cracked. You can break into pretty much anything. Of course, you'd need to be decent at computing, but once you're there, the world is pretty much your oyster. Try and make sure you download the wikipedia article on the dotcom bubble before you go.
[Answer]
If you're in a major city, finding an electronic repair store like Radio Shack might be able to rig you up a rudimentary charger. They'd likely charge an arm and a leg, but it'd be doable; especially if you have a replaceable battery that lists its information.
Lucky for you, the full first constellation of GPS for the US military finished in 1993, and this is a send-only system. In other words, your phone would still pick up GPS (that said, government might have significant interest if they got whiff as you used it, because the first public use didn't come till later).
Between these two, you could get an instant job aboard any public seaship of the era.
Social media apps are *mostly* toast. Your only use from them will be some cached article headlines and messages. The former could be useful for knowing a handful of future events.
If you have local storage for your email, this could be a treasure trove of knowledge on the times of various major events, and guide predicting some things a bit more precisely than your memory.
Wireless calling:
1G and 2G actually existed in some cities at this time, but since your sim card is likely to an account that doesn't exist (and sim cards don't exist yet so you can't replace it). You'll be limited to 911 calls. This could be useful for emergency response, but that's about it. It could be a lifesaver though.
Cameras and Voice recorders of various kinds existed in this time, but they were big and bulky. Might be good for spy work since noone would expect.
The biggest benefit is going to happen if you're running Android and can get a Serial-to-serial connect juryrigged (doable, but a pain - again, a lot of time in radio shack - USB [Universal Serial Bus] is a descendant of older Serial Bus standards, and is surprisingly still backwards compatible - for example, I have a USB-to-Serial cable for my older printer - matchup could pretty much be figured out with a multimeter). Android is open source and Linux-based, and Linux already exists in this era, which means if you can get at the code, there may be chunks that could jump waaayyyy ahead in computer software development. Being closed source though, an iPhone will provide no benefit, as there's little to no chance that any of the code will be accessible. If the time traveller is a cell phone firmware developer, this will be the best bet to maximize use of the cellphone.
This last one is huge, because with that tech, because Linux relies on a small kernal that can still be installed on 90's computers today. You could crush Microsoft & Apple and prevent the rise of Google. The OS code syntaxes would reveal ARM architecture, so you could also overpower AMD and Intel. Now, they won't be able to replicate the chips themselves, because modern boards use chemical pressing techniques that weren't nearly as precise back then - that march of time will still have to repeat because that precision came from better computers & sensors which allowed better precision tools which allowed better computers & sensors, etc, and the sensors on a cellphone aren't nearly the quality used for production & develoment. (Though your phone's processing capabilities may be able to bump them forward a few years - or a lot of other industries for that matter - it's basically a handheld supercomputer for the time).
[Answer]
What you couldn't do
**Charge the phone**
The USB standard hasn't been invented yet so you can't charge it via micro-USB or USB-C
**Transfer files to the phone**
The phone either connects via USB or by reading the micro-sd card (if it has one). Neither of those exist in '93.
**Call someone**
The operators in '93 wouldn't be able to recognize the standard the SIM card in your phone uses.
**Access the internet**
Both mobile data or wifi and both are non-existant at this time in history.
[Answer]
Difficult to say without testing but the Lightning connector (wiring of that can be found [here](https://www.etechnophiles.com/lightning-connector-port-pinout/)) has one pin for power (pin 5) and another for the ground (pin 1). Unless Apple has done something to require the digital communication, a good laboratory of the time may be able to make a custom connector to charge device. It is not that miniature:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XmW52.jpg)
I think that a good laboratory of 1993 should be capable of making this connector ([image credit](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lightning_connector_03.jpg)). This can be done, for instance, by etching the narrow printed circuit board (technology appeared in about 1956). Mind that only two contact plates need to be drawn to implement the charger, not all 8.
Being able to charge opens more scenarios for prolonged usage, unless you need a tension for your story with the battery running out.
] |
[Question]
[
It's 2100-ish and we're experimenting on our new time travel device, or let's say time travel bunker. What we gathered of information so far are:
* We can't really go back in time, literally. Every time we visited the past, we got into a new dimension identical to ours to the point the visitor arrived. Then, it just changes direction chaotically, but nothing really changes on our timeline.
* Huge amounts of energy are used to visit this new dimension for the first time, although revisiting it demands a lot less.
* Weirdly enough, it's cheaper to explore this new dimension than to explore space and new planets.
* We can bring back goods from that dimension as efficiently as we can carry stuff there.
* We can't go forward, no matter what we try to do.
The higher ups are not that happy. They hoped they could win the lottery a few times I guess. The board members were afraid we would get shut down and devised a plan to rescue all the investments made on the project.
As we know now where all the natural resources are we could just go there and get it. And let's be fair, we could use some. Since the construction of the mega cities started, we've been on a major shortage. The thing is, when should we go? I mean, to what age should we go harvest resources?
It would be easy to say "just go now and gather that brand new duplicated nuclear frost free refrigerator", but I don't think we would be welcomed there. I mean, I would shoot dead anyone trying to rob my toaster and I don't think the military would allow any of that. It would be a large scale war between two identical forces.
We need to think of a time where resources were readily available and we could outmatch the military. The balance on that question is the answer.
Valuable goods: almost anything goes. Think of what is valuable today, as in high price stuff. More readily resources like already processed steel and gold ingots. Also art, high tech computers (large amounts as in warehouse full of it), uranium ready rods, etc. The thing is, the more advanced the better resources we can find, but it'll be harder to harvest since the military would be a hard match to overcome. Not limited to those, you get the idea I hope.
[Answer]
The thing is the massive amount of energy. Sure you could go back and collect iron, coal, oil, etc but is it worth the expense?
Raw materials can be collected from space by asteroid harvesting and the energy to rip a hole in the fabric of time/space just to mine I suspect will be far greater than asteroid mining.
Now where you make your money is collecting unique things. Think Jurassic Park except you don't need to find DNA or clone anything. Think all the Van Gogh painting he burnt because his painting were worthless at the time. Think about all the books and scrolls burnt in the Library of Alexandria. Da Vinci first draft drawings. The items that were robbed from the Pharaoh's tomb and melted down.
The next thing is recordings of events. The Parthenon filmed just after construction. Life in Pompeii. The burning of Rome.
Finally you have the recording of crime. Who actually shot JFK? Who was Jack the Ripper actually? What happened to missing people? Where is the missing body?
All these things can make a huge amount of money far greater than any lottery.
[Answer]
If length of time isn't a factor, you could always go back to before humanity evolved. I'm aware this is basically the plot of *Terra Nova*, but it means that you don't have to deal with any real resistance.
[Homo Sapiens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens) only evolved as a separate species in the last 300,000 years or so, and would only present serious resistance to a modern military sometime in the last 100-150 years. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old - even if travelling further back requires more energy, it's only in the last 100,000 years that humans managed to colonise most of the planet
Sure, you lack the benefit of preexisting mines and infrastructure, but if you don't care about preserving the world or timeline, you can basically strip mine the planet with no care for collateral damage. It also brings up the possibility of retrieving extinct species of plants and animals for studies - who knows what medicines could be found in the jungles of the Jurassic?
As an alternative approach - why do the work yourself? You presumably have access to highly advanced technologies, knowledge, and medicines. Travel back only a few hundred years - perhaps to the end of the industrial revolution - and trade with the inhabitants of the new world for resources. You could charge exorbitant prices in raw materials for mere pittances. If it's possible to travel back to several locations within the same parallel reality, you could start a bidding war between the nations of the time.
[Answer]
You ***really*** need to read Charles Stross's [Merchant Princes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_Princes) series, which has a very similar premise. To my knowledge, he's the only author that's really leveraged inter-dimensional travel between more/less advanced societies for its logical economic conclusions. (And social conclusions, but that's where the plot lies.)
The key concepts are [uplift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_(science_fiction)) and [technology transfer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_transfer). No, you can't win the lottery. You *may* be able to win by betting on a sporting event, because those are slightly less random. But you can ***reliably*** make your fortune by teaching less-advanced people skills which will build their society and put yourself in the position of being the supplier of those technologies. If you could be a combination of Newton, Newcomen, Stephenson, Faraday, Davy, Edison, Marconi, (extend as appropriate), then you can drip-feed their society advances in technology at a rate they can handle, and be in a position to reap the profits of being the person at each step who gets "first mover" advantage.
And not only that, but knowing the direction of travel, you can make sure you've acquired the relevant assets ahead of time while they're still cheap. Say you're going to give them the Newcomen beam engine for pumping out mines. You can buy up flooded mines for a pittance, and of course when the pumping technology exists then they're profitable again. Thinking about building railways, canals or turnpikes? Buy land along the route before the technology exists. Internal combustion engine? Expand your empire to the Middle East. Mobile phones? Expand your empire to the Congo for coltan mines.
Don't forget general society as well. It's tempting to just look at railways and bridges as the big legacies of the Victorian era, but arguably the biggest advance was installing proper sewers and water supplies so that people didn't die of preventable diseases. As those people survive, you've got more workers for your businesses, and more consumers. Hospitals too - don't forget to pass on lessons from Pasteur and others. And by doing this, you shift the public perception of yourself from industrialist robber-baron to benevolent protector of the nation. It's hard for Luddites to find much traction when you're the reason their families have toilets and running water in their houses, and their children were born safely in your hospitals, and their grandparents are being looked after in their old age by your nurses. Victorians like Rowntree can serve as useful examples if you discard their religion and moralising.
[Answer]
There are probably 3 main times that you want to go back, if you just want to steal the resources sitting there. I'm not sure of the actual time, so I'll outline the transition stage and why.
Right before the rifle was invented (1840). The invention of the rifle meant that instead of muskets, people now had guns that were accurate. If you want to have the lowest risk possible, hit them right before they have accurate guns and you don't have to worry much about losing anyone.
Before the Invention of the Machine Gun (1880). The invention of the machine gun. The machine gun marked a huge change in tactics and strategy. It wasn't about man power anymore. 1-2 people could hold down dozens of men with just a single machine gun. If you want to reduce the risk, but get more reward, you want to come around now.
Before handheld or portable communications were invented (1950s). Fast communications mean a faster response. If you appear with 100 men and start ransacking a place, it helps a lot of the people have to run all the way to a phone to get help rather than pulling out a hand held radio or mobile phone and dialing for help. Weapons are already pretty dangerous, so the main factor is how long can you go ransacking undisturbed before you need to leave.
The later you go, the more materials you will be able to obtain. Industrialization basically meant that the longer you waited, the more they were producing and the more you can steal. Its like dropping into a mine where its pickaxes and carts, vs dropping into a mine with machines carving mountains into nothing. After portable communications are readily available, you risk being caught, pictured and filmed which you don't want. Knowing something is possible is a very good incentive for investment and the military would certainly see the advantages of such a technology so you don't want them biting you back later on.
If you go too early, then you simply won't have the materials you want in a large enough quantity to be worth it. Think of the Effiel tower. It was essentially a display from France to show off how much iron they had. That much material now-a-days is a joke. Its 7,300 tons, but now we currently produce more than a million tons a day.
**In fact... the best way would be to go back and rob yourself.** Think about it. If you had a warehouse full of goods already. Go back into the alternative timeline, and steal everything you had. Now back in the original timeline you have doubled your goods. Just rinse and repeat. You only need to start with one big robbery, or investment and then you can safely double your goods with no resistance.
[Answer]
The ideal era for harvesting resources for an advanced society is the present. Strictly speaking, only ten seconds in the past.
The time travel devices take your harvesters to a point in time identical to your timeline, but in another dimension. So go back ten seconds into the past, or even much, much smaller intervals into the past as required, maybe it only needs to be a microsecond. You will be in an identical version of your own timeline. It will be full of the same resources as your timeline. Grab what you as quickly as you can, before they realize you've arrived.
Now you will have acquired identical versions of the goodies used by your advanced society. It wouldn't be a good idea to go back to a timeline you have visited, because they might know you'll be coming back again.
A word to the wise. Remember they're about to do what you're doing, i.e., pop ten seconds into the past of an alternative timeline and plunder it, so maybe you should back somewhat earlier into the past than ten seconds. That suggests going back before you've got your time travel devices working or perhaps back before the time travel research & development project begins.
In conclusion, the near past will be rich in exactly the sort of golden goodies and resources your advanced society uses. They're there for the taking in the alternative timelines of the recent past. So go for it.
[Answer]
Don't forget the potential value of selective kidnapping. Grab a few Da-Vincis, Einsteins and Hawkings during your travels. Build a think tank full of multiple instances of the greatest minds in history and ask them how to best use your unique time travel opportunity.
[Answer]
How much control over -back in time- do you have?
If as fine as you could possibly like do the following:
Stockpile as much oil / iron / Uranium and other valuable resources in a location set to be taken from via time portal.
Once the stockpile is full go back in time 1 minute and start lifting from it.
Once empty... Go back in time 1 minute v2 and repeat... etc
The most important part of this is to stockpile enough energy resources to make this loop self powering, dump any waste on the other side of the portal and everything in your stockpile not consumed in making the next is profit.
[Answer]
You can’t rob the future. But if you can swing it, try to rob an Earth already robbed by your future selves. They can leave important research notes for you. It doesn’t help them to help you, but that kind of pay-it-forward-no-wait-I-mean-sideways thinking would benefit them when their own future selves do the same (and so on forward) so everyone benefits (weird proof by induction!). You can pick up the physical leavings not taken by your future selves, but more valuable will be the science... and the winning stock picks/lottery numbers known to your future selves.
[Answer]
You have a pretty bad mathematical collision problem here. If I have an infinite number of parallel universes that all evolve the same way, then there are an infinite number of **me** that all choose to visit one of these, presumably chosen by cosmic randomness, at the same time, all of us choosing to visit exactly the same time and to plunder exactly the same resources and bring them back.
Off the top of my head I believe the mathematics of that works out, in the infinite limit, as $\frac{1}{e}=36.79\%$ chance that I will randomly choose a universe that another "me" also randomly chose. I'm not sure what happens then; but it seems to me both of us appearing in the same place at the same time is not going to be good for our health, or anybody close to us.
With only a 63.21% chance of survival on each trip, I'd probably want to keep the number of trips to a minimum. Like zero!
Alternatively, I would not send *myself* back, but some sort of robotic AI to accomplish the mission and bring the treasure forward.
As for the best place to visit: I'd research the largest natural gold and precious gem deposits ever found, and pick the easiest to exploit (easiest both physically, and at a time of no resistance to the taking). To me that would be the least morally objectionable; those resources when found are pretty much fantastic luck, and denying somebody fantastic luck is (to me) less objectionable than actively robbing them or harming them or killing them.
[Answer]
Gabon, about 1.7 billion years ago
Uranium 235, the Uranium isotope that is used in nuclear reactors, has a shorter life time than the non-fissile but more common U-238. So in earlier times it's abundance was so high that there were [naturally occurring nuclear fission reactors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor).
You could just strip mine the area and fuel nuclear reactors with simple naturally occurring uranium. No need for involved enrichment. For extra safety build the reactors there and transport the energy back one way or another. Also don't worry about the nuclear waste. Just bury it somewhere. Complex life won't show up anyway for another 700 million years or so.
[Answer]
As exposed previously, setup a Rob-myself scenario:
Invest heavily to produce the most valuable object that can be carried (advanced tech, more stored energy that the required to time-travel, etc). Place it within your control, and educate people around that this object is for the time travelers to grab. Keep it here as long as you want to duplicate it.
-After some time (months), travel back 5 seconds, and grab it.
-Return to the same dimensions, but 10 seconds before.
-Keep doing until you reach the timestamp when the object is placed on site for first time.
-Profit: either by taking energy from other dimension or replicating advanced tech.
[Answer]
The most valuable thing the alternate dimensions have is living space.
You don't want to import resources, you want to export people.
The best time period to export to would be one with an easily impressed, organised workforce so that your new settlers can move in as a rich upper class rather than having to get their hands dirty themselves.
I would suggest the pre industrial classical period. Say ancient egypt or rome. You can set your settlers up as gods, take over the existing monarchies and use their established power bases to quickly industrialise and uptech your new world.
Phase 2 is large scale modern city building and ramping up colonisation.
With infinite space to work with, the size of your economy is limited only by your birth rate. Your problem is not lack of resources, but physical limitation on the speed you can get people out through the time gateways.
Ideally you would have a kind of conveyor belt of birth, basic training, opening new time portal, take over world, uptech to time portals, repeat.
Of course this assumes that you can only open one time gateway per dimension. If you can open 2, future travel becomes possible and you should use this to get future tech.
[Answer]
The general theme is going to be
# Before
For example there was silver in Spain before the Romans mined it, so go back to before the Romans mined it.
All the deposits of anything you might want that have been mined out, just go back to before they were mined. If you want historic artworks, go back to before they were stolen or destroyed. If you want extinct animals, go back to before they were extinct.
[Answer]
Something I don't feel has really been touched on, but could easily bring in a profit: **tourism**.
Assuming these devices aren't common or otherwise easy to produce, you have a gateway to the Roman Empire, primordial Earth, Victorian England... all without any risk that whatever mistakes some dumb tourist makes will actually affect your timeline! Even if you could only make one portal to one time, imagine the money that could be made from investors in real estate on a planet where the concept doesn't exist yet! Not to mention the lack of pollution.
I know the question focused on resource harvesting specifically, but I feel this is potentially a more lucrative strategy.
[Answer]
While not directly answering your question about "when" I wanted to provoke some thoughts you might not have considered yet.
>
> We can't really go back in time, literally. Every time we visited the
> past, we got into a new dimension identical to ours to the point the
> visitor arrived. Then, it just changes direction chaotically, but
> nothing really changes on our timeline.
>
>
> Huge amounts of energy are used to visit this new dimension for the first time, although revisiting it demands a lot less.
>
>
>
Is your "new dimension" something that already existed previously like how Myst linking books work or is this a dimension that is created by the effect of your time traveling?
Consider the ramifications of either. If a new dimension is created by the act of visiting (and revisiting is possible, connecting to the same dimension) then that dimensions timeline continues along with our own after that point.
If the new dimension is "new to us" like I bought a used car that is new to me in that I previously didn't own it but previously existed then that dimensions timeline continues along with our own with the side effect of whatever we do it from there.
If you go back to say yesterday, this new dimension as the exact same technology that we presently do.
In all three cases is there a potential that our own dimension will raided by one of these other dimensions? How do we detect these anomaly and protect our own dimension? By the act of building these defenses, at some point we will attempt to travel to another dimension with these defenses in place. What happens to the travelers then?
With an identical to that point dimension, I guess you don't have to worry about a dimensions technical evolution being faster then our own.
[Answer]
## The early 22nd century, shortly after 2100-ish.
They've only just recently discovered time travel, so they don't have any idea how to defend themselves against visitors from the future yet. Their first immediate plan after discovering it was to go back and ransack all of *their* history for valuable resources. That means that within a few short years -- or less -- they'll have warehouses *full* of great stuff that's ripe for the looting. And their defenses will be no match for anyone from the 23rd, 24th, etc. centuries. Score!
[Answer]
Take a look at H. Beam Piper's Paratime books.
Nutshell: Some form of the multiverse is real. Under certain circumstances (left vague) the timeline splits. You can't go BACK in time, you can go SIDEWAYS in time. Some of those timelines are 'close' to ours in that they separated recently, and are alternate histories. Some are distant enough that humankind isn't there. Some had nuclear wars.
Piper ignores a bunch of obvious problems -- Conservation of mass is one of them, and multiple copies of a given individual if world splits are common. It's not clear how you create a canonical index of timelines.
Most of the stories concern a Paratime cop, Verkan Val, who deals with the ways that people mis-use their power. (Slave trading, keeping the Paratime secret confined to Val's culture...)
Some of his stories are on LibreVox.
Good adventure stories if you can get past the above flaws.
[Answer]
One solution would be to literally trade with the future. They provide nice technology (in the form of blueprints) in return for the tech they have gotten in their past.
Essentially by cooperating the gains can be immense.
] |
[Question]
[
In my fantasy project I have a vaguely medieval society (specifically the high period). However some of their religious practices are more along the lines of a iron age society. One of the biggest ones is they still practice animal sacrifice (I know some cultures did around the time, but I couldn't find many European ones, save things like bull fights)
In their religious beliefs Omnis, the flayed God, demands the use of sacrifices to appease for one's sins, but also to "balance" the world. Omnis flayed himself to make the world so in their theology everyone owes a debt to Omnis. This debt also manifests into "balancing" between the two worlds: the Waking and Dreaming world which becomes unbalanced with human actions ex: hunting. the payment of this debt is usually young and ample farm animals such as: goats, sheeps, cows. Usually a young healthy animal with the best sacrifices being virgin animals.
In the ritual the animals throat is slit in a very specific spot and the blood is drained out of the animal. The blood is not allowed to touch and thus defile the (usually temple) ground so it is collected in large jars. However after the sacrifice the blood can be used for whatever purpose.
What uses could a medieval society have for these large quantities of blood? I'm looking mainly for domestic and commercial uses since there is going to be a lot of excess blood.
Note: contact with blood is considered impure, but you'd just have to be ritually "cleaned" after using it. In universe people joke how butchers are holier then the priests since they have to purify themselves virtually every day.
[Answer]
## Growing the sacred crops.
[Blood is an excellent fertilizer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_meal).
You talk about the blood not being able to touch the ground, but then you ask for domestic or commercial uses for it. So either enough time has passed with it being in a jug, or it's transformed in some other way (like holy water is), or it's used for a special purpose. Even though you state that the blood can later "be used for any purpose" you might still want some mystery and awe around it.
In many cultures, the core crop (like corn in the pre-colonization Americas) is considered sacred. So pour the blood on the fields. Time it ritually so it coincides with the best time to add high-nitrogen fertilizer.
If there's more blood than needed, pour some of it on adjacent ground and then allow farmers to move the "blessed" soil to spread on other fields, or in kitchen gardens. The town might even sell some blessed soil to outsiders, if there is enough.
Depending on the agricultural need and the amounts of blood, this can be an annual, quarterly, or monthly ritual.
[Answer]
Eat it: Turn it into [black pudding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_pudding). Or drink it, perhaps [mixed with milk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people#Diet).
BTW, the [druidic religion sacrificed animals](https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/rac/rac19.htm), [as well as probably humans](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/druids-sacrifice-cannibalism/). In the absence of Christians and Romans it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that surviving until medieval times.
[Answer]
Blood is a building material.
* mixed with clay/lime it can be used as paint, or plaster on walls. This gives the wall a lot more resistance to water.
* Mixed with clay is used for capping chimneys. The blood prevents erosion of the cap by rain.
* Can also be used to grout flagstones.
* Mixed with water, and eggs can be used as a deer repellant to keep the kings deer from eating your fruit trees.
* Can be made into blood pudding, blood sausage.
* Can be used as an ingredient in feeding the Lord's Hounds.
And most of it was used this way. While sacrificial animals weren't common in Medieval Europe, animal slaughter was common, and not much of the animal was thrown away.
---
Darker uses: Some magic systems are powered by blood. Steal the sacrificial blood for your practice of the Dark Arts.
[Answer]
Blood is high in protein. They can use blood to supplement dishes or as a source of cheap protein for poor people (and animals).
Back in my homeland (Portugal) and in other countries, people eat blood to enrich dishes, and it was used in the past as a poor's substitute for meat:
* it is added to rice and a kind of thick soup;
* they curl it with vinegar and fry it, and it almost looks like meat, only so softer;
* also blood sausages;
* using it on top of game/chicken as a sauce or as a broth for cooking the meat;
* sweets based on it - there are a couple of desserts based on blood, never tried them;
There are also other cultures which drink it as a tonic. Maybe turning drinking blessed blood into a religious ritual.
[Answer]
K. Morgan's answer is on right track, but fails to show just how common use of blood in culinary arts is.
**[Blood sausage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_sausage) in different countries is known as: kaszanka, blutwurst, krvavica, krovianka, blodpølse, vėdarai, asins desa, boudin noir, morcilla, sanguinaccio, blóðmör, sargyangma, 'dồi tiết', ไส้กรอกเลือด, longganisang dugo, saren, sundae, 豬血糕, morcilla, prieta, chouriço, mutura.**
Blood sausage in most general form combines ground offal, ground fat, blood and cereal like rice or psedocereal like buckwheat as plant additions and is traditional in many cuisines in entire world.
I doubt if traditional cuisine (as in not created as a mash-up of existing cuisines in modern times) lacking blood sausage even exists.
Blood pudding is just UK's variant.
**Animal products were historically a luxury not everyone can afford**, thus it was important to let nothing go to waste to make use of that precious protein, iron and other elements.
Wiki on "[offal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offal)":
>
> In some parts of Europe, scrotum, brain, chitterlings (pig's small intestine), trotters (feet), heart, head (of pigs, calves, sheep and lamb), kidney, liver, spleen, "lights" (lung), sweetbreads (thymus or pancreas), fries (testicles), tongue, snout (nose), tripe (reticulum) and maws (stomach) from various mammals are common menu items.
>
>
>
Parts about other continents don't have such a nice soudbite list, but make no mistake, they have same traditions about using everything.
As such, it would be incredible waste to let post-sacrifice blood go bad if you can turn it into food instead. **Since you have decreed blood impure in your religion, consider people of your world purifying blood sausage in smoke. That would be called [smoking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_(cooking)), an excellent way of improving taste and shelf life of animal products.** Has a benefits of being actual culinary technique and being just roundabout enough to fit crazy religious ways of thinking.
[Answer]
When Omnis flayed himself to create the world, this his skin become the world? And did his blood become the lakes and rivers? Then so should the remaining blood of the sacrifices. Always poor it into the same spot, until a lake of blood builds a symbol of the great work Omnis did. Or pour it into the river, to become one with his blood.
[Answer]
You could make alcohol, like in this question. [Blood-based alcohol for vampires?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/149942/blood-based-alcohol-for-vampires) Depends on your taste though, blood isn't for everyone!
[Answer]
You could introduce blood usage as a holy substance. People would use it for healing and to fight evil spirits consider it something akin to holy water in Catholicism.
] |
[Question]
[
Hopefully the title sums it up well, but I'm looking for potential faster than light travel (hoping for real or pseudo-real science here, as much as possible) *that doesn't involve a warp drive*, which is literally the only theory I know of that defines it as impossible without breaking general relativity - but I'm writing about a civilization so far into the future that calling someone Einstein is an insult, referencing how simple and misguided his theories were/led civilization down the wrong path for centuries due to no one thinking outside his box (I don't actually believe this, I think his work will eventually be "disproved" in some manner, but absolutely fundamental for humanity to get that far in the first place - doesn't mean that can't be lost on a civilization over a 1000 years later with insanely advanced science).
For background, this story begins in 1042, the switch to the new calendar isn't detailed in depth, but occurred around the years 2640-2680 AD. This is a unified, single government Earth with all peoples living in a relative Utopia(or at least believing so, kind of irrelevant to the story, actually). The formation of this new world order is loosely based on western ideologies but focuses on a "healthy" (please don't make me define that!) mix of socialism and capitalism in a *true* democratic society (technology/AI handles most logistics and enforcement, global votes are held as often as 10% of the population pushes forward any proposal, anyone can propose literally anything, yadda yadda). They have near lightspeed travel after effectively adapting photon cannons developed in war to act as engines in space. They have a firm grasp on what we now describe as anti-matter, describing it instead as "hidden energy", and are able to utilize it in our reality. Our main character was appointed as Director of the Department of Energy in 1026, and has used a bulk of the funding and manpower to achieve faster than light travel, not by a warp drive, but by literally breaking the light barrier (think breaking the sound barrier), and simultaneously clearing the space in front of the ship of all matter by absorbing it and converting it to fuel nearly instantaneously. This does imply an absolute necessity to plot courses carefully, and be extremely careful of traveling through planets and stars, not for the ships safety, but for the gravitational implications of eating a ship sized hole (more so in planets) through something as it travels through. Think a bullet through an apple. Like a wormhole type of travel but literally just ripping through space, matter, and time instead of going around it in another dimension, and the 'wormhole' closes up more or less instantaneously after the ship travels through. However I'm entirely unsatisfied with the "plausible" explanations I've come up with for how this travel actually works. I realize that's because real, modern science doesn't support it as plausible in the first place. Any ideas?
I just want it to be less "hand-wavey"
EDIT: I say faster than light travel without utilizing a warp drive where the term "warp drive" is defined as the ability to achieve faster than light travel by warping space-time around the ship, rather than the ship itself traveling through space-time. I'm very specifically looking for faster than light travel *through* space-time. "Breaking the light barrier" is a necessary part of the plot.
EDIT 2:
To add a couple more details here, this is a brand new development in this society, the main character is presenting his proofs, the opening is an interview with a reporter to describe the new advancements. This is only described in theory until near the end of the story, where they've built out and do the first practical test. To give away the ending, this test is world ending due a miscalculation and hubris preventing it's discovery until too late. They can't actually travel faster than light as they propose. I don't actually need it to be science based *and* safe - just seem plausible and with a slight equation tweak so it appears safe, but that mistake causes quite a catastrophe when put into practice. The protagonist actually describes in detail his disdain for previous directives disallowing study into warp drives by the department of energy, due to past catastrophes (warp drives at first appeared successful, but no one ever came back, if they did reach a destination), but finds it irrelevant now as he and his department have achieved it without a warp drive, or at least believe they have.
[Answer]
**Let's set the technobabble aside**
You can name your drive/engine/motor/causal-difference-generator anything you want. It's important (don't ignore it), because what you're really going to do is choose one of the options below (or one of those suggested by my compatriots), pretty much all of which have been used in scifi before, and then apply your unique spin on it. So, no technobabble, that's your job.
**So, what are your options?**
Let's completely ignore what we believe are the limitations of physics. Let me be 100% honest about this — those limitations are, at best, *only what we understand today.* It's a bit surprising that anyone would believe that what we know today is the end-all of knowledge, but we humans do it all the time. So, the limitations are interesting...
...but we're going to completely ignore them.
**Raw Speed** You've invented "inertial dampers" (the magical solution of ignoring acceleration that would turn normal people into strawberry jam before proving that under the right conditions strawberry jam is a perfectly sound fuel for nuclear fission), and so you can accelerate until the cows come home! In this situation, you're FTL because you can with raw, unadulterated horse power!
**Curved Space** You've finally resolved those pesky lawsuits with Paramount® and you can finally pull the trigger on *Warp Drive®!* Your pretty new engine (named the "William Shatner Drive®" as one of the bargaining concessions to settle the lawsuits) bends space like a fully-paid-for Photoshop effect. This allows you to travel a much shorter distance, making it only *appear* that you're FTL. Your actually moving just a hair faster than Apollo 15. *(Huh? What do you mean Adobe's on the phone? Whatdaya mean we forgot their trademark symbol? A lawsuit! Dang nabit...)*
**Pinched Space** If curved space is a bit slow for you, there's always the possibility of *pinched space.* Some people like to refer to this as "wormholes," but they're the unwashed barbarians of the throw-physics-out-the-window community. Think about using your two hands to pinch two locations on your favorite bed sheet, then draw those pinched portions together! Maybe travel is instantaneous (you know, infinitely FTL) or maybe it takes a moment of time (you know, like chasing the DS9 Prophets in their Celestial Temple... *Paramount's on the phone again? Tell'm to suck an egg!*) Anyway, an argument could be made that this is the same thing as curved space, but it's not, it's the punch-a-hole-through-it solution. (I loved an episode from Stargate SG-1 when a traveler tries to explain to Samantha Carter how they move through space, he's basically the source of my pinch-the-sheets metaphor. "Oh!" Carter exclaims, "Like an Einstein–Rosen bridge!" "No," the traveler says sadly, shaking his head, "it's not like that." Do you see what I mean by "technobabble?")
**Alternate Space** Also known as inter-dimensional travel or moving through space, between space, or through another space — whichever path is shorter, right? One of my favorite authors is Jack Vance and his Intersplit drive. It was his version of "hyperspace," such that a crack was opened in "real space" and his ship could slip through it. Heaven only knows what the rules of those other "spaces" could be! And, obviously, there are an infinite number of them.
Have I missed anything? Pure horsepower, jump the gap, tunnel through a shortcut, leave space entirely... diving headlong into a black hole would be tunneling through a shortcut... Personally, I think Star Trek is more pure horsepower where the remake of Battlestar Galactica is more like jumping the gap. Could be wrong about that... How about this?
**Gravitic Shear** What if your engine creates a "potential difference" with gravity similar to what we do with electricity (aka, "voltage")? Once the difference is established (a "shear"), you ride it like you would a wave with a surfboard. But this might be a hybrid of horsepower and curved space.
**Infinite Improbability** To make a point, one of the most creative solutions to this problem was Douglas Adams' *Infinite Improbability Drive.* The idea was so ingenious that most of us have been banging our heads against walls trying to be as creative ever since. The engine magically decreases probability to zero until the ship is *literally everywhere in the universe at the same time.* The target location is selected, and probability increased (think, "I'm probably here..." Adams was a genius author) to unity. (Or did I get that backwards... anyway...). This was a clever, wholly unscientific, fundamentally irrational, and absolutely *genius* way of getting from point A to point B in the least amount of time (but not always with the least amount of trouble).
**It's All a Simulation** @ReinstateMonica reminds us that the universe could be a simulation! How would we know, right? Well... you're pilot is The One and happens to know how to hack the code! Instantly the ship arrives at its destination!
And I can't think of any more. But that brings me to my last point.
**Maybe you don't need to be this specific**
Yes, SciFi has described these things in myriads of ways — but with rare exception, the specifics of exactly what is happening are ignored. I recommend that behavior. If you tell a good story, people will fill in the details with their own imagination. If you fill your book with details but tell a substandard story, most people will choke on what you're trying to explain. I recommend that you be wary of trying to crowbar too much science into fiction (just enough to relate, not enough to distract) because in the end, you're stuck facing the limitations I suggested ignoring in the beginning. It's a form of spinning your tires. So, dream up some impressive technobabble to briefly explain that your ship can do something that, today, we believe is simply impossible. Then let that ship fly.
[Answer]
Imagine that all of our existing physics equations are incomplete. In each and every case, the formulae that our smartest minds have discovered actually contain one or more as-of-yet undiscovered components which must be multiplied against one or both sides of the equation to accurately describe reality. Now imagine that the reason that our smartest minds haven't noticed these omissions is that our entire solar system resides in a part of the universe where those components all hold a constant value of exactly one. So, for the portion of the universe which we can directly observe, those undiscovered components act as "multiply-by-one" harmless players in the formulae which we create and validate. We can never discover these components through scientific exploration because within our scope, those components never fluctuate and in their constancy, they become invisible to us.
Now imagine that one or more of these hidden components are not constant under all conditions within our part of the universe. They are constant at exactly one almost everywhere, but under an extremely rare and specific set of conditions (gravity, heat, radiance, sound, electrical charge and maybe even thought or belief), the hidden formula components can be changed to values which allow FTL to occur.
The process of discovering how to travel FTL would then be simple yet dangerous.
The trick would be to find that rare set of physical conditions which allow for FTL before you accidentally change one of the other hidden components which might disallow life or matter or time.
Best of luck in your endeavors! ...for all of our sake!
[Answer]
For centuries Special Relativity reigned supreme. Discovery after discovery supported Einstein's theory. The equations held up. All the energy in the Universe is required to accelerate matter *to* the speed of light, much less past it.
Nobody even bothered to try breaking the light barrier. They just accepted the math as law.
Around the turn of the new, new millennium, an imaginative doctoral candidate in physics was staring listlessly at the ocean. A storm was blowing in. The tide was rising, and the waves toppled over themselves. A moment of inspiration washed over her. "That's it!" she thought. "The light wave just roles over itself!"
So convinced we were. The faster you go light shifts towards the blue end of the spectrum, squashing the energy wave together. At *c* the equation says you can't go any faster. The energy required is infinite. "Except, what if the wave inverts itself, and begins to red-shift as speed continues to increase and begins to stretch back out?" she pondered.
She spent the next 7 years developing the math to prove it was feasible. The numbers added up. You can break the light barrier! The challenge is getting the energy.
Not long after her trip to the ocean, another daydreaming physicist came up with the hair brained idea of a mass-energy transference skin. A skin of material absorbs matter and converts it to energy. All you need to do is run into it. Math ensues, papers are published and colleagues laugh at him.
The Director of the Department of Energy wasn't laughing. The director was intrigued. He had also heard a lecture from our seaside dreamer about breaking the light barrier. Of course she gets laughed out of the auditorium, but the director wasn't so sure her ideas were crazy.
He connects the two physicists, and realizes the of skin of the ship could absorb matter and convert it to the energy required to topple over that light wave. Just ram your ship into enough matter, and boom. Speed boost without warping spacetime.
So sure they were of the math, that you can break the light barrier. Nobody ever imagined what that would do. The wave just topples over itself, right?
Right?
[Answer]
The X Drive.
How does an X drive work, it doesn't matter, you are not writing a technical manual. For a story all you need is the rules it works by and a name. Most technology is black box technology to the people that use it, they only understand the rules. Use the name of the inventor that leaves no hint as to how it works. FTL drives are pure fiction, so just like a magic system all you need is steadfast rules about how they work and they will still feel consistent and scientific. Imagine trying to explain to a caveman how a radioisotope thermoelectric generator works, they don't know what atoms, nuclear or electricity are so no explanation will make sense. Explaining a FTL drive to us would have the same problem it has to utilize principles or forces we haven't discovered, so any explanation is indistinguishable from hand-waving.
If you want examples try wikipedia, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Faster-than-light_travel_in_fiction>, this is not the place for that.
[Answer]
Your problem is you are too close to what you are trying to set up. Basically you are trying to build a world where a form of faster-than-light (FTL) travel is being developed that end catastrophically. That's simple enough to deal with.
You also want to avoid using something like the Alcubierre warp-drive. A concept that is modestly plausible as an FTL drive, but not without its perceived problems. That's easily done. Say, that in future it was comprehensively found to be impossible.
Your near-lightspeed travel is essentially an interstellar ramjet that converts any matter it encounters into kinetic energy. The lightspeed barrier cannot be broken like the sound barrier. Not as we currently understand the science. Future science may find a work-around, but don't bet on it.
FTL travel *might* be achieved by a sort of continuously generated wormhole that keeps shifting a spacecraft across distances faster-than-lightspeed. This is pure hand-waving. Here the phrase "*might* be achieved" only means that it sounds hand-waving plausible. This is all that is needed for fiction. So could shifting into higher dimension space where the distances between astronomical objects is vastly shorter than in normal 4-space. (4-space is the term top describe our normal spacetime.) There is a wide variety of fictionally plausible notions used by science-fiction to "justify" FTL travel. Often is best to simply say it works without explaining how or why.
There is a simple idea that can explain an FTL drive goes catastrophically wrong. It comes from the real world and is bound to apply in fictional situations. basically things that work well on the laboratory scale often fail when they're scaled up to real-world industrial scales.
Assume an FTL drive is developed. It works absolutely well for small test vehicles. But it has an hitherto undiscovered flaw. Something that hasn't merged from the mathematics describing the science behind the FTL drive.
For example, there could be a wormhole that grows exponentially with the size of the FTL drive that causes energy to leak from a higher dimensional space. With small test vehicles this is negligible, but spacecraft big enough to carry humans this energy leak is catastrophic.
If the rate of increase is to the power of something between ten to thirty this would be sufficient to end the world. You can easily check how of a catastrophe you want by doing a few calculations. Just adjust the values to suit the outcome you are seeking.
This answer recommends focusing on what you to achieve and doing it in a straightforward and simple manner as conceptually possible. Don't overthink the problem. Don't worry about what you don't want.
Remember you are practising what is best called "rubber science" or the science as it is usually used in science-fiction. The important rule of rubber science is never try to explain more than you know.
[Answer]
>
> For background, this story begins in ... kind of irrelevant to the story... yadda yadda ...
>
>
>
Yeah, nobody cares. Or at least, I don't see anything relevant to the question.
>
> They have a firm grasp on what we now describe as anti-matter ... to achieve faster than light travel, not by a warp drive, but by literally breaking the light barrier ... clearing the space in front of the ship of all matter by absorbing it and converting it to fuel nearly instantaneously.
>
>
>
OK, got it.
We can do this with a few (well, six) assumptions:
1. there are more than three spatial dimensions, but the higher ones are "curled up" as speculated by various superstring or M- theories.
2. your science director has found a way to use antimatter to partially and temporarily unfurl one or more of these dimensions, giving a localized bubble of effectively-higher-dimensional space *inside* normal 3 (or 4) space.
3. we live in a metastable false vacuum
4. there is another false vacuum state nearby which is metastable *only* while those higher dimensions are unfurled (and collapses back to our usual metastable vacuum when those dimensions are not being actively held open at significant energy cost)
5. this other vacuum state annihilates normal matter *at the boundary* in such a way that the energy released can be used to prolong the local dimensional unfurling
6. the speed limit is higher in the unfurled dimension than in regular space, so the false vacuum bubble can effectively propagate through normal space faster than light would allow
This gives you the option of claiming they were *working* on an antimatter-powered Alcubierre drive, but experiments failed due to its energy unexpectedly dissipating into (and temporarily unfurling) higher dimensions.
It gives you a way of annihilating matter in front of the bubble, the possibility of a bubble losing control (or popping), and the existential threat of accidentally triggering a full vacuum collapse. Conditions inside the bubble are wholly up to you.
Maybe point 6 (the actual FTL bit) is true in principle up to a certain energy density, at which *further* dimensions unfurl - dissipating your energy and/or triggering a *full* vacuum collapse.
This point (6) is probably the hardest to make convincing, although the same sort of claim is easily allowed when hyperspace is *outside* normal space, rather than being embedded inside it. Certainly the laws of physics are broadly permitted to differ in a different vacuum regime (so conditions inside the bubble really can be whatever you want)
[Answer]
Perhaps something along the lines of John Scalzi's "Skip Drives" from the Old Man's War novels?
The skip drive, as explained several times in the various novels, most completely in book 1, allows for seemingly-instantaneous travel between points A and B. However the ship doesn't move at all, it simply disappears into an alternate universe, while simultaneously an identical ship arrives at the point of destination in the universe it just left. This is, naturally, a crazily unlikely event, but it's a quantum universe/multiverse so not IMPOSSIBLE. Due to (as the books say) universes wanting to keep that level of improbable events down to a minimum, the ships leave/enter universes that are fundamentally identical to their old ones, and the arrival point of the ship is inconsequential because a ship arriving from another universe is the "hard" part, where it arrives isn't that big a dea). Maybe a few atoms are in different positions than they were in your old universe. There are rules about it, like there being some maximum theoretical "skip horizon" that's so far out nobody cares, and that you can skip in close to a planet but need to be away from it to initiate a skip, but those are the basics that matter for you I think.
I found this version of FTL super interesting for a whole host of reasons, not least because I'm a fan of multiverse theory. Maybe your hero stumbles onto identical math, but with one fatal flaw. Nothing replaces you. So your hero's ship tears a massive hole in space-time which isn't filled by anything, with REAL bad results. Maybe there isn't a multiverse? Maybe there is and it turns out you can't "force" a nearby alternative universe to send a replacement ship? Who knows! Earth is doomed either way!
[Answer]
**Space pump**
Why waste your time and energy traveling tediously through space? If you want to be somewhere else, just take all the space between you and your destination and move it behind you. It's basically a propeller or jet, but the medium is space itself. Artificial gravity can be achieved by routing a *small* amount through the ship itself, while pushing most of it around the sides. Moving space around shouldn't take much energy if there's not that much matter occupying it. (This requires a distinction between "space" as the phenomenon that keeps everything from being in the same place, as opposed to the measurement system we impose on it.)
AFAIK, this doesn't have a well-known precedent, so you can pretty much make up the rules as you go along. What's the penalty for going through a planet? Who does it affect? It's intuitive enough that you can maintain suspension of disbelief while pretty much making up all your plot points from whole cloth.
[Answer]
Lets look more carefully at what Einstein said.
You get some very strange results but relativity does not actually prohibit FTL travel. Rather, it says you can't **accelerate** to FTL speeds. That does not preclude some sort of drive that converts the whole ship to tachyons--which can no more slow down to lightspeed as we can speed up to lightspeed.
As for something going wrong--two things come to mind:
First, you're converting the whole mass of the ship. Maybe something doesn't scale right, rather than jumping to tachyon space you made a total conversion bomb.
Second, the drive works as advertised--but the jump field expands beyond the ship. It was believed it would simply peter out in empty space but in reality the field extends until enough matter has been grabbed to expend the energy. It's not a sharp dividing line, either--as the field weakens it starts grabbing some particles and not others. In small scale testing this just grabbed some of the atmosphere around the test body but when it's a whole starship in space that's not enough, it ends up tearing up whatever is around (for a large definition of around, it takes a lot before the interplanetary medium dissipates it!) quite catastrophically--atoms randomly lose subatomic particles, the result is usually not the original element and probably radioactive, if a lot is missing it's exceedingly radioactive. You get a big chemical boom that blazes in the gamma spectrum.
Second, there is the problem with time travel. By the choice of reference frames you can end up with a FTL ship ending up in the past. There is a solution here, though: Something about the drive defines the reference frame. Relativity does not require a consistent reference frame but that does not mean there can't be some sort of externally imposed reference frame. Consider the hyper drive of so many sci-fi stories--you move from our universe to another in order to attain FTL speeds. Suppose the transition requires zero velocity relative to the interface between the universes. Presto, no time travel paradoxes.
For something to go badly wrong--oops, the junction isn't as flat at the scientists believed. It's flat enough a small scale test craft works as it's supposed to but a whole starship extends too far from the generator, the universes diverge too much by the time you reach the edge of the ship that the jump doesn't proceed as it's supposed to. Perhaps this just results in the atoms of the ship being ripped apart, perhaps something far worse happens. (I'm thinking of *Asimov*'s *The Gods Themselves* where the mass that comes across the transit brings the properties of the universe with it.)
While we have zero hints as to how either of these might be possible neither is prohibited by current physics.
[Answer]
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the [solution](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/FTL) of [Mass Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Effect) yet. The phlebotinum of the setting is a substance which can increase or decrease the mass of itself and objects around it by applying electrical current; which is what the series was named after.
This allows FTL because you can give your entire spaceship negative mass. The famous E=mc^2 equation, [in its expanded form](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnMIhxWRGNw), only postulates the lightspeed barrier for objects with positive mass: the energy required to increase a certain mass to a greater speed approaches infinity as the speed gets near c. Photons, and several other particles, are massless, and according to the same principle are *required* to travel at c.
And particles with negative mass? This theoretical substance is open to [much speculation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass#In_special_relativity), but it is reasonable to suppose that something with negative mass is obliged to travel above c. So you fire up your mass effect engine, and as the ship accelerates it gets lighter, crossing the lightspeed barrier when it is massless, and then continues on above c with negative mass.
Just adopting this theory for your setting will probably draw comparisons with the Mass Effect setting, but the general idea is applicable: take one of the equations prohibiting what you want to achieve, and try to flip a sign using a substance or field with exotic properties.
[Answer]
Your question is not going to have an answer as posed, because you've already worked out an extremely detailed outline of the story, which is inconsistent with well-established principles of physics.
But if all you want is an answer to the more general question posed in the title, then I can think of a couple of general types of possibilities:
(1) Wormholes.
(2) A device like the Star Trek transporter, but with the signal being sent using tachyons.
Both of these are consistent with all the known laws of physics. Both of them lead to time-travel paradoxes, because any FTL technology is automatically also exploitable as a time machine.
In #2, you have the problem that tachyons don't actually seem to exist.
For a more detailed discussion of the physics, see section 4.7 of my special relativity book, <http://lightandmatter.com/sr/> .
[Answer]
In order to travel faster than the speed of light in normal space you're going to have to revise a lot of current physics. With the rules as they stand the only way to get around the light-speed barrier is to modify space... a warp drive, one way or another.
Since as far as we can tell the speed of light is inviolate under the rules as we know them, the most obvious answer is to change the rules.
Back when the CERN super-collider was first fired up there was a little talk about the possibility that the proposed experiments could cause a localized change in one or more of the fundamental rules of physics. The problem with this is that there is the potential for this to cause a catastrophic cascade reaction that could destroy the entire universe - maybe at light speed, but possibly at unbounded speed.
Now imagine that your main character has developed a method for producing very specific changes in the fundamental laws of physics at will. In lab conditions he has managed to modify the fundamental rules in a small volume of space in such a way that the normal mass interactions are replaced, using a different set of interactions that are not limited by the light speed barrier. While the field is active an object is essentially massless and can be accelerated to very high relative speeds with very small energy expenditure... solving not just the speed of light problem but your energy issues as well. He's even figured a new set of physical laws that will make everything feel normal in there, just disconnected from the rules in the normal universe. A true feat of genius.
At the boundaries of the region of altered physical law there is an interface layer where physical laws are essentially chaotic. While this is initially of some concern to the scientists it is soon discovered that the interface layer is only a few nanometers in depth and doesn't seem to produce much more than an interesting visual effect and a few stray exotic particles.
What isn't obvious is that when the generator is in motion the interface zone on the trailing edge of the field increases in size depending on how fast the field is moving, like the wake of a boat in motion. At around 14 times the speed of light the interface zone destabilizes and ruptures, leaving a wake of chaotic physical law changes behind the vessel.
Imagine how it would feel as you pop out of your FTL test flight somewhere near the orbit of Mars and looking back towards Earth. A few light seconds away you see evidence of a massive exotic particle burst and as you watch the photons from further and further away arrive. From your perspective it looks like the fuse of some great demolition explosive, lit in the exotic particles of your FTL wake. It races back along your path towards your departure point in orbit around Luna and you watch in horror as first Luna and then the Earth are engulfed by the phenomenon, shattered, torn, crushed and then turned into a ball of glowing plasma.
When the boiling wake of uncertain physical laws finally reaches you will you give yourself up to it or turn on the drive and run, knowing that you could be dragging a trail of annihilation across the universe by doing so?
[Answer]
Imagine you've invented some way to carry infinite fuel on what is otherwise an ordinary rocket. You get into orbit, plan a trajectory to Alpha Centauri, fire up the engines, and away you go.
At some time you reach light speed, and so there's no point in running the engines any more, because you just can't go any faster, right?
No, that's not how it works. You can in fact accelerate as much as you like, given that you still have some means to do so. The more thrust you make, the faster Alpha Centauri gets bigger in your window, and the less time will pass on your watch as you ride on the ship until you get there. If you want to make it to Alpha Centauri in 1 day elapsed on your watch as a passenger you can do that now, with our current understanding of physics. All it requires is:
* some means of generating enough thrust, and
* some means of not entirely obliterating the spacecraft and the occupants with the tremendous acceleration and deceleration required.
It's pretty easy to imagine solutions to these issues in the future.
The "problem" is that to observers on Earth, everyone on the spacecraft has stopped aging, and the craft doesn't go faster than light. And to the people on the spacecraft, everyone on Earth, and a thousand generations after, have lived and died in the blink of an eye.
In other words, the light "speed limit" is not so much a problem of *speed*, it's a problem of *time*.
So naturally, an advanced civilization has developed different ways of thinking about and managing time. It's not such a problem if the trip is 10 minutes for you and 10,000 years for your friends if medicine has solved aging, and this kind of travel is commonplace for everyone. Maybe these new ways of thinking about time are what necessitated the change to the new calendar.
Astronomical timescales, like the birth and death of stars, suddenly becomes relevant to everyday life to such a civilization. But you've also got interstellar travel in the garage, so it's no big deal. Trash pickup is on Tuesday, and on Wednesday it's a little dark for a bit while a crew hauls away heavy elements from the star so it doesn't go nova. Extreme time dilation creates issues, but dealing with these issues is commonplace for an advanced civilization because the processes are understood and there's a system for dealing with issues proactively.
...until someone proposes a new technology that enables even higher speeds and more time dilation. An error is made in anticipating the consequences, and "whoops"...
[Answer]
If you cant "Warp" spacetime, what other options do you have. The light speed barrier limits matters interaction at lower than light speeds.
All faster than light travel distorts spacetime in it's overall common laws.
[Answer]
**Introduction**
We have pretty solid understanding of what happens when particles approach *c* in particle accelerators, . We *know* to the limit of our measurements than General Relativity holds up. There is no "Faster Than Light" movement, that is mathematical impossibility if you use General Relativity to describe the movement. Sort of like, if you use `[x, y, z]` vector to describe the position of an object in a computer game, that object can't be in your pocket.
However, all these measurements have been done on particles accelerated by outside force, such as electric and magnetic fields. There's no way to have a particle with plain Newtonian reaction drive (AKA "rocket") to accelerate it. If you have something big enough to be accelerated by the rocket, there's no hope of reaching any kind of high speeds with internal fuel, thanks to the [Tyranny of the Rocket Equation](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html): the type of fuel and rocket engine determine how large change in velocity you can have, and adding more fuel does not help because that fuel makes you heavier so you use that extra fuel to accelerate the increased mass.
**Solution**
In your story, something beyond current physics have been theorized, experimented with, the re-theorized, and finally proven over decades of research:
* Many of the relativistic effects measured on particles and larger objects such as laser sail probes sent to the deep space at significant fraction of *c* are actually result of the method of acceleration.
* An object "knows" how it got its current speed, and that is what causes the relativistic effects we observe. There is a "relativistic charge" it carries with it, much like electric charge, as a fundamental property obeying its own laws. The "light speed barrier" is just an artifact of this charge, not a fundamental property of space-time. The maths all work out, and no paradoxes remain.
* Causing relativistically asymmetric acceleration using both external forces and internal propulsion at so-called relativistic speeds allows creating mass which has its relativistic charge altered. This is incredibly expensive, as getting a big enough rocket engine to high enough speed with external power (laser sail probably) is a huge project. It's also just plain *hard*, as despite the enormous acceleration, the whole thing needs to be precisely controlled or the "relativistic charge" dissipates before becoming stable.
* But once it can be done, once you can create mass with different relativistic charge, the benefits are mind-boggling. The different relativistic fields caused by the charge combine in much the same way as electric and magnetic fields do, so it is possible to build a space ship with "relativistic core", and achieve effects which "break" our current understanding of General Relativity.
* **FTL is one of these effects.** At least in theory, you can simply just go "faster than light" with finite acceleration, if you have the right relativistic field configuration. It's just that nobody has really figured out just *how* to build such as ship. There has been countless hours of simulation on supercomputers, and catastrophically failed experiments, but nobody has managed to create a working model, let alone a working prototype. **Until now.**
[Answer]
Considering that the *Star Trek* franchise coined the term "warp drive", let's look at other technologies that *they did not consider to be warp drive:*
* [Wormholes](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Wormhole) are tunnels connecting parts of space-time. Voyager 6 was transported to the far side of the galaxy by a wormhole, to become V'ger, in *The Motion Picture.* The transit rights through an unstable wormhole was auctioned in the TNG episode *The Price*. The entire premise of the *Deep Space Nine* series was a space station guarding a stable wormhole. And several episodes of *Voyager* utilized wormholes.
* A [displacement wave](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Displacement_wave) is described as "a polarized magnetic variation". The Guardian of Forever in the TOS episode *City on the Edge of Forever* produced displacement waves that could transport people through time or space. In the premiere of *Voyager*, an entity called The Caretaker had a [space station](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Caretaker%27s_array) that he used to bring ships across the galaxy, including Voyager.
* A [soliton wave](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Soliton_wave) is a wave that can travel faster than light. The TNG episode *New Ground* portrayed an unsuccessful attempt of a starship riding such a wave.
* Several advanced species developed long-distance transporters. Agent Gary Seven used one at the start of the TOS eposode *Assignment: Earth*. The Iconians developed a [gateway](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Iconian_gateway) that they used 200,000 years ago, which was re-discovered in the TNG episode *Contagion*.
* Q had powers to alter reality, including sending the Enterprise across the galaxy to meet the Borg in *Q Who*. It's arguable that other alien species (especially in several TOS episodes) had similar powers.
There are also instances of faster-than-light travel using warp technology, but without warp engines (Borg trans-warp conduits) or in an unconventional way (the TNG "Traveler").
[Answer]
Some mostly stupid ideas I had-
Idea 1-
* turn your ship to photons.
* fly away at light speed.
Of course, this is only light speed, but the next idea might solve that. Or maybe it just makes it worse.
Idea 2-
* make up some vaguely explained engine. that's what I did [here](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13471946/2/Last-Chance)(It says light speed, but you can make it FTL).
Idea 3-
* something like what happens in Skyward. (No idea how it works. Probably won't work for you, but maybe it can help. )
Idea 4-(falls partly under Idea 2)
* decide what you need(FTL engine)
* make up some vague explanation that somewhat follows the laws of science(talking about radiation and/or atoms and/or nuclear generators and/or made up sciency sounding stuff here is a good idea since it sounds confusing but strangely correct at the same time), or since yours is so far in the future, you can make up your own laws of science.
* since you *want* yours to fail, add in something like:
any deviation in the (sciency whatnot) could cause a total system failure, including but not limited to(list your desired consequences here)
or similar
* Just for fun, you could throw in a California Proposition 65 Warning, if that's around in your story.
* Just have fun with it. Even if you need to change it later, add in another sciency spiel that nobody will understand. I don't know about everyone else, but I don't read most of the sciency explanations in books if it's longer than a paragraph.
[Answer]
Quantumn Drive. We exist at all points in the universe at the same time just in different levels of probability (essentially the basis of quantumn computers). You need to change the probability.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm writing a story that takes place entirely underwater, mostly in a deep sea town and shallower city. Both are underwater and populated by beings who can survive underwater.
My thinking is that they send messages to each other by taking a soft clay-like material (let's call it substance x until someone thinks of what it should be) and writing on it, then giving it to a messenger. The messenger takes this wad of substance x with the writing on it and delivers it to the recipient.
When they are done the wad is given back, the letters are smushed away, and it is reused. What material should this be?
It needs to be something that can be made of substances found in the ocean, can be made underwater, doesn't dissolve into the saltwater, lasts a fairly long time, and is inexpensive.
Is there a real-world substance that meets all these requirements, or am I gonna have to make something up?
[Answer]
What you described is an old invention:the **[wax tablet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_tablet)**.
**[Spermaceti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermaceti)** from sperm whales is just one of many waxes your underwater people could use. Some of the fishes also contain significant quantities of wax. If you need only a short-term solution, animal fat would also do the job.
I couldn't find any seaweed that secretes waxes, so I hope your underwater people are not vegan.
[Answer]
**Braids of seaweed.**
The ancient Inca used knotted fibers, or *quipu*, to record events and information. With enough effort, seaweed could be manipulated (slicing then braiding) into thin cords, which could then function in a similar way as quipu. I wouldn't be sure about the lifespan of these cords -- it depends on the manufacturing process -- but these makeshift quipu could have knots tied or untied, and would be relatively light or even buoyant in water.
[Answer]
You don't have to go back in time very far to reach a point where marine-derived hydrocarbons pretty much made the world go round. The catch being that you have to kill rather intelligent, large and dangerous predators who share your environment.
Enter the sperm whale, whose head is filled with [an extremely useful collection of waxes and oils](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermaceti) which may be extracted and refined to produce exactly the sort of material you'd be interested in. By way of a bonus, it also produces another kind of oily wax, [ambergris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambergris). This is much rarer, so you would only use it for special occasions, but it would still suffice.
In both cases, you want to keep your message tablets safe in a heavy container or framework, as the waxes would be lighter than water and quickly lost if dropped.
Waxy molecules *are* found in various marine plants and animals in smaller quantities, so you don't have to wave your hands too hard to invent something slightly more easily and ethically sourceable. The main waxy component of spermaceti, [cetyl palmitate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetyl_palmitate) is found in some corals. I'm sure you could conjure up a wax coral or sponge that produced it in usefully harvest-able quantities
[Answer]
If you want a pliable material that can be collected undersea without having to kill anything, you might want to consider a bituminous clay or asphalt-like material formed in the vicinity of an undersea [asphalt volcano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt_volcano).
High viscosity hydrocarbon fluids mixed with fine silt or sand produce an oil-based clay-like substance that can be scraped or carved to form letters. The marks will last a long time as long as the temperature remains below a certain point, but can easily be erased by simply heating the surface via friction. Rapidly rubbing the surface softens and smooths the markings.
[Answer]
Maybe not 100% what you’re looking for, but you could use the bones of aquatic animals to carve into (I’m thinking a runic alphabet like Ogham, which was designed to be notched into materials like wood). Then, when you’re done with the message, you can file the surface smooth and start again. Obviously this will wear out the bones over time, but it might work as a temporary solution (and fairly easy to implement, as bones are probably going to be relatively abundant in a decently-populated underwater civilisation).
[Answer]
I like that we are trying to find a realistic substance to suit some wonderfully unrealistic characters! I think the sperm whale may be the winner but my immediate thought was putty; the smooshy stuff they used use to put window panes in place. It's sort of fawn colored and can be scribbled on. Its waterproof for sure, to keep the rain out but fully underwater, I don't know...Good luck, I love the idea of your underwater community :)
(If you are stuck, maybe they can blow bubbles in the manner of old smoke signals?! )
[Answer]
Why does the substance have to be soft? Scraping on a rock (slate) with another rock (chalk) would work as well underwater as it does above.
[Answer]
I'll answer your question very generic, so you can use it not only for writing tablets, but ANYTHING in your underwater world.
What you are looking for are **hydrophobic substances** such as oil, fat or wax.
For your writing you'll want fat-derived substances, given that wax will be too hard in the cold.
But simply take a light granite tablet and slather some thickened, darkened grease on it.
By "writing" on it you get light letters on a dark surface, and with your fingers or a simple ruler you can "delete" writing as well instantly.
[Answer]
If your race as access to metals, and if they are stronger than humans, gold would be the perfect match.
Especially if they're somewhat advanced, as there's a lot of gold floating in the oceans.
The gold could be filtered out they would have a more or less infinite source.
[Answer]
**Fish**
Carve the message into a fish, the recipient eats the fish and sends back another fish with reply carved into it.
] |
[Question]
[
As mentioned in an [earlier question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/28358/why-do-only-clothes-stay-in-an-animal-transformation) of mine, my particular world has a class of humanoids which have the magical ability to change into a single animal form at will. As detailed in the linked question, only clothing disappears and reappears on transformation, other items tend to fall off the animal body.
Since my world takes place in a story, there is going to be a fair amount of strife. Part of that will include enemies capturing some of these shapeshifters. Now holding a shapeshifter with a large animal form (such as a lion or a wolf) is not too hard. However, smaller creatures, particularly those which fly, becomes much more difficult. Particularly in the throes of combat.
Take, for example, a shapeshifter bat. Ideally a human-sized cage with very small holes or other such item would be used for capturing such enemies. However, when participating in frequent/guerilla combat, carrying a large cage around is simply not practical.
What kind of method using more portable materials (ropes, nets, etc.) could be used to capture humans that had the ability to change into small creatures? Ideally this is not too specific to a particular kind of animal (a mouse-shaped trap would not be very helpful against sparrows).
Notes:
* The containing element (ropes, nets, etc.) would not transform with the shapeshifter. Shapeshifting is based on [self-image](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/28365/81). Ropes are not part of that.
* Shapeshifting occurs quickly (within seconds) and does not change the size of materials near the changing.
* Animal forms have human intelligence.
* Each shapeshifter has only one animal form. That is, a person with a bat form will never have a lion form.
* Shapeshifters only have reasonably large forms. No microscopic parasites or insects. Assume that all shapeshifters are at least the size of small mammals (mice, rats, etc).
* Shapeshifters can transform at will, but cannot be forced by outside measures. (There's no "button" to press to make them transform.)
[Answer]
drug bag drag
Drug them with something that stops them from forming the self image needed for the change. Opiates or hallucinogens would probably do the trick, but details would vary. Simple alcohol might work well enough.
Then close them into a bag that makes it impossible to quickly escape if they do manage to transform. Any reasonably tear proof fabric will do. It just needs to slow unfocussed and drugged person until guards can deal with him. It will also make the body easier to control and move and allow putting opiates or alcohol inside the bag to sustain the stupor without also drugging the guards.
Since they can't walk you will have to drag them along. You can stack the bags on a cart or a sledge or some such. Details are not that important. You just need some way to move the goods.
[Answer]
This is very easy in the case of creatures that shapeshift to larger creatures, and also works fairly well on ones that shift to smaller ones, but it's dependant upon how fast the creatures shapeshift and when the 'self image' concept kicks in.
Essentially the method of containment consists of a collar, designed to be easily snapped around the neck, with four spring loaded bars that push inwards against the shapeshifters neck once closed. If these bars move too far inwards or outwards, the collar does something nasty. I recommend having spring loaded spikes inside the collar so that any transformation leads to an immediate severing of lots of fairly important bits of anatomy. Or fixed spikes if you know they transform to a bigger animal. Or explosives if you have access to them.
Now you have your shapeshifter pinned in human form and you can contain them just like a human. You can also use the collars to dole out punitive justice/mark out the shifters/any number of other purposes.
Adding in wrist/waist/ankle bands would help to reinforce this, and make it harder for anyone to transform without dying an immediate and grisly (or possibly even grizzly) death.
This doesn't work if the shifter 'snaps' from one form to the other via magic. It only works if there is a 'transformation' phase where the shifter is moving from one shape to another. It also falls down if the shifter starts to accept the collar as part of their self-image, but hopefully by that point you can assume they're pretty broken to your will anyway.
[Answer]
Assuming injuries are taken with you from one form to another then break their arms.
They can still walk in human form, but a bird form cannot fly and a quadruped cannot run or even really walk.
If they do change form and it's smaller than human put a spiked collar on them and keep them in that form. If it's larger then force them to transform back and put a spiked collar on the human form.
Brutal but effective.
[Answer]
I'd use Tranqulizers, personally.
If you're close enough to throw a net over them before they scamper away into the undergrowth or fly away, you're more than close enough to shoot them with some form of tranquilizer gun. Shapeshifting takes a couple of seconds so a good, trained shot would have more than enough time to hit them while they were vulnerable.
There are a couple of variables to consider:
* what happens to the tranquilizer in the bloodstream of the shapeshifter if they change? Does the ratio of blood:tranq remain constant, or does the quantity of sedative remain constant through the change? If the latter, then you would have to choose your sedative carefully in order to ensure that they don't suffer an overdose.
* Is shapeshifting a survival mechanism? As in, if put in a position that would stimulate an adrenal response in humans (fight or flight), will shapeshifters instinctively shift? If so, if the former is the case in the previous question you could give a dose too low for a human but ample for a small animal.
* What happens to an object stuck into the skin of a shapeshifter when they change? Do they "fall away" as well? What if I have shot the human form with a barbed arrow in the leg, say? Does it just "drop out" during the shifting process? Depending on the answer, your sedative needs to be fast acting and quickly absorbed in order to take effect even if the dart comes out during the shift.
* Finally, it depends on how important non-fatality is. If you want to catch them but it's not a complete failure if some die, then sedative overdose isn't too much of an issue. If it is critically important that some don't die, then you'd have to do some research beforehand though into just what they might turn into. Only as much as you'd have to do for any other method, though - a net is of questionable use if your shifter turns into a small burrowing animal and disappears under the earth!
[Answer]
For the simple answer, a double net. One heavy weight rope, maybe as much as 1" with a loose 6-10" weave, one very fine butterfly net style. The big beasts will rip the fine net but not break the heavy net, the fine net will stop the smaller beasts from getting through the gaps in the heavy one. You might even go for three layers to have an extra check on the cat/dog sized ones.
If you're trying to catch rats or mice, you're on your own. You've got at most a minute before they chew their way out of anything non-metallic.
[Answer]
## Magic
You mentioned your world has magic, since that is the basis for the shapeshifting. Is there a class of magic that can be utilized for either casting spells or creating magic items? Something that allows for one or more of the following sorts of things:
* **Immobilize** (i.e. paralyze, freeze, sleep)
* **Restrain** (i.e. magic collars/nets that expand/shrink as needed)
* **Contain** (i.e. magic cages that are like force fields, or where crossing their boundary, no matter how big/small, causes damage/pain/shock that prevents one from crossing [throws them back to the center of the "cage"])
* **Control** (i.e. hypnotize, enslave, make into a "zombie")
* **Deceive** (i.e. illusion to make them think that no matter what shape they take, a cage/restraint has transformed to contain them; delusion to make them *think* they are not strong enough to escape or incapable of shape shifting)
* **Suppress** the magic of the shape shifting (i.e. anti-magic, whether broadly speaking or specific to suppressing the shape shifting magic)
## Special Technology
If the world also has **high tech**, then things like:
* Stun guns (regularly applied in case of "restraining")
* Force field cages/cells
* Hibernation capsules
But even if it is a **low tech** world, could some form of specialized technology designed around "naturally occurring" phenomenon been built to handle these creatures? They cannot be forced to shapeshift (per your requirements), but perhaps they can be suppressed from being able to (even though they can "transform at will," there are things I can normally do "at will," yet in special circumstances cannot do). So things like:
* A form of rock that emits magic itself that suppresses the shapeshifting (kind of like a shapeshifter's kryptonite), which non-shifters mine to use in collars/hand-cuffs, but the effect works in a small radius from the rock (since it is emitted).
* A form of 'poison' brewed from various plants, etc., that suppresses the shapeshifting (similar to the "drugging" noted in other answers, but one that is specialized against this particular "at will" ability).
* A type of metal in which contact with the skin creates a magical disruption of the ability to shift.
[Answer]
Put the shapeshifter on a landmine. If his form is smaller, as he changes the mine blows up. Tell the shapeshifter about it. Demonstrate it. Make him fear it.
By landmine I mean any trap that works on the basis of pressure-plate. Spear-walls, multiple crossbows with trigger-wires aimed in the general direction of the 'shifter, for example, or pots of boiling oil above the 'shifter are valid examples too. You don't have to physically tie someone to a place if you can make him want to stay there for a fear of death.
[Answer]
The answers I have read so far are all nice, but usually seem to either go the one-size-fits-all or are too spezialized for field-use.
What I like most is the solution with drugs, but I fear you might run out of drugs before you run out of shapeshifters, so some passive(-active-mixed) means are required.
---
# How to catch them:
## If the Shapeshifter is significantly smaller than a human:
There is no real way to catch them except cornering them. While a normal mice may walk into your set-up trap, an intelligent mice will notice that something fishy is going on with that cheese on the spring. Of course you can set up traps that activate by entering them, but they are usually highly situational (like needing an unsuspicious hole where the shapeshifter will enter by himself). A lot of planning is required by the hunting party.
## If the Shapeshifter is bigger or equal to a human:
Use standard hidden hunting techniques. Covered pits, manually or automatically triggered rope-traps, nets. Basically any way animals are catched in our world, except that it may not be obvious for a human observer.
The alternative is to simply hunt them down with weapons, ropes and nets (and, yes, tranquilizers).
---
# If the Shapeshifter is in human form:
Use standard human-restraints in addition to this. No point in placing a collar around their neck when they can just take it off with their uncuffed hands.
## For anything larger than a human:
Put a collar around a body-part that enlarges. Be it the neck, hip, ankle or even feet. When the shapeshifter transforms from human to elephant they would strangle themselves, when the restraint is around the feet (steel-shoe comes to my mind) they would cripple themselves with it.
Depending on time and availablity add any additional gear like Spikes (inward for example), Explosives (activated by tearing the restraint) or something else from your imagination.
## For anything smaller than a human
If there is a part that stays the same during transformation, restrain that one. For this to work however the shapeshifter should not be able to use any (now unrestrained) body-part to free itself in a matter of seconds. In this case probably use the next method.
Use a self-fastening restraint. Mabye some kind of spring, that excerts a constant pressure can work. When the body-parts shrink, the restraint will shrink as well.
If the shapeshifter shrinks entirely out of any restraint, a bag or net is probably your only option. Remember though you only need to carry human-size bags, not elephant-size bags. If the shapeshifting happens toward the body-center, smaller sacks with self-fastening holes might work as well. The head, arms and legs go through the holes, when the shapeshifter shrinks it wll end up inside the sack with all holes closed (long enough).
---
# If the Shapeshifter is in animal form:
Now that is where it gets tricky. Because there isn't a single form for all shapeshifters, we have to come up with some generally available restraints.
## For anything smaller than a human:
Collars work again wonders for only slightly smaller animals (dogs, maybe cats, even some larger birds). Use sacks and/or nets for even smaller animals. It can't be healthy to enlarge from mouse-size to human-size inside of a 5 liter leather-bag.
## For anything larger than a human:
Don't. At least not if you can force them to change to human form. How to force them? Be creative. Poke them (or threat to poke them) with a stick (read: spear), a sword, a gun, something poisond... the list goes on. If a shapeshifter is not willing to change to human form, kill him (or, if the mission does not allow that, threat him you will).
Alternatively tranquilize him and use some methods from above to at least tie it up somehow. As mentioned in the question you can not carry an elephant-cage.
[Answer]
A possible solution is a fishing net with very small mesh (less or around 1mm)
made with some resistant yet flexible material
[Answer]
**Let's go fishing!**
No, really, you just need a net and a hook.
You can hook your shapeshifter if it's large enough (terrier dog size and over, otherwise you'll crush him) and tie him. You can hook the 'shifter anyway you like: hand hook, throw him a spear, shoot him with an bow/crossbow with a tied arrow...
If you want a single size hook version, you should make the hook large enough to tie the smallest shape without killing the 'shifter. And remember, the bigger the shape is, more hooks you will need for a single 'shifter. Take also in mind that if you pierce a 'shifter while it's on his largest shape, his wounds will become more massive if he gets small, but I don't think it'll die.
If your shapeshifter is in a shape too small to hook him, catch him with your net/bag. You will notice when he gets bigger (it's not an instant process), then hook him and reuse the net/bag as you wish.
Your 'shifter will feel lots of pain, but won't die and will get weakened enough to fight. If his legs aren't hurt there is the advantage that the 'shifter can still walk by his own, so you just need to pull him and not carry him.
As usual, you can put some drugs in your hook tip to make things easier.
[Answer]
There's the solution used in fairy tales. Talk to your shape shifter and say you don't believe he could get as small as a mouse. Then he does, just to show you, and you trap him in a stout bottle.
You could fool him into going small by setting a trap - like precious stones or special food - in a small place.
Basically trap the guy as you would a mouse, and have an unbreakable bottle handy.
[Answer]
An alternative to [Ville Niemi's answer](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/33956/11123) in case you're anti-drugging, is a solid container. You didn't specify what happens when they transform into a larger animal (ex. elephant), so I'm not sure if they'd burst, say, a box during a transformation. If so, the container would needed to be reasonably large and without holes— we don't want prisoners who can transform into smaller animals slipping out.
You'll have to deal with the prisoner slamming against the sides and moving around when transporting him, but that's a secondary concern to your containment question.
[Answer]
**What about a pill that is made from a treated unstable metal**
Pill that is made from a treated unstable metal with some kind of natural radiation which makes it stable and workable like other metals the process was rediscovered from an ancient alchemy text from the times of the earliest cases of reported shape shifting. While the treated metal would also change from a solid to a liquid when and only when it was was in contact and infected by the radiation that is only produced with the energy that is emitted during the process of shape-shifting. The earliest and later alchemist have never found a way to utilize it, it was a bounty hunting rogue who fashioned the first pill from it with a poison that powerful that a drop would kill an adult orc [:)] while his pills where crude they were very effective [3 drops in each would kill instantly the largest shape-shifter before they could complete their transformation] he would sneak up and drop one in the mouth of a sleeping suspected shape-shifter. They would choke while swallowing the pill in their sleep then waking them up facing a gun [or some kind of weapon] aimed at their head, shape-shifters would change to escape causing the treated metal pill to liquefy releasing the poison killing the shape-shifter halfway through the transformation process. This would allow the rogue to prove it was a shape-shifter and collect the bounty the non shape-shifters would be threaten to stop doing something they were not doing as cover story the pill would pass harmlessly through them.
Guess he made a deal with you or what ever and you now replace the poison with what ever you want tranquilizer?? As they are very small you can carry a lot, being made of metal you can make them to be almost indestructible as well. Magical and non magical users can carry and use the pill. Sorry about the lameish story but it helps my ideas follow and needs to fit in your world.
[Answer]
Most physical abilities have some physical limits. A determined cat can generally squeeze through any hole it can get its head through -- but the skull sets an absolute limit. Unless your shapeshifter is *completely* amoeboid or *completely* free of size limits, there is likely to be some organ which simply can not be distorted past a certain point without taking serious, perhaps fatal, damage. The fact that things tend to fall off is not a statement that nothing will resist that tendency; a fine enough net (of some material that will resist chewing through) might be all you need.
Limitations make better stories, in most cases.
Barring that, use a magical force barrier. Fight magic with magic.
[Answer]
Neat and simple - A pair of manacles with an addition, a thin spike that runs between the bones of the wrist (or leg, I guess) and connects the two halves of the manacles together. The spike will prevent them from shapeshifting out of the manacles - if their form is too small, the spike will tear the hand/foot/wing half off as the shrinking makes the spike too proportionally big, if their form is too big it will cut off circulation, and if the size is comparable, they're still trapped because it runs between the bones. If spike thickness and placement through the flesh is careful, the injury might heal pretty well once the manacles come off. Pretty cruel, pretty brutal, pretty effective.
Of course, since shapeshifters can't be compelled to transform, there should be a couple other solutions for a shapeshifter who won't return to human - a sturdy collar or a collection of adjustable straps with inward spikes can prevent them from becoming bigger, or temporarily control them even as larger beasts. A few small metal cages and a few midsized net bags (with wire woven through to prevent chewing out) to control smaller beasts - and maybe just one set of bars for a larger, human-proof cage. With several pairs of the manacles, it would all probably fit in one midsized bag. And those who are larger beasts and remain troublesome might be controlled with damage - broken bones or physical injury to keep them from escaping by turning human, or encourage them the manacles are a better option, or they might be controlled through threats to their fellow shape-shifters.
[Answer]
What happen to the thing that was swallowed? What if you made him swallow a rock with a steel string attached to it? If it just magically fell off, the best way would be dose him with some kind of poison. Or as @Gianlua said, use a net.
[Answer]
Use below freezing ropes or whips that when rapped around would freeze the cells and prevent transformation in that section.
[Answer]
Jars. Lovely things-where peanut butter comes from. Anyhow, jars are very effective way to capture tiny animals if there is a lid. If you want breathing holes, either punch them in the top or make a space-oriented oxygen source that connects the inside of the jar to the real world.
[Answer]
Essentially the magical form of a Faraday cage or net.
As long as the creature is within the confines of the cage or the net then they are effectively prohibited.
Essentially a similar concept to the Ysalamir creatures in Star Wars EU trilogy Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising and Last Command, where said creatures project a natural bubble around themselves that blocks the force so that they cannot be hunted by Force sensitive predators.
Ysalamiri sink their claws into the Olbio trees on which they live and draw nutrients.It was very difficult to remove a ysalamir from its tree without killing it, Grand Admiral Thrawn used ysalamiri for defense by attaching them to a back harness or a nutrient frame which allowed him and his men to remain safely inside the ysalamiri's Force repelling bubble.
He used this trick to accelerat the Spaarti cloning process without the usual side-effects which occurred when similar Force imprints interfered with one another.
Ysalamiri did not actually negate the Force; since all existence was infused with Force energy this would not be possible. Rather, they projected a bubble inside which users were unable to exert any influence over the Force. A single bubble measured up to 10 meters in diameter; large groups of ysalamiri could extend their collective bubble by kilometres, but only in great numbers.
A concept of this nature would suit a technological or medieval setting quite simply, just choose what the bubble that is projected negates.
[Answer]
Assuming you **know** the person is a shifter:
"Shift or die!" See what form they take. If it's smaller than a human you put it in an appropriate net. If it's bigger you demand he shift back and then you put him in a human-sized net.
You'll need to carry a few sizes of net but not any huge amount. You'll also need a net made of metal to deal with gnawers.
] |
[Question]
[
So, after a long unplanned hiatus, I have started designing alien creatures again, and one image that eve before that hiatus I could not get out of my head is that of a creature which has both the pointed piercing/shearing teeth of a carnivore, and the side-facing eyes of a herbivore.
The thing is, though, I don't want to just handwave it and say that I'll do it anyway because it looks good to me; I will if I have to, but I would rather have a reason.
Why, then, would teeth that only make sense for an exclusive meat-eater occur in the same species as eyes that only make sense for an exclusive plant-eater?
Now, I've asked questions on here before and subsequently, from not giving enough criteria, gotten unhelpful results, so I'll say a bit more about the creature I'm imagining; It:
* Is vaguely humanoid
* Is at least nearly human-sized
* Has a sense of smell not significantly better than that of a human, although much better hearing
* Has retractable claws on both hands and feet
* Is at least partially warm-blooded
* Is naturally evolved, not having been subject to any artificial genetic engineering, although it is not from Earth or related in any way to any Earth life
* May be either digitigrade or plantigrade (I have not decided), but may not be specifically unguligrade
My question then is this: Why would a creature meeting all the above criteria have both the teeth of a carnivore and the side-facing eyes of a herbivore?
[Answer]
Your creature evolved within an ecosystem where it was both hunter and prey.They've exclusively hunted smaller prey but there was one or more other carnivores that hunted them as well.
They've hunted their own prey by sound. Visual acuity was unimportant. But it did help in avoiding being ambushed.
[Answer]
I think the best way to make this work would to make the animal a scavenger. Carnivorous teeth are best to tear and slice decomposing meat, and the side facing eyes would be used to scan for danger as the creature eats.
[Answer]
**Your animal is brachycephalic.**
Brachycephaly is a mutation that produces a foreshortened face. Brachycephalic mammals have shortened muzzle or no muzzle. I have heard humans called brachycephalic chimps.
Your animal is a brachycephalic carnivore, very much like a pug dog.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ygFab.png)
As a visual aid here I have images of a pug dog with eyes very nearly on the sides of its head. This is not because the eyes have moved but the entire skull is squashed flat. Next to it as exemplifying the protoherbivore with eyes on the sides of its head is a noble pygmy goat. On the side and wondering why it is in with these two is a smug wolf, with front facing carnivora standard eyes.
You will see in the comparison of pug and wolf skull that the dentition of both canids is carnivore standard, in so far as there is room in the pug jaw. This pug skull demonstrates a typical pug underbite which your animal might very well have.
--
Why would a protowolf evolve into a pug? We know in our world it is because pugs are snorty and friendly but there was artificial breeding involved which your OP precludes.
Why then would a chimp evolve into a brachycephalic human? Chimps have a wicked attack bite but humans struggle to attack with a bite because our noses get in the way. The answer is that other adaptive traits came along with brachycephaly. For your animal, maybe smaller bodies conferred better fitness in lean times when elk prey was scarce but grasshopper prey common? Maybe the arrival of new predators made side facing goatish eyes helpful? Maybe the wicked attack bite meant too many pups killed by getting bit, and so the ability to bite hard was selected against? Maybe snorty awesomeness helps cement social bonds and group fitness?
In any case: pug animals. Picture would be welcome. Remember the underbite please.
[Answer]
Many dinosaurs had carnivore teeth and side facing eyes.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0kooy.jpg)
[Answer]
**While it may be a predator, it could not be the Apex**
There are many animals that are predatory, yet they have their own predator(s) that will hunt them down. For your animal, it could have their eyes like that because they have a bigger, scarier animal that is out to hunt them. Depending on how dangerous the animal is, and what environment your species lives in, it needs to see more areas and be aware at all times. The alternative is that the prey it hunts is quick and stealthy, so it needs to be aware and look around to know where its food is.
[Answer]
You are assuming "sharp" teeth - incisors,shark like teeth, etc - with a predator. However, you are not understanding the *reason* for the teeth. Teeth evolve to adapt to *what* it eats. *What* it eats doesnt have to be prey. A plant can have a fleshy like substance and therefore needs to be torn off, ripped, sliced, etc.
[Answer]
If you improve the sense of smell I would say "because it is a scavenger". It bullies other carnivores away from kills.
[Answer]
The notion of side-facing eyes for survival amid other predators seems pretty sound. And since you provide carnivorous teeth as a given, then could it obtain prey by some means other than visually hunting? Like say:
1. By using a web
2. Listening for movement and spraying poison in a general direction
3. Luring prey to it
4. Scavenging, as other have suggested
5. Observing prey and setting traps or chasing them off cliffs or other semi-intelligent tactics
[Answer]
**It's a whale**
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/nZlfI.png)
Your carnivore has eyes on the side of your head because it's a whale. Toothed whales are carnivores. Baleen whales are carnivores. All whales have eyes on the side of their heads.
[Answer]
Vision is not it primary sense. It might have something like echo location for hunting prey at short to medium distances and only use vision for detection at longer distances.
An electrical field sense might also work.
[Answer]
Reasons:
binocular vision helps to locate the distance to the prey animal. Why would not not need this?
Possibly the predator is MUCH faster than the prey. Imagine a giant sloth on the ground. Safe in a tree, but easy prey on the ground.
The predator is also prey, OR there is an escapable but fast moving hazard. Imagine being in a forest where trees fall randomly, but frequently.
The side view eyes are a relic. The animal lives in an environment where vision isn't used for hunting. Think bat sonar.
] |
[Question]
[
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QijRu.jpg)
Starship Not-Enterprise exits hyperspace and looks at the planet filling up the window. Their jaws drop. The planet has a perfect geometric shape clearly visible from space, occupying the majority of the visible surface from their current vantage point.
Its astounding. **Sharp** boundaries, **straight lines**, perfect **sharp corners**, **exact angles**. Obviously this was created by a very intelligent alien life with large engineering capability and was perfectly planned. It **looks like it was drawn in a CAD program**.
However there is no mighty intelligent life on the planet and never was. There may be plant and animal life if it helps explain the creation of the shape. This perfect geometry was entirely created by natural processes. Somehow a natural process created something which which looks undisputedly artificial after one first glance.
**If this is possible - how could a natural process can create a near-perfect geometric shape that's the most prominent feature on the planet?**
Or, if not possible in the real world (which I suspect)…
**What's the minimum handwaving one would need to do to get any near-perfect shape becoming the prominent feature on the planet by natural means?**
---
The exact shape doesn't really matter - so long as a natural process can create it and it looks deceptively like an artificial process created it. Can be a Triangle. a Square. Letters or other simple glyphs. Any simple 2D shape. The exact design doesn't matter. It just needs to stand out as clearly artificial by way of being simple 2D geometry.
Am open to a curving shape, but a circle made by a conical volcano isn't going to cut it, the curve is unlikely to be a perfect circle, and the contrast against the surrounding land is going to be low.
With regards to projection any suitable map projection is fine. Straight lines on a sphere's surface bend in 3D space and can bend on maps, so this is open. It can be in true 3D space (eg 3 identical mountains with a perfect plane between their peaks that when viewed in 3D is a perfect equilateral triangle), or perspective to a point in space (that the not-enterprise happened to luckily intersect) so it looks perfect to the naked eye, or becomes a perfect shape when projected onto a standard, existing map projection, eg Mercator.
I have no idea of the best process to achieve this. It could be tectonics. Clouds. Erosion. Animal migration. Rainfall patterns. Shadows from other planets accumulating over time killing vegitation. Anything. That's why I'm asking. It can be transient but needs to be visible for at least a few weeks.
(If "perfect geometry" is considered opinionated for some reason. Any 2D shape from [this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_two-dimensional_geometric_shapes) appearing prominently on a planet when viewed from space. Best answer is accuracy of shape, then simplicity of geometry.)
Edit: Changed "Perfect" to "Near perfect" - (a valid) quibble about perfection.
[Answer]
"The planet hasn't been tectonically active for nearly a billion years. Winds have blown the surface smooth and its many moons have protected it from large impacts. There are no oceans, but the atmosphere has ambient moisture.
Six hundred million years ago it was nothing but a moist sphere of red dust in a thin shell of carbon dioxide. Then the first meteorite slipped past the moons, presumably from someplace more diverse. Wedged into a crack in this rock was a lichen. The fungal component of this lichen could digest the iron oxide dust, and the plant component could photosynthesize--if slowly.
Nine thousand years ago the planet was completely covered in a thick mat of the lichen, then a green spheroid, still unremarkable. Whatever DNA the original lichen had for handling threats had long since been dropped in favor of more efficient replication. The lichen's growth had slowed by that point--it was choking on the waste oxygen that it had liberated from the soil and put into the atmosphere. Then the second meteorite struck.
The rock exploded upon reentry--probably into hundreds of pieces. It too had a fungal passenger, but only three spores survived the fall. That's what the white circles are: monokaryotic mycelium of the invading fungus, expanding radially. It could probably grow a couple centimeters each day in the oxygen rich atmosphere--unimpeded by the vast green canvas of lichen.
It's amazing Captain, it's like a third of the planet has transformed into a cotton ball. And it smells like the mushrooms you'd get in the grocery store back home. Anyhow, we estimate that by two thousand years ago, the three expanding circles had met each other. That's where the straight lines come from--the circles expanded at a steady rate, but where they met they formed crisp lines of dikaryotic mycelium which has been growing outward.
That's how mushroom sex works, sir. The monokaryotic mycelium doesn't have the genetic diversity to reproduce on its own, so it can only form mushrooms after it meets another patch of mycelium with a different genotype.
The brown Mercedes logo you're seeing on the side of this planet--it's actually three bands of little mushrooms, maybe six centimeters tall and a thousand kilometers wide. We think that they intersect at a spot in line with the meteorite's trajectory, before it exploded.
...or at least that's our best guess. Lieutenant Radagast claimed that he had seen this species before. He says it's *psylocibe cubensis*. Before we could stop him. Um. He ate one. He's been acting a little strange, but he recently informed us that he's now certain of his analysis.
I've attached an image from the archives. It turned up in the old Earth internet--someplace called the shroomery. Note the straight line formed at the interface between the two samples. You're seeing that, but with three samples, and at a planetary scale.
End of report."
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DwnEa.jpg)
[Answer]
Just how sharp do you need the shape to be?
This Hexagon on Saturn is looking pretty artificial,
and it is 14 500km in diameter.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7dgW7.jpg)
Not to mention the whole planet is a nice sphere, with a *multitude* of very neat circle forming a disk around it.
Craters can be *very* neat circles:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/THdLL.jpg)
And simple rock crystals can be quite geometric, although usually not so large as to be visible from space.
Like the Iron Pyrite image by another poster, or how about some Columns from the Giant's Causeway?[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DfzpK.jpg)
[Answer]
A possible idea is a ridiculous large pyrite crystals, as they form sharp angles with geometric faces, specifically it forms cubes with metallic surfaces.
While highly unlikely (maybe why they are surprised to see it), but large crystals do form in [space](https://www.space.com/26335-coldest-white-dwarf-star-diamond.html).
So your planet may have a large pyrite crystal, mostly buried under the surface, but has a large metallic flat surface, protruding from the surface.
Or if Gold cubes isn't what you are after then maybe large magnetite (iron oxide) crystal, it is normally a metallic black colour. The crystal in the first image has a thin transparent film on its surface, giving the rainbow colours, but it has the right shape. The crystals in the second image show the natural colour.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/E7LVC.jpg)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZRymr.jpg)
It forms a octahedral crystals, so if one was half buried under the surface you would have a metallic black pyramid protruding from the surface of the planet.
[Answer]
**Infinite possibilities**
The universe gives us already many strange phenomena. Imagine a smiley face in a crater, with a curved mountain as the smile. [Welcome to Mars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galle_(Martian_crater)).
Although many things in the universe are chaotic, it happens often enough that straight geometric forms form somewhere on different levels. The celestial bodies that are large enough are surprisingly round. Crystals with sharp corners. Solar systems that look like molecules. Some happen often, others not.
The universe is **big** [citation needed]. The amount of planets in just the milky way is estimated between 100 and 400 *billion*. The milky way is a galaxy. There's an estimated 100 billion galaxies observable with our current technology.
In this universe, it's not just likely, but a near certainty that some random stuff in the wild universe made such shapes. Although the size projected in your example is very large and makes it unlikely again. Possibly a tectonic plate is fractured and many shards are being pushed upwards all over by neighbouring plates. Then erosion through weather and plant life makes it a more or less flat surface. Or a weird anomaly in the gravity in the area is causing most meteors to land in the hexagonal area, much like our earth is protected from large chucks of meteor thanks to some large planets in our solar system.
But however unlikely it is, there is a certain *possibility* it currently exists. The chances of complex life was once calculated to be 0. Yet here we are. Compared to that, the chance of a visibly from space geometric shape in this big, big universe is very good.
[Answer]
I'd use an extrasolar diamond from another start system: An ancient star system had condensed a planet out of nearly pure diamond, and when a passing supermassive star disintegrated as a supernova, it stripped the ancient star system and blew the diamond planet's outer mantle into a geometric array of moon sized pieces of diamond, and one of the moon sized pieces of diamond landed on your planet. It can be any common mineral that we find on our planet : calcite, ruby, quartz, the point is that the planet cooled for 8 billion years on a first star, then passed near a fast young giant supernova and was exploded into moon sized pieces and landed on another planet 1 billion years later.
[Answer]
Saturn's moon [Mimas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimas_(moon)) has a natural circular crater almost 140 KM across, about 1/3 of the moon's diameter, with a natural mountain in the middle. I believe that may be the **largest known near-perfect geometric shape** completely visible on a spherical body in relation to the size of the body.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KgUat.jpg)
*And yes, that **is** a moon.*
] |
[Question]
[
In the near future Vat grown 'cruelty free' meat has become cheaper and healthier then eating animals. Society is moving to exclusively growing our meat, no one wants to pay the high costs of 'live' meat.
What will society do with the huge quantities of livestock 'left over' as we transition to the vat grown meats? We could slaughter and eat the last of the livestock and simply not raise new ones, but this would effectively mean the extermination of numerous species. We can't let them loose in the wild either, as they no longer are capable of fending for themselves without human intervention.
I imagine a few will still be raised to be slaughtered and eaten by rich elitists folks who are willing to pay much higher prices just to be able to say they are eating the 'real thing'. I suspect a few may be kept around in zoos or the equivalent, so future children can look in amazement at the things we use to kill and eat.
However, what will happen to the vast majority of remaining livestock? I'm interested in any controversial arguments that may occur during the transition to exclusively eating vat-grown meat, what environmentalists, animal rights activists, and PETA may argue for the well being of the livestock, in addition to what the industries and average person will look to do.
[Answer]
Economics, culture, religion, government policy, and other factors will dictate what happens, likely in a dynamic equilibrium amongst all possible outcomes. All of your outcomes and many more are all likely to happen. The real question is only for how long and to what extent the transition occurs.
Where a market for live animals exists, the animals will be purchased:
* Low margin producers will sell stock to higher margin producers. Mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcies, and other market mechanics will drive out the lowest performers. Some producers will sell off lower margin species to purchase higher margin species.
* Survivalists will buy breeding stock since "natural farming will survive the end of civilization".
* Zoos will buy breeding stock to ensure survival of the species and individual breeds.
* Animal rights groups, petting farms, and other animal reserves will buy breeding stock.
* Philanthropists will buy individual animals to live out their natural lives on hobby farms.
* Wealthy individuals will buy individual animals to flaunt their wealth, as speculative investments, or any number of financially dubious purposes.
Where a market exists for live meat, it will continue to be sold.
* Prices will reflect supply and demand.
* Niche producers will continue as long as they can sustain their margins.
* Religious laws and cultural norms may push for or away from live meat consumption.
* Market inequalities will allow for competition. Logistics, marketing, culture, or other factors will influence perceptions.
* Socialist governments will subsidize the live meat industry to slow the transition to vat meat in order to preserve and ease the transition of traditional live meat producers.
* Pet food
Herds will be culled:
* As prices are depressed, capital will move to higher margin investments. Producers will simply not breed additional generations of animals.
* Some producers will transition to higher margin species
* Some producers will transition to vat meat production
Many animals will die, but some may live. If producers fail to transition, there will be no money left to purchase feed or other supplies necessary to run a farm.
* Some producers will sell off what they have, possibly at a discount, possibly at a loss.
* Some producers will euthanize the animals to minimize their loses.
* Some producers will not give up even after every dime is sunk into the unsustainable business. When they have no money for feed they will hold on desperately waiting for an improvement. The animals will die of starvation, or be seized and/or euthanized by animal protection groups.
* Some producers will give up, and simply let the animals go free. Most of them presumably get captured or die of natural or unnatural causes. For a few "nature finds a way" and they may get lucky enough to sustain a feral population that endures and evolves.
[Answer]
There wouldn't be a huge stock left over as we transition unless the transition was extraordinarily fast. Instead, the transition would gradually replace livestock.
In the beginning, carniculture (vat-grown meat) would be more expensive than livestock. They would argue that vegetarians who wouldn't eat meat because it involved killing animals could eat it. Of course, vegetarians who have different reasons may still avoid carniculture. It will be the luxury item.
Over time, they would make carniculture cheaper. So it would displace some existing livestock raising. But that in turn would make livestock less valuable (as there is now a surplus). Farmers would raise less livestock, as it would be less profitable. The two would balance for some period of time, as the herds decreased in size and carniculture became cheaper.
Eventually livestock-based meat would become the luxury item. People would pay more for it, as it would be rare.
If carniculture takes over because of cost, then they would simply harvest the livestock. Because the current livestock is free at that moment. It is cheaper to slaughter it and sell the meat than to maintain it. They would simply stop exposing the cows to bulls and making more.
If you want there to be drama around it, you need carniculture to be adopted for some reason other than cost. Because cost will balance naturally. They'll reduce the size of the herds as they go.
Health might work. The carniculture meat might be high in good fats like Omega-3 (like free-range beef) while the factory raised meat is high in saturated fats. So the carniculture product is immediately higher quality. Meanwhile, it would be controversial to feed low quality, cheap meat to the poor.
Or you could start with PETA/vegetarians arguing that livestock is inhumane and promoting a switch to carniculture while it is still more expensive.
[Answer]
The breeding of livestock is under human control. So with the demand for conventional meat declining, we would just stop breeding them.
Cattle, pigs or chickens do not mate uncontrollably. Farmers invest a lot of work to make sure they only mate when the farmers want them to and with the partner they want them to. Common methods to achieve this are gender segregation and artificial insemination. This gives the human farmers control over the reproduction of their lifestock.
Also, the life expectancy of the average farm animal is short. Chicken live for a few weeks, pigs for a few months for cattle for just one and a half year until they get slaughtered.
So unless the transition to artificial meat is **very** fast (less than a year) or the factory farmers are completely ignorant to this economical development, they will downsize their inventory with the declining demand. They will slaughter and sell their last animals the day they go out of business.
If they do forget to read the news end up with an inventory of unsellable inventory, they would not just let them free. They would be liable for all the damage those now free-roaming badly socialized animals would cause to their neighbors. So they will likely end up doing what farmers usually do when they can't sell their lifestock for some reason. They would just kill off any unsellable animals and dispose of the bodies.
Regarding the ecological impact of removing these species from the ecosystem: Remember that domesticated animals are no longer natural animals. We selectively bred for millenia to fulfill our requirements. They no longer participate in any ecosystem outside of the farm that breads them. They likely would not be able to survive in the wild anymore. Many are not even the same species anymore as their wild ancestors. A few migth be kept in zoos as a rarity.
[Answer]
I suspect the same would happen to livestock as would happen with any product which has grown obsolete in the marketplace. The price would drop due to the demand dropping, and ranchers across the world would attempt to sell the livestock to the slaughterhouses at cheaper rates to maintain profit.
At the same time, breeding of livestock would abruptly stop and the calves born today would be the last newborn cows and pigs born for the slaughter. I would argue that not just elitists but a good percentage of people would continue to buy meat at least at first, so it would be a slow decline, not a sudden drop.
Ranchers would likely replace cows and pigs for consumption for cows and goats for milking, as it would be the most natural transition. Consequently the quantity of milk would skyrocket and the price of milk would drop drastically as well.
With time, existing livestock would eventually die out naturally not to be replaced or breed, and milk and meat would once again balance out with demand. Some ranchers may humanely kill the livestock once the food runs out in order to prevent overhead costs, while others still would continue to feed them until their natural deaths despite the lack of profit involved.
PETA would most likely offer a free range place for cows or pigs to live on, though PETA would not likely provide the means to transport the livestock and very few ranchers would put forth the funds to transport them there.
PETA would still continue to seek better conditions for animals raised for the purpose of being milked.
[Answer]
As several others have noted, it is unlikely that such a transition would happen overnight. There'd be plenty of time to work down the size of the herds.
I'd add that many animals are kept for reasons other than meat. Cows give milk, sheep give wool, etc. Skins of many animals are used for leather. Etc. Maybe these uses would decline also, maybe not.
But suppose human use of, say, cows did eventually end completely -- if we not only had vat-grown meat but also some sort of synthetic milk, if people abandoned leather for canvas or plastic, etc. Some number of cows would be kept in zoos. You'd probably have a few people who kept them as pets, just as people keep other exotic animals as pets.
And I'd expect that there would be some movement of people trying to figure out how to transition cows to living in the wild, through breeding, training, genetic manipulation, or whatever. It wouldn't have to be a great political movement with millions of people. I'd expect more like dozens of people. Just like there are people today seeking to preserve endangered species one way or another. If nothing else, there would surely be SOME number of conservationists buying land for cow pastures to preserve this creature that has now become an endangered species.
[Answer]
Your question implies that -- even though "*Society **is moving**" to exclusively growing our meat*" -- the herds will remain the same size over time.
That's not true. As demand decreases, so will the sizes of the herds: ranchers will, as you said, "*simply not raise new ones*", and slowly get out of the business.
Also, your question is very "First World". Lots of poor people all over the world raise pigs because they're **cheap**, eating scraps.
[Answer]
Seeing how transition would not happen in a moment but rather over decades, the problem would kind of solve it self by simply diminishing the amount of meat we consume from actual livestock and trend more towards vat-grown meat. Slowly, steadily, vat-grown meat production ramps up and becomes more profitable and sustainable (and as people start to trust it more), however real meat will never stop being produced. It is just like we have artificial sweeteners and actual sugar. We have GMO foods and non-GMO foods. There is market for everything.
Lets draw a parallel with our own world and how it is dealing with transitioning from fossil fuel to sustainable green energy. It is not happening over night - fossil fuel is still used very much but over time as more green-energy power plants are created less people will have a need for fossil fuels.
In your scenario people would also slowly start to transition and as there are less customers for actual meat it would be produced less as farms start to fail due to not being profitable. Some farms would still function as high-end brands that deliver 'organic meat' if that thing is allowed in the world for those that prefer it to vat-grown stuff.
But overall, decades in after vat-grown meat appears on the market it will simply push out the organic meat as farms go out of business or switch their factories to produce vat-grown instead of actual meat. Eventually an equilibrium will be reached on the market.
Animals that were grown in those farms would not go extinct - cows, sheep, goat etc. still live in nature even though we grow them for consumption ourselves.
Their numbers would probably dwindle but i doubt they would go extinct.
Plus, animals are grown (and/or slaughtered) for reasons other than meat - production of milk (and from that other dairy products), skins, fertilizer, pets...
**As for controversy** there will always be a camp of people that will prefer natural meat and will campaign against vat-grown stuff for the same reason people protest GMO foods today. There will be people that will protest meat eaters, just like vegans do today. There will be those that will complain about long-term health effects that we may not know. People will probably argue that vat-meat factories pollute the world more than natural farms and waste more energy. Naturally you will have politicians claiming that the industry is bad because it is taking away jobs from farmers, veterinarians, cattle growers and medicine makers that ensure cattle remains health.
Just look at any industry that has pushed some other older technology out of the market and see the arguments that people used.
[Answer]
A long transition.
At first, vat grown meat will only be fit for substituting for mince and other highly processed products, so you will see, first, premium priced burgers and sausages with 'no-animal-meat' content, then more mass-market products if and when the price of vat-grown meat drops below that of animal meat.
This will take years. In economic terms, it will drop the price of animal meat, forcing some farmers to switch products and so reducing the livestock herd. The turnover time for battle is about [18 months](https://www.myfearlesskitchen.com/beef-cattle-life-stages/), so the herd size can change very quickly in response to market demand. Chicken and port would be faster.
As the technology improves, we will get things like chicken breast and diced meat - taking more market share from animals and again reducing the global herd.
Finally - probably several decades hence - we will be able to replicate really hard cuts like fillet steak and on-the-bone joints; once these can be produced more cheaply than animal meat, mass animal farming will fade away.
Livestock farming may persist for a long timne, though, in some forms -
Artisan, premium forms of meat such as [Wagyu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagyu) may well be produced for a long time, and [hill farming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_farming) for sheep is one of the few practical uses for uplands, maintaining a distinctive landscape.
So - a gradual replacement followed by a long tail of specialist breeds, with meat-from-animals eventually banned in a century or so.
[Answer]
Two scenarios:
1) People change over time - as meat eaters change their minds or die, the demand decreases.
2) People are afflicted by a super plague that makes meat from a sentient being 100% fatal to ingest at all.
Outcomes:
1) Farmers just stop buying new heads of cattle (or buy less) and let the herd size thin over time.
2) Farmers abandon their animals to the elements. They currently raise their animals out of desire for profit, they will abandon them out of desire to reduce costs as well. Not all farmers, but most. (After all, 99% of meat eaten today is raised on factory farms, where animal welfare is respected only as far as legally required). Some charities and rescues make efforts to re-home abandoned animals, but the majority of all cattle are left to die in their pens.
Keep in mind that there are secondary uses for animal by-products, that may become the primary product as meat demand falls - leather, etc. Also keep in mind that while we might have lab meat soon, we will not have lab dairy soon. Growing a muscle cell in a petri dish is a whole different animal from growing a complete lactating udder.
[Answer]
I'll give you the dystopian answer, since nobody else has.
As humanity becomes increasingly detached from natural processes, the cultural value of animals will decrease, and as populations increase, the economic incentive to eliminate competition for human living space will increase.
If viable alternatives to the products of animal husbandry become cheaper and more available than animal products, within a dozen generations breeding populations of non-human animals larger than mice will cease to exist.
Virtual reality will supply people with sanitized, bowlderized nature so there will no longer be any desire to keep the real thing around.
[Answer]
Having raised black angus beef cattle myself, the effects would be devastating to me and other farmers. Small herd farming is, in my experience, already a quite unprofitable job. But an "extinction" of this profession altogether would be a situation I would not like to be caught in the middle of.
Though cattle would continue to be raised in continually thinning numbers on big ranches, this leaves small herd farmers such as myself out of luck, out of a job, and in possession of equipment that I no longer have any use for. Not to mention the land I now have to pay taxes on that I have no choice but to sell. The equipment I used to use for raising cattle would no longer be needed, but would also be unsellable because other farmers would most likely not need it either.
Though I would most likely transition to a different animal that there is still a need for, this change would certainly be a hiccup in my career.
This situation is very similar to "The man in the white suit" so I think it would be a good idea for you to watch that.
But as for the animals, there is little more you can do than to stop breeding them and sell off a few at a time till you can make a transition to a more profitable industry.
Although I have seen some work by Allan Savory that introduces the truly fascinating idea of using herds of livestock to re-green the world's deserts by free ranging them. This would benefit the planet and give poor countries that may not have the logistics to import this "vat meat" the means necessary to thrive until their industry can take full advantage of the new meat.
(Mr. Savory's Ted Talk <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI>)
[Answer]
Slow transition. No technological change happens overnight in the real world, since the producers of vat-meat need to set up shop and ramp up production.
Think of the horse as an example. Prior to the wide-spread adoption of the steam engine, the horse, and other animals in comparable roles such as oxes, mules, etc., was the only source of power in agriculture. Every farm had its horse(s) to pull wagons, plough the fields, etc.
With steam engines some tasks were taken over by machines, such as [ploughing, sorry for the German-only reference](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dampfpflug).
After WW2 with the advent of tractors, the horse was swiftly replaced in farming.
However, we (the societies that have replaced the horse as working animal) still breed horses.
So, while the overall livestock will decrease in numbers, people might transition to other uses:
* Beef grown in vats does not do away the need for cattle in dairy production
* Non-meat products: leather, wool, etc.
* Recreation, hobby
* Tending to the landscape: herds of sheep can be used to keep otherwise impassable tracts of grassland from turning into wilderness
[Answer]
Keep them around in mega-habitats and watch them evolve. It'd be sort of like the fighting bulls for tauromachy, but without the bloodsport.
[Answer]
If artificial meat replaces animal meat, demand for the latter will drop and so will prices. Those who raise animals for meat will seek greener pastures, so to speak. Eventually the artificial insemination that keeps these strains of animals will stop.
And when it becomes too unprofitable to even keep these animals, they'll be sold off. And, no, farmers aren't just going to open the gates and let them wander out on to the highway.
[Answer]
Very near future. Here's a [Wired article](https://www.wired.com/story/lab-grown-meat/) claiming that lab grown meat is just around the corner because it will be less expensive than farm raised meat. If that's the case - and it may well be soon enough, raising livestock is expensive - then there's going to be a pretty quick transition and yeah, the livestock populations are going to be completely wiped out. It'll be like horses after cars.
I have wondered at the ethics of annihilating literally billions of animals for the sake of not having to kill them later... I don't think people will dwell on it too long. Taking the slaughter out of the equation and cheaper meat will make it easy math for most people, even if cattle (beef and dairy, apparently lab-milk is even easier to make than lab-meat) become and endangered species as a result.
Transition won't be overnight, but barring major regulatory or health hurdles, if the meat is cheaper it's going to be fast. Maybe livestock will be added to zoos, allowed to roam free in open areas out West (like the horses), or raised in small quantities as a luxury item though you can expect the cost of "real" meat to skyrocket. In the event of regulation or poor quality lab-meat transition will be slower, but I'd expect to end up in the same place pretty quickly as the lawyers resolve the regulatory issues and quality will improve over time.
] |
[Question]
[
We know through the works of Babbage, Lovelace, et al. that mechanical computers (computers operating through gears, cogs, etc., and powered by steam or some other arbitrary non-electric power source) are possible.
In our world, it has been observed that *electronic* computers obey various forms of [Moore's laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law), with [exponential growth](https://math.stackexchange.com/q/2376164/375088).
In a world without electronic computers as we know them, would mechanical computers display a Moore's Law-like exponential curve of improvements? If not, why?
* Would Moore's Law simply be inapplicable to mechanically engineered non-microscopic components (e.g. gears, cogs, ratchets, etc.)?
* Would it initially apply, but rapidly hit a "hard" physical barrier/limit?
* Would it follow some *other* kind of curve, such as linear growth or polynomial growth?
I would allow limited use of electricity as a *power source*, but not for driving *logical* circuits. Cathode-ray tubes, while technically being a form of a vacuum tube, could be allowed *for display only*, but I'm thinking more the use of [mechanical television](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_television) instead if at all reasonable. Standard electric-dependent *computing* components such as RAM, ROM, ferrite core memory, and hard disks are definitely out.
[Answer]
First of all, Moore's law is not a law of physics like Newton's law of gravity. It is just an empirical evidence that has held until now, in a quite surprising way.
While we have been able so far to shrink and shrink the size of electronic components, that is hardly possible with mechanical elements, therefore I highly doubt a mechanical equivalent of Moore's law would hold for more than few generations of calculators.
After that it would just be an horizontal line.
[Answer]
[Elmy's answer to a question of mine](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/137171/feasibility-of-a-purely-mechanical-monochrome-computer-monitor/137177#137177) made me realize what might be the most limiting factor for applying Moore's Law to mechanical computing.
**Dirt.**
*Or, more accurately, your ability to keep dirt out of the works.*
The beautiful thing about electronics is, other than heat dissipation, it's irrelevant how dirty it gets. But dirt gets in the way of spinning gears. No matter how well you try to seal it, you'll get dirt (if only in the form of congealed grease, metal shavings, wearing bearings and bushings, etc.).
In other words, you can realistically build a mechanical computer as small as (a) a gear can tolerate a grain of dirt or (b) you can keep the works sealed to prevent dirt from getting in.
Modern mechanical wrist watches demonstrate substantial size reduction in gearing — but they're also so well sealed that you need often need tools just to open the case. They could likely be made smaller, still, but you start getting into the problem of the slightest shaving causing you a problem, and a mechanical computer is much larger than a wrist watch.
So, where Moore's law was originally (and basically) the density of transistors doubles every two years. The mechanical variant of the law would be the size of a gear halves every two years. After 20-30 years, you're down to where the slightest speck of dirt would stop the machine. IMO.
[Answer]
Sorry to be a bit of a spoil-sport, but...
**Moore's law doesn't apply.**
[Moore's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#History) is the recognition that *semiconductor complexity* (in integrated circuits) increases at a particular rate.
The very Wikipedia article itself you linked to states that
>
> Despite a popular misconception, Moore is adamant that he did not predict a doubling "every 18 months". Rather, David House, an Intel colleague, had factored in the **increasing performance of transistors** to conclude that **integrated circuits** would double in performance every 18 months.
>
>
>
The cited source ([link](https://www.pressreader.com/usa/technowize-magazine/20170501/282445643992141), [alternative link](https://web.archive.org/web/20180824135217/https://www.pressreader.com/usa/technowize-magazine/20170501/282445643992141)), in turn, states that
>
> Moore’s law is basically about **transistor density**, but there are many versions of the Moore’s law for other capabilities of digital electronics.
>
>
>
and that
>
> In 1975, Moore revised his prediction as the number of components in the **integrated circuits** doubling every year to doubling every two years.
>
>
>
(My boldface all three.)
Since mechanical computers presumably aren't semiconductor-based, nor use transistors or integrated circuits, **Moore's law simply doesn't apply to them.** If you are referring to some alternative, related observation, then you are referring to something other than Moore's law (but possibly derived from it).
It's likely that miniturization would follow *some* curve, but I can't imagine you'd get to have cogs in the low nanometer dimensions (the same order of magnitude as features of modern high-density integrated circuits). That's simply because you'd need enough material to hold itself together, while performing some kind of useful work. For example, turning a cog to increase a counter will require some amount of energy, which must be delivered to and ultimately supported by the cog.
To have physical components of those dimensions, you'd likely need some kind of super-material to hold together, and hold its shape, under those stresses. Barring that, it seems to me that you're likely to hit a physical limit at much larger dimensions than those viable for anything resembling a present-day integrated circuit.
[Answer]
**Molecular machines**
You can in theory make 'mechanical' machines right down to molecular level. They already exist in biology, for example rotary motors:
>
> Three protein motors have been unambiguously identified as rotary
> engines: the bacterial flagellar motor and the two motors that
> constitute ATP synthase (F 0F 1 ATPase). Of these, the bacterial
> flagellar motor and F 0 motors derive their energy from a
> transmembrane ion-motive force, whereas the F 1 motor is driven by ATP
> hydrolysis.
>
>
>
And also other machines such as ribosomes and the following:
>
> Cytoskeletal motors
>
>
> Polymerisation motors
>
>
> Rotary motors:
>
>
> Nucleic acid motors
>
>
> Viral DNA packaging motors
>
>
> Enzymatic motors:
>
>
> Synthetic molecular
>
>
> <https://www.cell.com/trends/cell-biology/fulltext/S0962-8924(03)00004-7>
>
>
>
Reasearchers are currently working on so-called biological computers that work in a different way from the standard von Neumann machines of today.
---
EDIT
Mechanical monitors would also have improved at a similar rate, having developed from this mechanical TV: <https://www.vox.com/2015/3/25/8285977/mechanical-television>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SeeAQ.png)
[Answer]
The simple answer is: yes, because they did. They didn't follow Moore's Law (which as Moore said was never actually correct, nor did he ever expect the trajectory to continue), but they existed, and the trend to miniaturisation certainly did continue until transistors took over.
People tend to forget that a clock is a mechanical computer. Early clocks were massive mechanical systems. As time went on (pun intended), machining abilities allowed people to shrink the size of clocks until it became possible to build pocket-sized watches. Chronometers followed the same trajectory - [Harrison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison)'s original chronometer required a large wooden box, but his later chronometers were the size of large watches. Watch movement technology and winding mechanisms evolved over time, and became more miniaturised to the limits possible with machining and materials.
With watchmaking having firmly established how to construct minaturised mechanisms, [mechanical computers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_computer) were extensively developed and used throughout the first half of the 20th century. By WWII, most planes, warships and artillery used mechanical computers called "predictors" to improve accuracy, allowing for windage and (for aircraft and anti-aircraft guns) relative speeds.
These pure mechanical computers were still being surpassed by electro-mechanical computers though, which integrated banks of relays with mechanisms to rotate those banks of relays. Relays are mechanical systems with electrical power. Everything that transistor switches currently do can be done (albeit more slowly) by relays, and in fact early adoption of transistors was simply as drop-in replacements for relays in existing electro-mechanical computers. Had the transistor never been invented, it seems very likely that the direction of travel would have been the development of smaller and more reliable relays. (To digress, Terry Pratchett's novel *Strata* supposes this as part of the underlying mechanisms in Discworld.)
And then Diskworld. You may say "definitely no hard disks", but that's nonsense. A hard disk ***is*** a mechanical system with electrical power. Our current hard disks are a development of [drum memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_memory), which is more clearly a classical electro-mechanical system. Hard disks are actually one development which is almost inevitable and independent of electronics. They wouldn't be as good as what we currently have, sure, but they'd be around.
So in your electronics-free world, the end result would be increasing miniaturisation of relays and relay-based computers. Of course this could never approach the size of a transistor, but we might well have pocket calculators, fairly complex landline phone systems, and warehouse-sized computers of the kind that were available back in the 1960s. Moore's Law would probably stall there, in the same way as it has currently stalled for silicon.
[Answer]
Ugol's Law is a law, in that it attempts to explain nature: ”You're *not* the only one."
However Moore's Law is not a law at all. It doesn't explain nature, it **commands** -- well, not nature. It commands **research and development**.
It is an industry agreement on how to spend profits. Specifically, to give profits over to R&D enough to drive that rate of processor power increase, *instead of* paying that money to shareholders as dividends.
Or think of it as industry collusion to *limit* R&D money to a level that doesn't consume all profits and cause companies to bankrupt themselves and each other trying to keep up in an exponential technology race. It allows shareholders to profit-take.
Conversely, it allows management to stand up in shareholder meetings and explain a weak year with heavy R&D investment: "we needed the R&D funding to hit our Moore's Law targets".
So, not a law at all, just a *super cool* development schedule that allowed shareholders, managers and developers alike to share the dream.
## The answer to your question is
Moore's Law bears on mechanical computers **exactly as much as that society chooses to make Moore's Law (or some other development target) a part of their national vision/commitment/insanity**.
[Answer]
You get exponential growth if the growth furthers more growth.
For an industry, that means that the products not only sell well, they also help building the next generation of production lines. In the case of integrated circuits, this happened not just with computers helping to the planning for the next generation, there was also the engineering industry that used the research results from generation X's imaging and precision tooling improvements to build the tools for generation X+1.
For mechanical computers, this self-improving cycle never took off. The machines were always too difficult to make, some of them even predated the era of mass production (Leibniz built one), some simply were out of reach for the engineering technology of the time (Babbage, he couldn't find a workshop that would produce the cogwheels at the required precision).
I think we did have exponential growth in mechanical engineering during the Industrial Revolution though, so I believe the answer would be: Yes there was Moore's Law for mechanical stuff, it just didn't happen for computers but for steam engines and related technology.
There was also an explosion of electrical engineering once the basic technologies around alternating current were available.
I.e. my current theory is: technological progress is a series of exponential improvements that run until they hit some barrier (as is typical for exponential growth).
[Answer]
There was exponential growth in electronic computers because the central task in making tiny integrated circuits is, in fact, easy. Lithography is a lot like photography. You're creating machines with billions of components by just taking a picture or making a photocopy. You're both making a billion components, and assembling a billion components! I don't want to understate the many peripheral problems to figure out (eg, how to arrange a billion components) but because those problems weren't intractable and solving each new problem benefited a lot from the previous advances in computation, it led to exponential progress.
Integrated circuits aren't the only example of rapid exponential growth. Nuclear weapons increased in power ~10,000 times in just a couple of decades. Turns out, they were easy too.
Unfortunately, we don't have an easy process for making gears. Manufacturing precise machines remains hard. I think a mechanical computer could be built to be relatively powerful with tiny components sealed from dust and with error correction to work around failures. But building the second would take just as long as the first, and be uneconomical. (Without lithography, we wouldn't have gotten very far with hand-assembled vacuum tubes either.)
If you could imagine a similarly easy way to make mechanical computers, then you could experience some period of rapid exponential progress.
] |
[Question]
[
## **Background Information**
In my world, there is one spherical world that is 2,000,000 miles in diameter and has the same land-to-sea ratio as the earth. On this world , there is a civilization of elves possessing 19th century maritime technology, though they do not possess steam power. Their fastest vessels can go about 40 knots , and they possess submarine technology , powered by clockwork motors.
Over the course of a millennium , this civilization has made hundreds of thousands of city-state settlements in an area of 4.7 billion miles² ( 752,000 to be exact ) All of these colonies border a body of water in some way and are , on average , 90 miles away from each other. ( i.e. one populated city state for every 6250 square miles of world [ on average ])
Question: Given a spread this large , is it possible for such an "Empire" to have any sort of effective administration, or is the spread too large to allow any meaningful communication from one end of the empire to the other?
## Extra Unnecessary information
*None of these sea elves live outside of the city states*
*All area outside of the settlements is either open ocean , uninhabited land, or inhabited to varying degrees by foreign peoples*
*Assume such a civilization has detailed maps of the entire 4.7 billion square miles*
**EDIT:** In a previous instance of the question, the size of the planet was *several thousand light years* in diameter. It has been edited to *2,000,000 miles*
[Answer]
Optical telegraphs would work. At the most primitive, signal flags, though these would not work at night. A more robust system would consist of shutters using light/dark colours to send something like morse code. At night, you might use something similar to a lighthouse, using shutters to block off/show light. Have towers with men stationed in it in shifts with food and water, and you'd have signals technology that's essentially light speed, and while manpower intensive, would be *significantly* faster than anything else.
Apologies to the late, great Terry Pratchett, whose ideas I have reappropriated here. After all, when you care enough to steal from the very best ;p
[Answer]
I started my initial response with 'Barring magic...', but a planet that has Any dimensions you need to measure in light years needs to be magical so it doesn't collapse in on itself.
'Large' empires on earth kept in touch before electricity; indeed, large empires far predate electricity. For a maritime empire, you might try looking at the French and Spanish colonial efforts in the New World for pointers. However, those are empires in the '5-7k kilometer' scale. Light years presents a whole new set of problems.
Assuming you don't have magical communication, the fastest that information can be transmitted is the speed of light. This statement may be getting rolled back by advanced science in the coming years, but for now its true, and its definitely true for your empire's tech level. If you have a large empire and must communicate quickly, you might get away with semaphore towers, like on Discworld. On earth they're impractical because the horizon cuts things off more than a few miles away, but on a planet measured in light years, a person on the ground could be forgiven for thinking their planet was flat.
But, as many other answers have suggested, I think your planet may be a bit too big. It is, after all, a sizable portion of the Observable Universe.
[Answer]
**Think outside the box**. electricity is required for human in real-world modern communication such as telephone, internet. However, electricity is never a hard condition for our communication. We can sent hand mail, send messenger (who remember the content of the email and will speak the content to the receiver). As we invent electricity, we adapt our communication to take advantage of our wonderful invention. It does apply to your world, electricity is never a requirement for communication.
So, here are some of my propose for your world:
* **A elves species have their biology channel of communication the gain through evolution**.
It may be their telekinesis power. If you know the [Protoss](http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/game/race/protoss) in [Starcraft](http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/), they use telepath to speak to each other. The Protoss also have [Khalai](http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Khala) which similar to our Internet.
* **The alternative power which have same function as electricity in our world**. Remember that electricity is human intention in our Real-world. The elves may invent something. Perharp magic can replace electricity. Elves + magic is a good combination anyways.
* **Traditional communication system similar to our world, through mail and messenger, but with better logistic.** They still send paper work around, but better logistic mean better ways to move mail around, and get the paper work done fast. If they have submarine, is it fast ?. The island may have sub-terran network for submarine to move around in the kingdom. Let take a look at [Pneumatic tube](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube). The mail are carry very fast via a automatic mail network. If you can implement that network use submarine technology. For inter-islands mail, one rich citizen can have their privated mail-carrier sub. Very small submarine that move extremely fast (think of Harry Potter [Owl Postal Service](http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Owl_Postal_Service))
[Answer]
The obvious comparison to make is with the actual earth of the 19th century. The first trans-oceanic cable was 1866, India was connected to England in 1870. So without long-distance electrical communication the British Empire seemed to communicate well enough to co-ordinate administration up to a point. As soon as electrical communication became a possibility they absolutely wanted as much as they could have, as quick as they could have it, so it does make a difference.
I'm not sure what the total area was of the British Empire (in terms of land and intervening sea), but since you allow the areas between your city-states to be "inhabited to varying degrees by foreign peoples" I think a fair comparison is that the British Empire discontinuously extended across roughly 1/4 the surface of Earth. 50 million square miles. More if you draw a bounding box that includes far-flung islands like Fiji.
Your Elven civilization is 100 times this area, or about 10 times as big in each direction.
I think you could stipulate that *politically* it would be extremely difficult to administer an empire of this size, but that *technologically*, maintaining a correspondence across it isn't completely out of the question. Especially if Elves live longer than humans, and don't mind exchanging letters over decades in order to have a thorough discussion. Your ships aren't going to sustain top speed of course, but it's "only" a matter of many months to get from the edge of the empire to the centre, not many years.
The further colonies will be quite isolated from the centre and therefore (unless Elven psychology is very different from ours) quite diverse. Colonists might well take liberties, if they know it's a year before the nearest Imperial fleet can reach them. But once that year is up they've still got an Imperial fleet to deal with. The American revolution notwithstanding, "stay in line or we'll eventually get around to sending a gunboat" was an effective way for a powerful empire to discipline individual outposts.
[Answer]
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of floppies, or in this case a boat full of books.
Communication over this empire would vary based on urgency. A tall tower on a world of that size could be seen as far as atmospheric conditions allow and the brightness of the signal flame permits.
So start with a set of towers. These towers have lights on them. They'll have to be fire based: mirror based will be washed out by ambient light (assuming this planet has a night and day cycle somehow), possibly with lenses and shutters. A signal would be sent to the nearest cities, and relayed along.
Extra tall/bright towers could skip over more than one city in some cases.
The level of haze will matter. On hazy days, signals are going to fail. On extremely clear days, you might be able to do something fancy like send different messages in different light frequencies (where the other side has filters to extract the the two channels).
These messages require an economic system that crosses from one city to another and clears payments. They are also going to be reasonably expensive.
Other messages will be sent by messenger bird or boat. Sometimes complex messages will be sent by boat and "saved" to be referenced by light or bird-based messages (contingency plans and the like).
Security of these messages can be maintained by use of one-time pads. So the crown could send messages security to a general through multiple paths and not worry about it being intercepted, because the general has a key (transported physically) that ensures the message package is noise without it.
Having modern information technology could be useful. Routing of messages (around damages caused by clouds, rain or hostile forces), compression, and other techniques would all make their communication network better.
Mountain ranges and other similar stuff could cause problems. With the elves living near the coast, overland messages are difficult. Either building towers on the mountains, or hiring non-elves to do so, would permit short cuts. Use of slow-delivery one-time pads or other encryption could prevent the towers from corrupting or intercepting messages.
The bandwidth you'll get from boats will far exceed the bandwidth from the light towers, so passing huge pairwise common one-time pads around shouldn't be all that expensive compared to maintaining and using the towers.
The transparency of air increases the farther you are away from the ground generally. So making balloons that float above the cities that relay messages to other cities might even be practical, and would match the steampunk sensibilities of clockwork submarines. You could even imagine large ground-based lights shining up at the balloons, who have huge mirrors and shutters to beam the message to the target. Spotter balloons in the destination city with large telescopes would then record the message, and use mirrors to send it down to the city below.
Said balloons could also send messages to predetermined locations for fleets. A fleet might have a few balloons and some extremely bright flares it can use to communicate limited information back to the nearest city state.
Using [data for death rays](http://panoptesv.com/SciFi/LaserDeathRay/LinAbs.html), light in completely clear air at sea level loses about half its intensity every 30 km. In more realistic situations it is more like every 1.5 km. So height (and lower air density) is very important.
At a 6 km altitude air is half as dense. And it might be far dryer and have less particulate in it. However WW2 barriage balloons (tethered) only managed 1.5 km. Still, 1.5 km might result in far less moisture, particles, and a decent reduction in air density (20% ish) and ability to see over smaller mountains. (6 km is too high for tethered, and unless you want airship elves isn't practical).
[Answer]
A planet with THAT radius would also mean you could potentially see VEEERY far, depending on how the atmosphere is. In that case, a signal flag system on a very high mountain might be visible in the whole empire... and the other way round. That would allow long distance communication.
Edit: oh, i see, that answer was already there before. Damn, i didn't see that. Well, I'll leave it here, because the mountain idea might contribute something new.
[Answer]
Why does this world need to have a centralized administration system?
Whether or not communication is effective, each city-state could have an appointed regent and operate as a sort of almost independent power of it's own, in a decentralized administration system.
Now this could obviously lead to mutiny and 'almost independent' becoming **just** independent; but this is where the other cities come in. Think feudal lords, their king couldn't keep track of them all the time, but they were so busy vying for power and his favor they stayed loyal
It would take too long for the emperor/whatever to hear of any misdeeds against him and send forces for cities on the other side of the planet, so instead, city regents could form 'councils' on a sort of node-based system. Choose 'central' cities, and the surrounding city rulers then convene there once every few months or so.
The rulers of 'central' cities obviously would garner more power, so they keep each other in check. once every year (as an example), they convene with the central cities in a council with the *actual* ruler.
administrative communication would be kind of a trickle down system, so yes, slow, but the ruler of your empire wouldn't need to do much, because his regents would have guidelines etc. to follow.
Effective administration doesn't have to be fast, it just needs to be predictable.
[Answer]
There were [networks of semaphores at 10 km intervals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line#Chappe_system) before 1800, used by Napoleon. Also [Heliographs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliograph). I read somewhere that there was a network of these across Europe, but I can't find a reference.
[Answer]
Looking at the possibility of an optical telegraph: The tallest building in the 19th century [was about 150' tall.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_world%27s_tallest_buildings) This gives us a distance to the horizon of [about 15 miles.](http://www.ringbell.co.uk/info/hdist.htm) If we take your question literally, this is not possible as all of the elves live in cities that are about 90 miles apart. However, assuming they're willing to build and man signal stations to relay telegraphs, they could set up a network.
How long would it take to send a signal from the centre of the empire to the outer reaches (which is where I'll assume your capital is)? Assuming that the empire is a rough circle gives us an approximate radius of 40000 miles. A line of telegraph stations would have 2,667 stations to reach the outer edges of the empire. Assuming it takes a single second for an operator to read and retransmit a signal, it takes about 45 minutes for that signal to reach from the centre to the edge of the empire.
Gaps of open ocean of greater than 15 miles would necessitate either anchoring a floating station or routing around them, which could increase the isolation of other continents.
[Answer]
I assume that the empire looks like a square of around 68557 miles on every side.
Peregrine falcons' horizontal flight is about 40-56 mph according to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_speed), which means faster in average that your best boats. Make that every city has a lot of them having been breed in the cities around (birds only carry messages to the place they have been breed in).
When you want to send a letter from A to C, you take a falcon from B and attach the message to him; when the bird arrives to B, they take the message and put it on a falcon form C.
You may say that light-signals are faster, but if you want to send a complex law-style message assuring that the receiver (an elf looking at the horizon) doesn't mess it up, you need to take a lot of time, maybe hours. And this is only to send it to the nearest city. In the meanwhile, the hawk has carried a letter with thousands of words.
By this, you could send a letter from one side of the empire to the opposite in around 57 days. Assuming hat communication would be mostly between center and periphery, this time would be less than a month. Putting everyone in that kind of empire on the same page in that time is something huge.
Backside: you need to keep moving the falcons by boat from the place they were breed to the near cities so you don't run out of birds. Therefor, you may prefer to use them for official comm and let the boat-mail to the citizens.
[Answer]
Without invoking magic you will find a terrestrial empire utterly impossible. Your planet has a surface gravity something like 250 times that of earth. Your atmosphere is super dense and it's hard to say what it's made of but it is likely that O2 does not stay anywhere near the surface. No terrestrial bipeds for you for both of these reasons. The question now becomse can a pre-electricity aquatic empire with something over 10,000 mile sides. I was unable to determine the range of whale song by internet search but assuming a 20 mile range (and I think this is low) we can do at least as good as semaphore towers, which is not so bad.
[Answer]
Water - it is a good conductor of sound.
Elves can use this fact is not invent radio.
(At the beginning of the 20th century, some ships communicated by underwater bells, the system being competitive with the primitive Maritime radionavigation service of the time).
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_acoustic_communication>)
] |
[Question]
[
I have a basic setup for my world consisting of about five continents. I know their shapes pretty well, and their positions relative to one another. I also have the basic geography down (this is all Earth-like, by the way).
The problem is that I have a somewhat . . . difficult premise to deal with. In the framework for a story I'm setting in this world, a powerful mage casts a spell on one of the continents, Ithalia, making it forever change its shape and location. On this continent live a race called the Ithalin, of which the mage is a member. They want the rest of the world to keep away from them, and so they enchant their continent to change to make it hard or even impossible for sailors to reach.
The problem is, I need to create a map, for an Ithalin to use. This sounds like a terrible idea, right? Any map would seem to be obsolete as soon as it was created. Fortunately, I did not give the Ithalin free reign over the spell. There are several caveats:
* At any times, the continent must remain [homeomorphic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeomorphism) to its original form, which basically means that no holes can form or disappear in it.
* The basic locations of the five main cities of the Ithalin - dispersed along the coast - must remain at angles of 72 degrees from one another. The coastlines between them can change, and the continent can rotate, but they must remain fixed relative to one another.
How can I indicate that the map will change like this, in a seemingly random pattern (which may not be random)?
The world so far:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/54mVA.png)
Apologies for the poor picture quality; the rendering here is worse than in the original version in Paint. I can clarify anything that needs clarification.
Other notes:
* I'm looking to have this be a paper map, suitable for use in a medieval world. So medieval tech, please!
* The map knows what the continent is shaped like at any given time (magic!); it doesn't have to be told.
* A point on a coastline could move at - at maximum speed - ~ 5 meters per second, which is about 12 miles per hour.
* The five cities are at the five points of a pentagon, spaced 72 degrees apart, but the pentagon is not necessarily always regular - that is, the cities can be different distances from the center.
[Answer]
Use the same way people handle our ever-changing aerial continents - a daily weather report.
Think about it: the oceans of cold and warm air, loaded with water or dry, move about great distances every day.
Just touch the I̶P̶h̶o̶n̶e̶ Magical Slab, and images appear and a voice speaks:
>
> The county of Vhenice is nearing the Main City of Rhome today, and will be in alignment with Nhapolhi by Friday afternoon. Its main harbor will be usable throughout the week.
>
>
> The county of Phisa is currently landlocked, and still climbing. It is now at an elevation of 5000 feet above sea level, and expected to remain so for the next 3 weeks.
>
>
> Chalabria is now an island, and the harbor conditions are excellent, but a new mountain chain is expected to erupt there by the end of the week.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Maps are designed to convey useful information. We're used to thinking there is a "right" map, but there isn't. Consider our traditional Mercator projection:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jY94g.png)
This is what we tend to think a map looks like but it has some flaws due to the projection. For example, Greenland is *not* the size of Africa. If we change projections to the Mollweide projection, an equal-area projection:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rj2EK.jpg)
Mollweide gets the areas of regions correct (highly valuable for things like demographic studies), but distorts the shapes. If you see an image of France from a Mollwide projection, you might think it actually looks *wrong* because the lines aren't in the right direction.
The moral of this story is a map is tailored to convey the information people need from it, and that's the key to your question: **what do people need from your map?**
For lay people, who will never set foot on Ithalia, the continent may not even look like a continent on the map. It might be depicted as an angel, or a floating landmass, or even just a Bermuda triangle style line with a note: "weird stuff happens here."
For those who may need to set foot on Ithalia, the map would contain as much useful information as can be depicted (without magic. If you're using magic on the map, see the other answers). It might just point out geometric relationships between the cities (This happens to be K6, the dual to the Petersen graph):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/F8LiS.png)
or perhaps it shows how mutable and beautiful the coastlines can be:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/VqMAL.jpg)
Or maybe they're even odder than that. The Australian Aborigines had a system of stories they told, dating back millennia at least. We know very little about their stories, they are wisely secretive about them. From what we have been told, they served as maps. The story may be about a goddess in search of her love, but embedded in the story would be a series of landmarks that could take you from point A to point B in the deadly Australian outback without running out of water. These maps also served as keys. If you knew the story, you had the rights to go from point A to point B using the watering holes along the way (needless to say, this is why they aren't so interested in just blabbing all of their stories to us). This has its limits, but it also means that many of their works of art tell of the stories.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LXu41m.jpg)
In the case of the Aborigines, the actual geometric location of any destination was useless. If you'd die in the desert before you get there, it might as well be a million miles away. Accordingly, their stories don't get any geometric relationships right, but rather follow a series of landmarks! Perhaps a focus on landmarks might be helpful, such as we see in amusement park maps. They are less concerned with getting the geometry right than they are getting you the general feel of what you will see around you:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m5hzxm.jpg)
[Answer]
Origami. The map makes no sense unless the user knows the current folding-combination based on the time/date.
Assuming Ithalia changes shape in a cyclical pattern.
---
EDIT:
OK so the map itself is magic, and the Ithalin people mainly live on the coast right? Perhaps then the map is just a regular fabric/papyrus map, with all the non-moving continents inked onto it (with Ithalia missing of course).
To find the location of Ithalia, one puts the map into the ocean to first get it wet. They then pour sand onto it, and the sand sticks (through magic) to the map in the shape/position of Ithalia? A good shake, and the sand falls off. Secret magic map :)
Or something like that. Obviously this way if someone from the other continents steal it, and they don't know the trick, they cant read it.
[Answer]
# Temporal Maps
There's nothing wrong with a map that shows duration, rate of change and order. In fact in urban planning and elsewhere this is frequently used. You insert a set of data, and an "animation," displays change-over-time. Data is input for locations over time, and just like a graph, a temporal map shows change.
**Your Magic**
If this is done on paper, you will have to use a little tiny bit of magic, but you likely want a little bit more than complete handwave (or else you wouldn't have asked the question).
The alignment of celestial bodies on your magic pinpoints or objects in each of your settlements (say a rock or whatever) reports back to the parchment, which reflects the change in the magically on paper.
This is exactly what we do in geography - pinpoints in data over time report to my ArcGIS on the computer, which then displays the change. A classic [example here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animated_mapping#/media/File:2004_Indonesia_Tsunami_100px.gif). As I think about it, our ability to do this (changes in data are reported to a computer, and displayed) is what someone from the 1800s might call witchcraft, so having a littttttle bit of magic report temporal data onto parchment paper is not so far-fetched.
For security, I'll use the same device of comparing modern technology to medieval itty-bit-of-magic: a password.
EDIT from the Question: At 5km/hr movement, you would definitely have some geologic changes happening - as in peaks and troughs. Even waves - both physical, and as in 'waves' of people and animals. Setting aside the havoc this causes, it's even more evident that a Temporal Map would be most suitable, as it can demonstrate heights, extremes, and numbers against time - in a map-graphic fashion.
[Answer]
Ok, **magical tattoos**. Since you already have magic changing the face of the continent, and you can't have it falling into the 'wrong hands', Tattoo the map onto someone. Either the back of a trusted servant or onto a leg or maybe the belly of the trusted official. The ink would need to be imbued with magic to align with the magic changing the coast line and any other features.
One form of security would be that upon death (including peeling the skin off) the map freezes and stops transforming, once it is cut off from it's source of 'life magic' (the living person). (this also leaves an interesting plot device).
But unless the magic performing the changes has some kind of known pattern, it will take magic to keep up with the changes. An even better map, would be one that could forecast what you will be traveling through next week on your journey. (maybe that is as accurate as our weather forecasting).
Of course having some kind of 'key' to control the map, keep it updated or show the future prediction would be useful, or you just 'kidnap' a map. But this might be reserved for the better quality maps.
[Answer]
Having read the answers so far, which mostly boil down to "magic", I propose another option:
A projector/mechanical watch.
In the Captain's quarters in a ship, you find a chart, ornate and intricately carved, a relief map of the region. Above the map, there is a tube that goes to the deck of the ship, letting light through. This light is refracted through a number of lenses, each lens being turned gradually by a clockwork mechanism built into the ship. Each lens is a different colour, representing each of the cities of the mobile continent. Conveniently, since the cities are all on the coast, I'm going to take the liberty here of saying that the continent is the same shape as the cities - that is, if you know where the cities are, you may not need a coastline. Alternatively, more lenses could make sharp white lines to fill in the gaps.
If secrecy is required, and the ship is at risk of being captured, a number of manual settings/hand cranks could be employed, instead of the clockwork mechanism. Or, a number of hand-cranks could offset the running mechanism, like a sort of combination lock.
[Answer]
**Video**
Huh? That is not medieval tech!
The keyword is magic. Not the giant fireball type of magic, but the apprentice "try to make this little marble hoover for a few seconds" type of magic.
As everybody know, the magnitude of magic is proportional to scale [Citation needed], so by simply scaling the operations down, we can perform a lot of them. Imagine all those small and simple processes, is it actually that difficult to make anything Turing complete out of them?
Your map is simply a piece of paper, with extremely small droplets of ink moving inside it in complicated patterns, but only requiring low intensity magic.
Medieval society with magic $\rightarrow$ Medieval society with computers.
[Answer]
Similar in theory to Amadnon's answer. If the island's configuration and location are predictable through some knowledge (date/time) use a paper computer like a [Flight Slide Rule](http://www.pilotmall.com/product/E6B-Paper-Flight-Computer/flight-computers?gclid=CjwKEAiA3Ou1BRDso5XyhduuwFASJABP3PEDc1hFMNt7tnQ5qwmmwxTU9fQCzgdslFjOrt-k9dShaxoCWVPw_wcB). Enter in date/time/phase of moon/user's current location/destination city and you get out a bearing to the island/city.
[Answer]
If it's a magic map, why not magic ink, Marauder's Map (Harry Potter) style?
Additionally, as it is homomorphic you can easily do a map in which the floating continent is a separated piece of paper that moves over the static map but doesn't separate from it and get lost because... magic. Or magnets, which are a *kind of magic*... **additional benefit**: You can very easily create one of these in real life (in case this is for a table RPG game) using different two pieces of paper and some clips pasted underneath the moving continent so it moves cool and also stays *relatively* in place if there's a nearby fan or breeze...
] |
[Question]
[
I'm looking for an mass-extinction level event that would cause most life on the surface of Earth to be forced back to the oceans, one that is not feasibly reversible for humanity, before societal collapse sets in--but wouldnt kill mankind off too quick to start making rudimentary colonies deep along the ocean bed. My current idea is
# LOSS OF THE OZONE LAYER
From what I've read, if the ozone layer were to be completely stripped away, most if not all life on Earth's surface would die out. I believe this is the most plausible reason mankind would try mass-migration to the ocean depths; however, the problem is I dont think that colonizing the ocean floor would be the first choice. Im certain subterranean habitats would be a more cost effective solution if only the ozone layer was stripped. So I need something that makes living underground just as dangerous and impractical for large populations.
My immediate thought to this would be a total nuclear war, following or preceding the collapse of the ozone layer. A summary of this [paper](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021JD035079) claims a global nuclear war could cause a peak loss of 75% of Earth's ozone layer. This would provide a plausible scenario to ozone depletion and soil too dangerous to be digging around in after the fact. I'd have to do more world building for dealing with the radiation dispersed throughout the ocean, and how enough humans survive MAD to gather the resources to pursue such an endure, but I think this is a plausible baseline reason for significant populations to try inhabiting the deep ocean.
The only other solution I saw to quickly decimate the Earth's ozone layer would be a gamma ray burst stripping it away. But why humans would choose to dedicate time to going underwater instead of underground brings me back to the subterranean alternative. My immediate counterarguments for why some humans might take the plunge instead:
1. There would be a significant amount of marine-life to survive the aftermath, which colonies could readily utilize to sustain themselves instead of trying to grow crops & livestock underground.
2. Hydrothermal vents or retrofitting of submarines could provide an immediate solution to power.
3. Water is significantly easier to attain by desalinating the surrounding salt water, with existing technology.
4. Precious metals are found scattered all along the ocean floor, and wouldn't require as much surveying & digging to find & mine.
5. Technology for long-mission subs already exist for warfare; if the entirety of Earth's research and development was pushed towards advancing this technology instead of creating new tech to survive long-term underground, it could be argued as pragmatic by a politician or hyped up by an influential elon-esque figure with the ego-driven agenda of making his own society--thus bolstering public opinion even more for the high seas.
I'm up for any advice. I think my current explanation to create a setting for humanity living underwater can plausibly work. With the second iteration of it just meaning there are still pockets of humans living underground instead of underwater, and minimal or no contact existing between them--perhaps an opportunity for stories to be told in the setting.
I'd be open to even an unexplained catastrophic event, akin to the moon's explosion in Neal Stephenson's Seveneves--for the uninitiated, the raining debris superheats the atmosphere, and
a pocket of humanity survives the super-heating and boiling over of Earth's surface and ocean by living in deep ocean trenches.
## TO CONCLUDE
What apocalyptic event could realistically push mankind to pull together resources relocating to the ocean floor. Or at least a good portion of them.
[Answer]
I don't think you need anything exotic here. As long as the humans know in advance that this will be a long-term living situation, the ocean floor will naturally be a better choice than underground for a few key reasons.
1. You can dig an underground shelter, but you can't enlarge it after the fact. Additional excavation creates debris, but there's nowhere to put it unless you haul it to the surface (too dangerous). Seawater is relatively easy to move out of the way when you need to expand - just ask the Dutch. An underground colony would require strict limitations on population size, storage space for supplies, etc., whereas an underwater colony could expand as their needs changed.
2. Water is available underground via aquifers and wells. These sources recharge very slowly, though. Depleting an aquifer would mean certain death for the colony. An underwater colony is surrounded by a practically infinite supply of water, assuming that they could desalinate it.
3. Growing food underground is nigh impossible. Underground bunkers typically stockpile enough supplies to last through the entire disaster. That's not possible for long-term underground living. An underwater colony can raise crops on shallow portions of the sea bed, plus would have easy access to an abundance of seafood.
4. Ventilation is a big problem for underground structures. You need some way to pump fresh oxygen in from the atmosphere and to exhaust waste gases. If the big disaster left the atmosphere significantly polluted, you'd be piping this polluted air into your shelter. An underwater colony can extract oxygen from seawater via electrolysis. The water acts like a giant filter keeping the atmospheric pollutants at bay.
5. Humans don't do well in isolation. We're social creatures. Underground colonies would be completely isolated from one another, with no way to travel between them without making the dangerous trip to the surface. Underwater colonies don't have this problem, since they can just hop on the submarine bus and hitch a ride to the next town over. Aside from the psycho-social benefits, you'd also be able to have some form of trade between colonies and could better ensure the gene pool stays sufficiently diverse.
6. Power generation is likely easier underwater. The warm earth below you and the cool waters above you can fuel geothermal power plants, as can natural thermal vents. Shallower areas can use wave power or floating buoys with solar panels. A more advanced civilization can electrolyze hydrogen from seawater and use it in a fusion reactor. An underground civilization could be wired to existing solar panels but couldn't safely deploy more. You could conceivably tap into a natural gas seam and burn it for energy while it lasted, but that amount of refining and combustion underground would be extremely difficult, not to mention feed into the ventilation problem.
Underground shelters are the easy solution for short-term refuge, but only if you can stockpile everything you'll need to make it through. For sustainable, long-term living, you need the extra freedom that being underwater gives you. As long as your disaster makes the surface uninhabitable in a way that the humans can easily recognize is long-term, migration to the oceans would likely be their natural choice. Your disaster doesn't have to explicitly make underground living a bad idea, it's that way naturally.
[Answer]
# Self replicating aerial drones.
Gamma ray bursts, active suns, they all have the flaw that humans could just live a bit below the surface and be fine. You need an active threat that continually hits anyone on the surface.
Rogue AIs is a great way to do that. The USA and China could both have made AIs to manage drone programs designed to level each other. Both drone programs could have been triggered, cut off any attempts to turn them off as enemy action and an endless series of drones could be made by automated factories and mines to bomb the enemy and endlessly belt patriotic propaganda into the air to convince the enemy to surrender.
Humanity will have a while to try and handle the threats, but in time the only safe place will be deep under the oceans. The AI is limited in scope, and only attacks aerial threats, ground threats, surface sea threats, and 'missile silos' aka anything underground.
[Answer]
## The sky is on fire
[Someone calculated](https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen2b.html) that debris from the K-T extinction event asteroid would have been thrown out of the atmosphere. The IR radiation of the debris burning up in re-entry would have raised the surface temperature to around 400 degrees.
Let's say the solar system started passing through a small but dense nebula. Not dense by earth atmosphere standards, but a lot more than the near-vacuum in most nebulae. Enough to raise the temperature of the surface to over 200 degrees for, say 50 years. This kind of disaster was suggested in [Iain Banks's Feersum Endjinn](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12015.Feersum_Endjinn)
Features of this disaster:
* Slow enough that mankind can react
* Overwhelming so that mankind has no chance of stopping it.
* Mankind wouldn't have to move to under the ocean, the ocean would come to them.
Why not underground? Digging takes time, and you have all sorts of tectonic issues to worry about. Just ask the people who do drilling. A few hundred meters of ocean is enough to isolate you from what's going on up there, and all it would take would be to build a bubble over your head. Ok, a really big, strong, pressure-resistant bubble, but bubbling an area could probably be done more cost efficiently than digging. It also allows you to move your habitat deeper if things get worse.
Furthermore, raising ocean levels will result in subsidence, which would increase tectonic activity globally. The only reason that silt from rivers hasn't filled up the Gulf of Mexico is because the weight of the silt keeps pushing the floor of the gulf down. Melting ice caps will do that, too.
In a real scenario, mankind would probably try both tactics. I can imagine flooding, cave-ins, people feeling trapped, and a failure to coordinate causing plenty of plot complications for the mole people.
[Answer]
# Hyperbaric Disease:
A disease has swept the world, and millions have died. Everyone is affected, and even those testing negative for the disease are dying suddenly. Onset of the lethal symptoms occurs at a random time interval, so people continue to die. If nothing is done, the human trace will perish.
But a workaround is found. Hyperbaric chambers arrest the progression of the illness and delay the onset. It is impractical for millions of people to stay in hyperbaric chambers for the rest of their lives. A bold plan is proposed: colonize the deep ocean so the entire population is in constant high-pressure conditions. Everyone contributes for the chance to get in the lottery for a survivor position.
Mankind retreats to the sea, vowing to some day beat the disease and return to the surface.
# Because No One Owned It:
As global warming intensifies, small oceanic nations begin to disappear under the seas. They desperately try to hold on to their existence and major countries, concerned about refugees and dwindling land resources, invest in oceanic farming and mining.
Meanwhile, the refugee crisis grows wildly and nations don't want refugees on their land. Displaced peoples are forced into floating refugee camps on the sea and the lucky ones have their labor exploited to build oceanic mines and farms to support themselves and the world.
The rich build luxury ocean communities to get away from the violent, crowded mobs of hungry people on land. A whole culture of oceanic development begins to take form. Meanwhile, humanity stresses the land to the point of ecological collapse. Wars break out everywhere.
So when your global catastrophe hits, there are all ready colonies and refugee camps in the ocean being built. They flood with incoming refugees and expand what they have as quickly as possible. There isn't time to build underground colonies. Everything else dies, and the sea colonies are on their own. They're desperate, crowded, and hungry. But they're used to it.
# Because of Oxygen:
Your world is rapidly losing oxygen. Maybe an invasive airborne bacteria is consuming every bit of organic matter and converting all of it to CO2. The bacteria is unable to tolerate salt or can only survive at the very surface of the ocean. The hope is that the seas will survive and eventually replenish the air.
Meanwhile, if you want to breathe and grow things, you need to produce oxygen. The extensive network of tidal power plants means the oceans already have power and hydrolysis can make oxygen. Without water, underground facilities are exposed to the bacteria and can’t make cheap oxygen.
[Answer]
# Runaway greenhouse effect
A bit too much industry and a war that smashes a lot of remote natural gas infrastructure leads to a "[transition to a moist greenhouse](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10627)". The temperatures go up until the oceans boil.
However, when I say "the oceans", I mean the *top* of the oceans. Cool water in the deepest regions may not mix very quickly, and experience at the stovetop should suggest it takes a while to boil an ocean. (I honestly have no idea how long - that paper I linked above doesn't begin to go into such considerations)
Your humans know their planet is doomed, but maybe they can ride a modified SLBM somewhere? (wouldn't bet on it)
[Answer]
**Revelation 9: Monsters.**
>
> 1 And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto
> the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
>
>
> 2 And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the
> pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were
> darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.
>
>
> 3 And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto
> them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
>
>
> 4 And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the
> earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men
> which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.
>
>
> 5 And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that
> they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the
> torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.
>
>
> 6 And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and
> shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
>
>
>
<https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%209&version=KJV>
Freaking scorpions. If thats what they are, with their lady hair and lion teeth, and wings. Stinging people just because we have clean foreheads.
Those things aren't looking for people underwater. Hiding down here was an emergency plan originally because we had the underwater stuff ready. It definitely beats seeking death and desiring to die. And supposedly the scorps were only going to be stinging people topside for 5 months and then we can go back up.
But it has been 6 months already and it looks like they are still at it. Maybe "months" is like "scorpions". At least the sea cucumber farm is coming along.
[Answer]
**OUR PLANET HAS BEEN IRRADIATED**
Our sun, for reasons that I'll leave to you to come up with, is suddenly burning much, MUCH brighter, thoroughly bathing the planet in radiation. Anything not properly shielded by a quarter-mile of hyper-dense lead, or underwater/underground, is going to be suffering from a really intense case of radiation sickness.
A quarter-mile thick sheet of lead shielding is impractical for economic reasons, and it's easier to live at the bottom of the ocean than it is to live deep underground.
[Answer]
## A massive meteor strike
Lots of things can destroy all life on the surface, but to make underground bunkers inhospitable too you need to increase the planet's seismic activity. By striking the Earth with an adequately massive meteor, not only would blot out the sun and destroy the ozone layer, but you could effectively shatter the tectonic plates into many smaller less stable plates and massively disrupt the equilibrium inside the Earth's mantle.
This would result in a time period of massive Earth quakes and volcanic activity that could crush or rip open bunkers killing people who try to flee underground. Instead those who wish to survive must go under water. Rather than living on the sea floor itself which would also experience harsh earth quakes and volcanic activity, humanity would retreat into large submarines that just stay close to the sea floor. These submarines would be equipped with seismic detection systems so if they find themselves in a place where a new volcano is about to open up under them, they can just move to somewhere else.
While a super massive meteor strike would be an instantaneous event, humanity could detect and predict the impact years or even decades in advance giving us time to build our arks.
[Answer]
**Atmosphere Blown Off**
There were already people living underwater as fish people. Genetic engineering had come a long way and I guess a lot of people really wanted to live as fish.
When all the air on the planet suddenly went away -- I leave this to your imagination -- only the fish people survived.
[Answer]
## Because that's who survived 'The Event'
Humanity didn't retreat beneath the sea.
They died.
The surface is completely uninhabitable, nuclear war, a decades-long solar-storm that irradiated every living thing on the surface, biological weapons that de-nature in salt-water.. Take your pick.
Fortunately for the species, an experimental nigh-selfsufficient underwater colony/city survived the death of the surface-world by dint of being a mile underwater and shielded from the danger.
With the addition of surviving nuclear submarines, they have vehicles, and a lot of manpower and both nuclear power and whatever facilities the city has.
They will rebuild civilisation beneath the sea until they once-more claim the surface world..
[Answer]
# Frame Challenge:
# Humans were already living there, and they survived longer than anyone else.
**Everyone talks about life on Mars, and fantasizes about life on Venus, but the next step for humanity is life on Europa.**
Europa has an ocean of water underneath an icy crust. Living there immediately solves the four biggest problems of living in space, which are
* Where does your oxygen come from? (And what if it all leaks away?)
* Where does your water come from?
* How do you protect yourself from cosmic and solar radiation?
* How do you maintain livable temperatures long-term.
**Of course, you don't go to Europa and start figuring out how to build an underwater habitat beneath an ice shelf, you perfect the technology to build an underwater habitat beneath an ice shelf and take it to Europa.**
Once humans stopped talking about "living on Mars," they started building habitats to prepare for living on Europa. This would start with prefab buildings designed to reside just below the surface, and gradually move off the continental shelf. Space agencies would build progressively deeper and colder, eventually building permanent settlements under the Arctic and Antarctic ice. The final challenge is to drill down through the Antarctic ice shelf, and build a habitat from scratch.
## Unfortunately, a sudden GRB apocalypse ended the whole Europa trip, along with everything else.
However, all those habitats that were built as proof-of-concepts were still inhabited by marine biologists and deep-see tourists when the gamma-ray-burst hit. Because they were constructed to allow long-term, isolated habitation, the humans there survived when surface life died off.
[Answer]
## Oceans level rising too much, together with savage weather.
Your trigger event has devastated the climate of Earth and the level of oceans has risen dramatically. Simply there is no longer sufficient landmass to support viable underground settlements. Moreover the weather has gone totally bonkers. Tempests, hurricanes, hailstorms and other crazy meteorological phenomena have become common and unpredictable.
Attempts have been made to settle underground, but the current landmass is mostly made up of archipelagos and the former mountain peaks. These latter are too rocky and harsh to be colonized or excavated.
The remaining plethora of smallish islands are always subjected to heavy tides and floods that can destroy most underground settlements.
Rendering an underground settlement weatherproof in those conditions is much more difficult than to retreat to deep waters, where the harsh weather conditions are severely dampened by the water mass above.
[Answer]
## Lots of "Small" Meteors
A pro-Human Extinction group sends replicating drones out to the asteroid belt/Oort Cloud and starts flinging city-destroyer asteroids towards Earth targeting any large human conurbation. The impacts are enough to do a number on humanity but wouldn't do much damage to the ecosystem, particularly if they wait a month or two between each one to let the dust settle, literally. While subterranean shelters would still be relatively easy to wipe out this way unless they were so deep as to be impractical, a layer of ocean would be enough to prevent destruction with anything small enough to leave the bunnies and quokkas alive (the asteroid flingers love bunnies and quokka), so underwater humanity goes.
[Answer]
# Earth becomes a rogue planet
A possibility I can think of would be that the Earth was flung out of orbit and became a rogue planet. Perhaps a black hole or other massive object passed through the solar system to cause this to happen. The surface of the oceans froze yet humanity is able to survive in colonies on the ocean floor supported by geothermal energy. Deep sea life continues to cling on as well centered around geothermal vents.
[Answer]
# A relativist object hits the moon
This can scatter eject enough moon mass in low orbit, so:
1. It's a relativist object from outer space. There is no warning;
2. Causes an initial heavy bombardment causes devastation.
3. Causes a long, constant micro bombardment that turns the surface an impractical place, if not deadly.
[Answer]
**Unfortunately, unbeknownst to humanity, this has already happened.**
Actually this is an occult truth known by either the initiated ones or enlightened ones. The easiest example the western world an grasp the state of world is through the Matrix Movies. We live in multi-layered reality with the visible world being a tiny iceberg. Our souls came for a 'trip' on earth to test some ideas and we signed a contract before we were born. Once we leave the body and enter into the 'spirit world', we realize how vast the universe is and depending on our Karma, we may have a choice to return to The Light which is the source of All Creation. Some do reject The Light for various reasons and a significant number of humans who reject The Light join other sub-human and animal-like creatures which live in the ocean floor.
There is are mega-cities under the sea on earth but a different layer in the 'Matrix'. The creatures of this city are the agents of magic and secret societies make pacts with them. They are way more advanced then current humans and have many different competing ideological 'cults' but mostly harbor hostile anti-humanity groups who prey on unsuspecting humans and harvest organs mostly blood.NOTE: A huge number of them were of 'human' origin but mutate when they cut themselves from The Light are reject its transcendence and divinity.
Its impossible for humanity or any human to cause an apocalyptic event of sch a scale that humans relocate to the ocean floor. It is a phase of reality that was set before time and cannot be altered. And again, it has already happened and may souls live in the ocean floor in cahoots to reptilian creatures to destroy humanity.
] |
[Question]
[
Earth is dying. We mis-managed it and brought the whole ecosystem to the edge of total collapse.
About 50 years ago, we decided to move humankind to another planet, and now we are almost ready. A big, multi-generation ship is in orbit around Earth. It will hold a billion lucky people.
The rest of humanity will be left back on Earth to their fate.
This ship will reach an Earth-like planet in about 1000 years. Once there, genetic engineers will breed domestic animals in artificial wombs.
Now, our team of psychologists and engineers are dealing with this question: **What about having some pets on board?**
It makes total sense to keep some pets on board, to keep people generally happy before we get there. But we have several constraints:
* The animal should consume as few resources and produce as little ... ahem ... *waste* as possible
* It should be generally likeable, well received by kids. But also:
* **Should be religiously neutral**
Muslims have a saying: "unholy dog" and some Christians are against cats, because black cat... you know it. Hindu people hold cows sacred.
This is why we have to engineer a completely new animal to accompany us on the journey.
We have advanced DNA-replicators and we can manipulate DNA as we like. While playing with human DNA is rejected and outlawed by all, we still can put our imagination to work with animals.
So, how should such an animal look? (How big? What color?) And why?
P.S.: The ship itself maintains 0.95 G by rotating itself, so you can assume Earth-like conditions there. Also, the population is composed of "generally rich" people of all races and all religions.
[Answer]
**Normal Pets**
If you're looking at sustaining a billion people for 1,000 years, you don't need an artificial life system on your ship. You need a full, 100% working **ecosystem**, transported from Earth's remnants with as many animals, insects and plants as possible.
Artificial life systems are *fragile*. They have relatively few failure points, and they require extensive maintenance. You're better off trying to get a real ecosystem going, exactly the same as what happens on Earth. You can help support it with artificial devices, but in general this will give you a lot more depth to your life support - it's much harder to accidentally break a functioning ecosystem. Having all the animals and plants gives it an ability to absorb disasters or malfunctions that artificial systems will lack.
Because of that, you'll want to have as many different pets as possible, because they help contribute to this system. You will need to regulate and control their numbers, but restricting everyone to a single, artificial pet will actually hurt you, not help. On top of the above, it makes your entire pet population vulnerable to a single disease vector.
Regarding Religion: You have a ton of space on this ship. People are going to be capable of moving if they have neighbors with pets they object to. More than that, you will absolutely need these different groups to be willing to get along, and someone who will object to someone else's pet on religious grounds is a bad choice for your generation ship in the first place. Someone who will object over their neighbor's dog is the same person who will object to other things, and you absolutely can't afford the kind of conflicts that kind of intolerance could breed.
[Answer]
I would think that if people have issues with 'dogs' or 'cats' or what have you for religious reasons, I would say they would also have an issue 'creating' a biological animal just for our 'amusement'.
So because of that, I would recommend: Rabbits, eat little, waste little and have a large 'cute' factor. They even are edible in a pinch.
EDT To add for the 'creature-design':
Add a gene to make the bunnies glow in the dark, they could have different colors. They could also act as 'night lights' for young children and emergency lighting!
[Answer]
## Mass must be conserved
If you are constructing a ship large enough to carry 1,000,000,000 humans (and their descendants) for 1000 years or so, you are going to need more than a few Enterprise style decks, cabins and cantinas, you are going to need a habitat.
Ideally your habitat will be completely sealed, every atom recycled. A small leak over the course of 1000 years is going to result in a lot of lost mass, and unless you have some exotic way of replacing mass this will translate directly into food shortages in the coming centuries.
This will likely lead to insurrection, rebellion and possibly war.
## Energy cannot be replaced
In the vista between stars there's not much energy accessible, you can't refuel from solar energy and there's hardly any matter. The ship will radiate energy into space in the form of heat, and this energy cannot be replaced en route.
Unless you have some sort of magical limitless energy source (in which case why would you wish to leave Earth orbit at all), you have to carry everything with you, and minimise entropy.
Every matter to matter conversion is going to carry with it some inefficiency. Even composting potato peelings generates heat, which will ultimately be lost into space. An active little warm blooded mammal converts a lot of food into heat. Its faeces will be digested by bacteria producing still more heat, more lost energy.
## Cold blooded sedentary animals
Assuming that you want to minimise energy lost as heat, I would suggest using a cold blooded sedentary animal. Perhaps a modified furry lizard, snake or tortoise. A snake can live for months on a single meal and will barely move during this time.
## Fish
Cold water fish would also make reasonable pets.
## Warm blooded animals would be a luxury
Warm blooded animals radiate heat and need to eat at least once a day. If you take a kitten with you, that kitten plus a millennia of descendants would possibly mean cutting the human payload. Warm blooded animals would be luxury pets, only for the rich.
There might even be social stigma attached to owing a dog for example, much as there is with SUV owners today. It's seen as environmentally and socially irresponsible.
## Feral animals
As an aside, feral animals would represent a major threat to the mission. Unauthorised breeding (human and animal) would need to be curtailed.
[Answer]
**Tortoises might make interesting pets on a generation ship**. They're relatively sedentary, and kids tend to like them, but they have one other interesting feature: they're extremely long-lived (the record is 188 years). Because they live longer than humans do, they would wind up being passed down from generation to generation, not unlike the ship itself. That could make them very useful tools for teaching children about the values that a generation ship's crew would need to hold to make the whole thing work.
[Answer]
Constructing a ship large enough to support a Billion people for a thousand year journey between the stars will consume more resources than it would take to fix the planet (no matter how badly damaged). Building on the ground (or even under it) would be easier than moving that many people to orbit, even if terrestrial archologies are scaled up to support many more billions of people. One would need to assume something along the lines of the death of the sun to justify abandoning the Earth. Additionally, once possessing the ability to create such ships, why would one need to resettle on another planet at all?
You might also want to consider a convoy of vessels rather than a single massive vessel - it would be less of an engineering challenge and not an issue of putting all your eggs in one basket.
Regardless, concerns about being religiously neutral are fairly irrelevant. A ship that large would be big enough that such a person would not even need to be aware of entire cultural populations in other parts of the ship. Taking intolerant religious people along at all is likely not a good idea - holy wars in such an exceedingly fragile and uniquely vulnerable environment are not a good idea. Any kind of religious strife should be strictly avoided - either everyone is of one religion and keen on executing apostates, or better to just not bring intolerant religious people in the first place.
The amount of waste the animals produce is completely irrelevant - with that large of a ship, you cannot just store your waste and eat pre-made supplies for a billion people for a thousand years. The entire food/waste system will be an ecological cycle - more animals in the mix just very slightly scales up the process, or maybe they are an integral part of your food supply and waste processing (certain human-inedible plants process waste, animals eat these plants, then humans eat the animals and/or plants grown in animal waste).
Once concern would be animal socialization. Unless you are thinking of your future domesticated animals being solitary creatures or completely bereft of intelligence (though I suppose they could just be factory farmed), they need to learn their behaviors from their parents and other animals. How to feed themselves, clean themselves, interact with other animals, etc. etc. For this reason, you should probably keep a number of these domesticated animals alive on your journey. This has the side benefit of being a petting zoo to entertain the kids and a way to maintain the tacit knowledge and skills of animal husbandry.
Variety is rather important - people are not identical in their preferences. I know people who like to raise tarantulas while other people hate them, some people love big dogs but some others hate them, etc. No one animal will be the perfect pet for every individual and I see no reason why you should only have just one pet type - allow people to have whatever pet they like. To each their own preferences. If one kid wants a flexible dog to play fetch with, he could have a bendy dog. If another kid wants a lap cat, give him a lap cat. If some girl likes reptiles, let her have a gecko. Giving her a hamster instead, because everyone gets a hamster, would only disappoint her.
[Answer]
**Permanent Lamb / Goat**
Why engineer? Pick something with historical value.
Also, good eating :D Plus all the other benefits; wool, leather, eats a lot of different stuff (goat), etc.
---
If you're going for something different (because, hey genetic engineering!), I'd go against something with one color. You want a lot of different colors to be inherent (so people can tell their stoflar from their neighbor's), as well as some other physical traits...
Big enough to pet, and fur that wants to be petted. Something substantial enough to feel when it's on your lap, but not so big it can knock you down, or run wild in the halls.
I'm on the fence about teeth and claws. Sometimes getting a little blood drawn is a learning experience, and a sensation.
[Answer]
A couple options come to mind.
* Birds. They are small, they eat little. Nothing stirs imagination more than thinking about being able to fly...though maybe thoughts of escape while stuck on a generation ship aren't a great idea. I do genuinely enjoy the sound of birds when I wake up though.
* Ferrets (rodents in general). Little pranksters that could certainly lighten the mood. Again small and resource light. As I mentioned on @sydan's post though...rodents have a propensity for getting themselves into places they shouldn't be.
* Monkeys (or small apes). These would be the most resource intensive but probably the most helpful to the population. They can be taught, they need to be raised, filling people's spare time on a generation ship with a billion people is going to be no small task and this would help.
If we are talking about a ship that is this ridiculously large I don't think you need to limit yourself to one animal type though, the resource issue also seems less relevant as the requirement for pets will be minuscule next to what is required for that many humans. Heck, why not just have zoo Noah's arc style.
[Answer]
Going a bit outside the constraints of the question, I know, but what about...
# Robo-pets
They can fit every one of your criteria, as well or better than living creatures (genetically engineered or otherwise).
* Consume minimal resources, produce essentially no waste.
* Can be made [cute](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CuteMachines) (perpetually so, unlike puppies, kittens *et al.*), and won't ever be dangerous to kids, no matter how many times their tails are pulled (off).
* Carry no religious or cultural baggage, and are unlikely to attract any (unlike genetically manipulating real animals!), unless you have a Luddite cult or something, and what are they doing on a spaceship?
* Simple AI programming can produce surprising (and surprisingly entertaining) emergent behaviours. Like real animals, they don't have to have thoughts and emotions for humans to *ascribe* those things to them and emotionally bond with them.
[Answer]
**The Humble Hamster**
(Without genetic engineering)
Seriously, how fun would it be to have lots of little hamsters rolling around the generation ship in space age hamster balls? This would be even more awesome in a 0g environment! They could have specially designed 0g hamster balls and tunnel mazes to play in.
They're small and don't require a lot of food, the food they do require is easy to produce. They don't produce a lot of waste and they're great fun for kids.
Only issue is that you might lose them (hamsters are great at escaping) and you will need a significant population to keep them going as they only live for a few years.
But I think the super fun benefits out-weight the problems.
[Answer]
One thing I would like to point out is that we have spent decades domesticating dogs, cats, cows, and other such animals. So why would we want to give up all that progress? We have even trained dogs genetically to respond to humans the way we want. So why not engineer them down to a more appropriate size, a more relaxed demeanor, and possibly a more religiously neutral shape (though I do agree with the other person who said that you probably won't want people with those kind of volatility in such a tight space anyway). My point here is dogs have been conditioned to like with humans from the beginning, so why throw that all away?
[Answer]
I agree with the other answers that with a ship that large, you could probably bring along a variety of animals. But for a new perspective, I would suggest thinking about potential pest problems.
If you have that many people on a ship, you will likely have some pests - rats, mice, roaches, and so on. Why not bring along pets that will help keep down the pests? Cats that are good at catching rats and terrier dogs breed for this purpose would be ideal. You could genetically modify these species to be better at preforming their tasks.
Actually, I would consider broadening this answer to include other pets that double as working animals. Would you have a disabled population that could use seeing eye dogs and the like? What about dogs trained to sniff out explosives or gas leaks?
[Answer]
I don't believe "normal" earth animals would make good pets for this case. They simply use up space and resources that really should be used for other things.
However, since you have genetic manipulation, maybe these "pets" do vital functions for the management of the ship. This would make them less of a luxurious burden and more of a necessity for the existence of the ship.
They could be the following in addition to just being "pets":
* Heat Generators
* Recyclers (of just about everything: air, water, etc)
* Sources of Food (themselves, or, for example, maybe they create fruit or something)
* natural environment "cleaners" or ship "repairers"
* (most extravagant) Upon release from the ship, they are able to generate energy using radioactive space noise (or gather something else from "empty" space) and then they bring back some usable form of that to the ship.
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/32026/edit).
Closed 8 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/32026/edit)
Say someone was sent back in time to roughly the time that they were considering using the nukes on Japan to end WW2. The time traveller wishes to minimize loss of life for both sides, but more so for the Allies; however, his biggest concern is avoiding the degree of cold war, mutual assured destruction, and threat of nuclear winter that occur later.
Assuming the Nukes will be used to end the war, what advice could be given to handle using of nukes, and later policies afterward, to avoid the resulting brinkmanship. He also wants to avoid actual loss of life due to use of nukes originally, or even limit the harm of radiation rendering areas uninhabitable, so long as the two nukes are sufficient to ensure the war ends, but the later cold war is the greater concern.
He is aware that Little Boy managed a more destructive blast radius due to it being set off in the atmosphere and can advise doing the same with Fat Man.
What strategy is most likely to work?
edit: to answer the questions I'm looking to avoid nuclear brinkmanship, not the entire cold war. The cold war is likely to happen, just minimize the odds that one will use the nuke (in this world changes have already happened to the timeline which means that this timeline is no longer assured to not use nukes as happened in ours).
I prioritize avoiding brinkmanship and/or use of nukes higher than the preservation of lives. However, if a solution also minimizes lives lost on either side without significantly increasing the risk of brinkmanship then the option which preserves lives would be preferred.
Also, remember we had exactly 2 nukes, with limited ability to produce more rapidly. Thus any solution should consider the fact that if the Japanese call the bluff after the second nuke there is no way to force them to surrender for some time.
[Answer]
The time you're describing represents a very tricky point in history. Here are some things you need to understand:
## Situation
---
### The War
The United States dominated the Japanese in aerial and naval combat. Shortly after Pearl Harbor pretty much every major Japanese ship was systematically hunted down and sunk. The US were taking losses clearing individual islands, but Japan no longer posed a serious threat to them.
Furthermore, the conflict in Europe was pretty much wrapped up, and this brought the issue of how to handle the Russians into the forefront. Stalin and the West were allies out of necessity, not because there was any love lost between them. Communism was seen to be akin to a dangerous and wildly contagious disease, and every country was jailing communists - even simply suspected ones - like there was no tomorrow. Russia was sponsoring communist movements all over the world (look at Germany pre-WW2, and their communist rebellions).
The US was very much aware that the next conflict may well be fought against their former allies, and very soon at that.
### Desire To Use Nukes
So while a very complicated "victory" is being declared in Europe, the US is itching to test their brand new toys in a real-world situation. They could have ended the war any number of other ways - dropping nukes (especially 2 of them) was mainly due to their desire to send a message to the world (Russia in particular), and to see what would happen to the cities, and the surviving population. The Japanese were simply a convenient target, as the conflict in Europe had already wrapped up.
### Japanese Political Situation
Even though the Emperor is the official leader of the country, the truth is that the political and military elite were the ones truly running the show. And those guys were not ready to surrender - they had too much to lose. You may be aware that knowing the Emperor was about to take the reins into his own hands and order the country to surrender they tried to storm his compound and kill/capture him. It didn't work out, but it was a close thing.
## Your Arrival
---
So you see, there are quite a few reasons why the US wanted to make an example of the Japanese - and simply winning the war against them was not quite the main reason. Additionally, the Japanese public, military high command, and Emperor have to become *convinced* that fighting you is a losing proposition in order for a surrender to happen.
Your time traveler is going to have to be pretty persuasive to accomplish all that without knocking some heads together. Let's get down to business.
## Shock & Awe
---
You need to make a terrifying example, such that the entire world will know how devastating the Atom Bomb is, not just some Japanese higher ups - that's why bombing a major city is such an attractive proposition. How do you achieve that effect while not killing hundreds of thousands of innocents?
I have two suggestions, which may both have to be implemented:
**1. Nuke an island**
Approach a heavily defended Japanese held island. You know that high ranking officers are commanding the troops. Some Japanese ships are somewhere off shore, waiting to engage American ships which they expect will soon deploy marines onto the beach. Now you set the stage for maximum effect.
Instead of assaulting their defenses, the US Navy stops quite far out (they're protected by their carrier squadrons and can engage at their leisure). A message is sent in the clear, and in most importantly, in Japanese:
>
> Tomorrow, at 10:00 AM we will bomb this island with a terrifying weapon that you have never seen before. Everyone on the island ***will*** die. You have until then to surrender unconditionally, or we will destroy you.
>
>
>
Of course those officers scoff at you. *The Americans must think were stupid!* They even contact HQ to tell them about the funny Americans. Right.
Next morning - at 10:00 AM on the dot - a high-altitude bomber drops a nuclear bomb on said island. The surviving Japanese sailors - who will probably soon die of radiation poisoning - aren't laughing anymore.
The Japanese military high command are shocked beyond belief, and the Emperor definitely hears about this.
**2. Something a little closer to home**
Now the Japanese are apprehensive - the US just demonstrated overwhelming firepower, which can clearly be deployed from their carrier groups, and can wipe out an entire island, never mind a naval squadron, or a city.
The US demands that Japan surrenders, but let's say those old goats in power are not quite ready to do so. The Emperor is willing to talk things out of course, but the military high command is still pulling the strings, and they're obstinate bastards.
So now you have to up the stakes: US planes drop a nuke not on Hiroshima, or Nagasaki, but at sea, just a few miles off of the Japanese coast, and hopefully quite close to some major military installation / port.
The blast is enormous: the ocean boils, Japanese planes drop out of the sky like flies, ships roll over and are swallowed by the waves. Immediately afterward the Americans transmit a radio message in the clear:
>
> "We drop the next one on your capital. There's no where you can hide. Surrender immediately."
>
>
>
Faced with such a disparity of power the Japanese will probably surrender, and furthermore, the US will have showcased their terrifying weapon to the world. The only ones not satisfied would be the "curious" few who wanted to see what killing a few hundred thousand civilians looks like.
## Regarding Nuclear Brinkmanship
---
The nature of humanity is to be in conflict. The only reason we have stopped fighting among ourselves in the West is because it has become too unprofitable to do so. Up until the fall of the Soviet Union however, war among European powers was, to some, a certainty.
Every time a nation has invented a new weapon, strategy, or tactic, it's been held over everyone else's head, usually after first giving everyone involved a front row demonstration of their capabilities.
You can't stop the world from discovering nuclear fission. And once they do, you can't stop them weaponizing it because that's what we do. We exceed at killing one another.
Once a nation has nukes it will demonstrate it's awesome might to everyone else as a warning (see the US's behavior), and then once they do their opposition will sure as hell try to match them.
We are only lucky that the threat of mutually assured destruction actually kept the Soviet Union and the USA from turning this planet into a radioactive ash heap.
Again, there are two possibilities to preventing nuclear brinkmanship:
**1. Saner mind prevail**
You have a slim chance of using your knowledge from the future to explain to all parties involved just how deadly nukes are - what scientists decades later figured out about radiation poisoning, and the potential to literally *end the world*. Maybe by sitting them down and talking it out the world could come to some kind of agreement
**2. Preemptive attack**
You know how dangerous the Soviets became. You know the suffering they (and Stalin in particular) brought upon not only their own population, but on the Eastern block.
If you don't you should research the 60 or so million Russians that Stalin killed, the planned starvation in the Ukraine which killed another 20 - 30 million people, the pogroms in Moldova, and other atrocities many of which are still denied by the Russians.
Tell Roosevelt. Encourage him to drop a nuke on Moscow A.S.A.P. Don't let the Russians recover. Don't let them build up their strength. Simply kill that bastard and all the high ranking officials in one fell swoop. With the cancer cut out of the heart of the country the Russians may actually have a chance to build a sane country for themselves, and become valuable allies instead of incredibly dangerous enemies.
>
> Note: this may seem counter intuitive, but I think you underestimate just how much the average Russian would have loved to see Stalin gone. Many people saw the invading German army as liberators. With some well planned propaganda most Russians would actually be quite grateful, even if it costs them Moscow. Not quite bloodless, but in my opinion this is the only way to stop the escalation of nuclear threats.
>
>
>
[Answer]
I'd like to suggest a really strange answer to this question: the best thing a time traveler could do is keep their mouth shut.
Consider: what was the *single* most effective reason for Presidents to not launch weapons in the cold war? Everyone has seen what nuclear war is. Everyone knows what happened at Hiroshima. Everyone knows what happened at Nagasaki.
What better event to help drive the horror of nuclear war home than to have two cities bombed, with all the carnage associated with it. How many remember the result of the Trinity test? Can you remember why that test was important? (A hint for those who don't know the name: it was our first nuclear test, in New Mexico) Or perhaps do they know of the Bikini Atol, the site of the Baker tests of Fat Man grade weapons shortly after the war (23kT yields). Castle Bravo testing which came later at Bikini Atol saw the detonation of a 15,000kT thermonuclear bomb. What do we remember Bikini for? It's known because we irradiated an island and made it unlivable for the few native citizens there.
Now think about Hiroshima. Nagasaki. How much impact do those words have? Hiroshima saw about 15kT of nuclear explosion. Bikini Atol saw 42,200kT of nuclear explosions. How many associate bikinis with death and destruction rather than women trying to look sexy?
We remember Hiroshima. We remember Nagasaki. Why? Because they were not empty islands testing or demonstrating new toys of war. They were death. They were not blustering. They were not bluffing. They were a demonstration of just how far humanity will go in its quest for... well... whatever it's questing for.
The horror of nuclear warfare was not driven home by the shadows forever etched into the concrete. It was driven home by the horrors forever etched into our minds. This was not a toy. This was not something to bluster with. This was something real, some would say it was something evil, and no matter what, it was something we would have to deal with for the rest of humanity.
What better to ensure two nations do not play with their toys, for indeed they are not toys at all. Without it, surely we would find ways to downplay the risks of nuclear weapons and find ways to engage in even far more dangerous international games. We might have even fired a few *salvos*. Yes, salvos. Remember, while the Enola Gay dropped one *small* bomb at a time, we'd come a long way in tools to kill each other in the years that followed.
There is one case I'm aware of where nuclear testing brought the response you desire, and that was for one person, Dr. Julius Robert Oppenheimer. He witnessed the Trinity test. His understanding of the horror was complete without needing to see it used in combat. Shame he needed to be a top nuclear physicist and an eyewitness to get to that point:
>
> We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
>
>
>
[Answer]
Why do you need to use nukes to end the war? Just convince the US to accept the surrender terms that Japan was offering prior to dropping the bombs. Since the US accepted those terms *after* dropping the bombs, they were clearly acceptable.
While it is commonly thought in the US that the bombs changed Japan's stance, if you actually look at the terms offered before and after dropping the bombs, it was actually the US that changed its negotiating posture. Prior to that, they had insisted on an unconditional surrender, including the Emperor. Afterwards, the US accepted retention of the Emperor as part of the terms. After the Soviets entered the war, the US altered the surrender demands to allow the emperor to be retained.
Example source: <http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-reason-america-used-nuclear-weapons-against-japan-it-was-not-to-end-the-war-or-save-lives/5308192>
That cites General Douglas MacArthur as saying
>
> The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.
>
>
>
Since the whole purpose of dropping the bombs was to avoid having to thank the Soviets for ending the war and to start the Cold War, there is no way to use the bombs without the nuclear brinkmanship. The nuclear brinkmanship wasn't an undesired side effect of dropping the bombs, it was the purpose. Or perhaps it would be better to say that it was the first move in the nuclear brinkmanship strategy.
Note that I'm not convinced that not dropping the bombs would have prevented nuclear brinkmanship. The USA and USSR were already positioning themselves for that. Even if the US had been less strident, there is no evidence that the Soviets would have been. But it's the most realistic way to get there.
There's even a credible argument that bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima reduced the later nuclear brinkmanship. If your hypothetical time traveler reduced the effectiveness of the use of those bombs, they might well have been forced to use them in a later conflict where surrender wasn't imminent. As is, everyone was clear on their destructiveness. They had been field tested.
Everyone lived through the nuclear brinkmanship period without further use of nuclear bombs. Why change that? It seems far more likely that you'd disrupt that balance than improve it.
[Answer]
The key issue in your question is nuclear brinkmanship in the post war world. The reality is that the Soviet Union had infiltrated many spies in the US and British nuclear programs, and I would not be surprised at all to find out that the Nazi nuclear program (as disorganized and chaotic as it was) was also infiltrated.
People were aware of the idea of nuclear energy in the 1930's, even if they were not entirely clear on how it could be harnessed (H.G.Wells wrote about an atomic bomb in "The shape of things to come", but described it more like we would think of a "dirty bomb"; continuing to "explode" for a prolonged period of time and leaving large areas uninhabitable). The idea of a nuclear weapon was "in the air", but perhaps fortunately the true difficulty in making a nuclear weapon is preparing the fissionable material, since with a sufficient quantity of U235 you can make what is essentially a low yield nuclear "pipe bomb". The Manhattan Project spent a billion *1940* dollars (over $15 billion in todays terms) to learn the methods of extracting fissile materials from uranium, and how to handle plutonium in its various forms.
So since people are aware of the possibilities of nuclear energy and have some idea as to how it works, there are two possible paths to take:
1. Eliminate the Soviet spy program and stop the Russians from getting the bomb. Without the detailed information sent by the spy rings, the Soviet Union would have to carry out a Manhattan project of their own, which given the vastly smaller economy of the Soviet Union and the depleted industrial and scientific base in the immediate post war world, might prove to be virtually impossible.
2. Test the bomb in secret, but hide the results from everyone. President Truman must then make the decision to launch Operation OLYMPIC and invade the Japanese home islands, inflicting over a million casualties on the fanatical last ditch defenders (and taking an estimated quarter million casualties on the allied side) to win the war in 1948. Since as far as anyone knows, the bomb does not work, there is less urgency in trying to duplicate nuclear weapons and the nuclear arms race does not go into high gear in 1949, when the USSR detonates its first atomic bomb.
Option two inflicts far more casualties (Japanese civilians were being drilled to attack allied troops with lances made from bamboo tipped with bayonets), but keeps the cold war much cooler, although without knowing the atomic bomb is a reality, the USSR might be tempted to "liberate" Western Europe in the post war period, unaware of the possibility of nuclear retribution.
Option one also squelches the cold war, since the USSR will have no effective counter, and indeed might be "convinced" to adhere to the Yalta accords and withdraw from Eastern Europe, but sets up a resentful and paranoid USSR which might indeed "eat grass" just to get the atomic bomb and have an equalizer to American power. (In a sense this is actually futile, America's true power is being a commercial empire and an oceanic power, capable of projecting trade and troops round the world, where continental powers like Germany and Russia are very disadvantaged in projection of trade and power by being surrounded by other rival land powers).
So your contrafactuals might lead to very unexpected results in the new timelines.
[Answer]
**Nuclear brinkmanship could not be avoided by modifying Allied strategy against Japan.**
The world-threatening brinkmanship displayed during the Cold War resulted almost entirely from the mere existence of nuclear weapons. A ground war, or even an ICBM war, were unlikely to achieve either country’s goals given the much longer and more drawn out effort that would be required. Nuclear weapons are convenient because in theory, with enough of them, you could completely defeat you enemy in minutes.
The problem is, nuclear weapons were an inevitable result from WWII whether they were used or not. Nuclear physics had come into its own, and many nations were beginning to wrap their heads around the potential for a weapon. They would have been developed eventually.
A Cold War in a world with nuclear weapons is inevitably going to see their usage as an intercontinental threat. The resulting brinkmanship (though sometimes agitated by bad politics) will follow naturally.
[Answer]
I'm with Cort's answer on this one. **Do nothing**. Considering the circumstances the U.S. basically took action that resulted in the least loss of life possible.
At most, his advice could have been *"slow down on the island hopping, no need for so many Marines to die...wait for the bomb program to be ready".*
You have to consider the enemy we were facing. Acquiescing was not an option, they were a brutal and murderous entity bent on conquering and dominating us. We had to actually fight and win; it was not optional.
Now realize their death-before-dishonor culture (which they proved to be very real many times) and Operation Ketsugo already planned and ready to fight a mainland war of attrition with millions of soldiers and civilians projected as losses...we were very probably going to have to start killing dang near every man, woman, and child in Japan in order to end the war (they literally had *59 divisions* of civilians planning to fight in it...for contrast the entire modern United States Marine Corps has 3 active duty divisions). That was not a tantalizing prospect to us, and we knew that.
Those bombs showed Japan that we could wipe them out, and have minimal losses to ourselves in the process. That meant that their planned war of attrition was absolutely pointless. That is the only reason they surrendered. And considering those bombings even had less loss of life than many traditional bombing campaigns had during WWII (drop incendiary bombs over and over on a city and the numbers will pile up) they, ironically, saved an enormous amount of lives on both sides.
As for the cold war...those political tensions had little to do with the bombs...those were simply the means by which the two sides made the threats over their political tensions. The soviets themselves killed many times their own citizens than the various wars over communism killed combined, and I see little way we could have stopped that without making WWIII.
[Answer]
While dropping the bombs was horrific - and in the end, unnecessary - I would be reluctant to try and change how things worked out in the end.
Destroying two cities made it obvious what would happen if an all-out nuclear war were to occur. So we ended up in a cold war where people were reluctant to use them.
Imagine though, in your changed scenario, that people aren't as afraid of nuclear weapons. In that case it seems possible that an actual nuclear war, with multiple sides using them, could occur later in the century. In the end that could lead to tens or hundreds of cities being destroyed.
So I would recommend **not changing anything**. I consider it a minor miracle that we've gotten this far without a nuclear war, and I just don't see the benefit being worth the risk.
The only possibility is that I would maybe stop after one bomb. That might be enough to show the might of the weapon and create the backlash against it, while still saving a city worth of people. Even still, that seems risky.
[Answer]
**Detonate a nuke on a nearby uninhabited island as a demonstration & threat.**
Added bonus if the island has a known amount of human infrastructure on it, the destruction of which can be examined later by the Japanese, as proof of the bomb's capabilities.
This course of action [was actually debated](http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/03/06/to-demonstrate-or-not-to-demonstrate/) at the time; dropping the bomb over a **desert** or a **Japanese ocean port** was also suggested. A written warning could have been disregarded as propaganda, but a detonation would have been impossible to ignore. The idea that a demonstration would deplete the **limited stockpile of nuclear bombs was largely a myth**; a third would have been available by late August, Little Boy's fuel could have been used to seed the construction of multiple "composite" bombs, and the invasion of Japan wasn't scheduled until November in any case.
---
That's the easy part. As for minimizing brinkmanship? I can't think of a particularly good solution for that. One off-the-wall possibility could be to **widely disseminate plans for the construction of nuclear weapons**. Then, the world's governments would be **compelled to organize an independent inspection organization** to control the, ahem, fallout -- and might be too busy to practice brinkmanship against each other.
[Answer]
(More a comment but it won't fit.)
1) Revisionists aside, it was a close thing whether the bombs were enough to cause a surrender. Thus all the demonstration answers don't work.
2) There was a very good reason against a demonstration--we knew there was a chance Little Boy would fizzle even if the mechanism worked perfectly. At the time we did not have the computing power to figure out the odds of this happening. (Now we do, it was a few percent.) If we announced it and then it didn't go boom we certainly would have failed.
3) Something to keep in mind: The bomb really was a great bluff. We didn't have a high enough production rate for them to be militarily important.
4) In the big picture I think nuking at least one city was a very good thing--it showed us the horrors in a limited scenario and thus kept later wars from going nuclear. Had we somehow avoided Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Korean war likely would have been nuclear and involved far more bombs.
[Answer]
The best suggestion I've heard, outside of not doing it: Don't admit that there was a single bomb or that it was nuclear. Tell a scientist that something is definitely possible and he's more than halfway to reproducing it. Simply keeping the existence of the technology classified might have slowed proliferation by up to a decade.
Nothing could have kept the cat in the bag forever, though.
[Answer]
Send the time traveller back a little earlier, and have him suppress the [MAUD report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAUD_Committee#The_reports). Bury it in Lyman Briggs' office (as actually happened for almost a year) but cancel Marcus Oliphant's visit to the US in August 1941 - if necessary, bring his plane down mid-Atlantic.
>
> Oliphant then met with the S-1 Uranium Committee. Samuel K. Allison was a new committee member, a talented experimentalist and a protégé of Arthur Compton at the University of Chicago. Oliphant "came to a meeting," Allison recalls, "and said 'bomb' in no uncertain terms. He told us we must concentrate every effort on the bomb and said we had no right to work on power plants or anything but the bomb. The bomb would cost 25 million dollars, he said, and Britain did not have the money or the manpower, so it was up to us." Allison was surprised that Briggs had kept the committee in the dark.
> (from the above Wiki article)
>
>
>
So Vannevar Bush never meets with the President in October 1941, nobody in America reads the Maud Report, the Manhattan Project in its actual form never even starts, and by mid-December, preliminary efforts on nuclear power plants have to be set aside as a long term pipe dream, to concentrate on the war effort, as America has a lot of catching up to do. (And the Soviet spies faithfully report the same long-term pipe dream to Moscow).
... and many of America's most brilliant minds and substantial capital are freed up to work on war-winning machinery, computers, code breaking machinery, guided missiles, jets, to bring the war to an end in 1944...
Once the war is over, there is no immediate need for offensive nuclear weaponry, and research on nuclear fission for power proceeds at peacetime rates, probably about as fast as 1950s today's research on fusion power technology. (And 1960s, 1970s, 1980s etc... up till today)
[Answer]
I've played around with the general plot of "time traveler goes back and changes some historic event" too - nice daydreaming activity. I've always come up on 2 problems that I feel may be significant plot holes if glossed over (and may make up their own main stories if addressed in depth):
1. The problem of some random nobody turning up and wishing to influence policy at the **highest** level. Claiming to be from the future might often result in a lengthy diversion to some mental health (or criminal correctional) institution. One way to prove that one is from the future is prediction of events that are about to happen.
I fear that our knowledge of the past may often be fragmentary and
incomplete (for various reasons: loss of records/eye witnesses,
necessity to "condense" history to only facts (subjectively) seen as
relevant afterwards, the focus on "facts" and not including a focus
on intangibles like leaders/population's attitudes and perceptions
at the time, change in perception/recollection as time passes,
tendency of victors to adapt history to suit their agenda, etc.) So the proof will not be forthcoming in all instances that may be required of the time traveler, thus casting doubt on his claims.
(In
Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", the
protagonist does not try to convince the others that he should be
listened to as a wise and benevolent counsellor, he rather uses his
knowledge of modern technology to gain power and thus control from
inside the culture and its beliefs/norms, while keeping his origin
secret. Now figure how your time traveler connives to become president/dictator of the US...)
2. The [Grandfather paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox): time traveler changes past in some critical way, altering the flow of history in a way that will remove the need (or even ability) for him to change history, thus reverting the flow of history to as it is ... ad nauseam.
I guess this may hint at why some other posters have suggested "let it be - say nothing". But one can always daydream of alternative timelines where the bombs were in fact not dropped, where Japan surrendered before the bombs, where Germany conquered the USA, etc. etc. etc. - our timeline being just one of many possibles, and not necessarily so remarkable as to need changing.
[Answer]
Invade with an army of time travelers from the future, and establish an apartheid regime via superior firepower and surveillance technologies across the world. Punish people not for the crimes they commit, but for the crimes you claim they would have committed had you not intervened. Blame the holocaust on political dissidents and Hitler's 'suicide' and Germany's defeat on your intervention. Use your access to the short-term future to conduct impossibly fast and thorough searches of all publicly accessible information networks to ensure that you effectively control all communication all the time. With the advent of perfect or psuedo-perfect human behavioral prediction machines, you can even avoid completely exterminating the intelligentsia (if you feel like not killing them) by ensuring that those smart people who will not be misbehaving are not killed. Manipulate the global environment as necessary to prevent revolution. By ensuring the obedience, isolation, and poverty of all 'primitive' humans, you can also ensure with complete confidence that they will not have access to nuclear weapons, nor the kinds of governmental representation that would be necessary to effect the sort of nuclear brinkmanship you are talking about.
We can take this further, and minimize the number of lives lost in the transition. To do so, we record, before our intertemporal invasion, the whereabouts, habits, etc. of the 'key players' in global affairs at the time, and note the sort of unexpected security breaches that inevitably frequently occur all the time. When we time travel, we assassinate each 'key player' and replace them with a loyal agent. Using our acquired political power, we replace everyone important with our army over the next few years. Japan surrenders to the US because we run the President and the Senate, and also the Emperor and his exceedingly well armed bodyguards. Once we effectively control everything, we can either end the charade and reveal ourselves, or just let people think they live in a discordant world while we in fact run everything from the shadows.
Suggested reference material:
I, Robot (the movie, not the book)
Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty
[Answer]
Tell the scientists about nuclear fission, but also tell them it has been proved in your time that a fusion explosion would ignite the Earth's atmosphere, and so it was never done. There was in any case some concern about that possibility during the development of fusion weapons and before the first test, and hopefully your input would be enough to prevent fusion weapons from ever being developed and tested.
[Answer]
Cancel the Manhattan Project and label it an expensive, useless fiasco. Do what's necessary to erase contrarian evidence, up to and including murder.
If aplicable, say you're coming from a future where the US got so bogged down in this fiasco that it ended up *losing* the war against all probability.
Another possibility is to say you're coming from a future of actual nuclear apocalypse.
] |
[Question]
[
So I have [sparrows](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow), which are sentient and intelligent, which are physically exactly still just the same, no extra hands or anything, so any weapon would have to be held in the feet or somehow attached to the wings.
They have roughly the [mentality of this .gif](http://www.mandatory.com/2013/09/19/the-funniest-gifs-of-the-week-9-19-13/17), and I would imagine that simply holding knives in either their beak or feet and aiming for the face and eye slits or other exposed parts of the armor of a person.
However, what sort of ranged weapon, if any, might they use? Keep in mind that they fight human-sized people, but they will also have their own human-sized allies to help build and attach any equipment
EDIT 1: Tech level is roughly late medieval with some magic
EDIT 2: Both one on one, dueling, and war scenarios answers would be good
EDIT 3: No, the sparrows should remain sparrow sized, preferably. No extra limbs either.
[Answer]
Couple parts of this is probably a little dark.
I don't see your animated gif or the image of sparrows wielding knives very likely. It's cute to watch it run with it, but in the end it's far too much weight for it to fully take off, let alone accurately attack at someones eyes with. There might be a case to be made for 'talon knives', sharp extensions on their existing claws that were small enough for it to still take flight. Think of chicken fights here (the ones where knives are attached to their feet...works as a sharp extention to their back claw that can be used to slash). Even then they'd be pretty useless...imagine the fight scene in Lord of the Rings with hobbits taking on a cave troll. Now shrink the hobbits to the size of house cats. In direct combat, it's a silly matchup.
That said they'd have some pretty interesting but very specialized abilities that would definitely sway the favor of a fight. 2 humans fighting with one getting sparrow support would see the sparrows offer many advantages. 2 or three of them attacking an unarmored persons eyes for example, or attempting to interfere with the already limited sight of a person in a helmet. It might not cripple or disable them immediately, but it gives the advantage to whomever the birds are helping.
(added : if it's a magical land, I'd imagine a wizard would have difficulties casting spells with a sparrow chirping in his face. Sparrows would do a brilliant job of interrupting spell casting, both by fluttering around in a wizards face, and by chirping away interrupting any vocal component)
The other option is to avoid a direct combat fight. A sparrow is decently silent...flying into their opponents bedroom and using a little talon knife to open up their throat would be exceedingly effective assassination. A well trained sparrow could (feasibly) dive bomb and opponent and try to slash at their neck on their way by as well (extra effective if the target doesn't realize it's coming). Think rogue tactics in D&D for other ideas, anything that works as a sneak attack really.
At a larger scale they could be quite fun. A large group of cavalry are flanking on the left when they are struck by a flock of thousands of sparrows attempting to interfere with the riders and mounts vision causing riders to fall and horses to collide mid charge. At this point, their weapon is their sheer numbers and confusion. Using a bird flock to mask friendly troop movement is possible...even flying in and pecking apart the opposing armies banners (flag standards are used as communication...how do you tell the archers to fire if the banner you wave to give them the signal to fire is shredded by birds?).
There's many specialized roles they could help with. One of the biggest issues in Medieval war is ultimately communication...having a bird fly from group to group distributing commands would be exceedingly helpful. A bird eye view of the battlefield to locate enemy positions and tactics before they get to you...I would suspect a sparrow general flying far overhead as he commands the battle infront of him would have a tremendous advantage over generals who's sight is relegated to the ground.
As a suicidal effort, what is to prevent them from loading up on as much black powder as they could carry and fly with, and send themselves flying in to enemy's supply depots? A few good small birds could create several large fires pretty quickly. Less suicidal...if they could learn to use flint and steel, just flying into stores and fields and lighting fires would be effective.
[Answer]
**Small bombs.** While a single swallow might be unable to carry one, two swallows could quite easily hold such a bomb. In order to fly sufficiently far apart to navigate, they'd probably attach said bomb to a small length of standard creeper.
Manufacturing the device wouldn't be terribly hard. The birds could retrieve small amounts of gunpowder ingredients and crush them into a fine powder using their beaks. They could then use some form of large seed as an outer container to hold the gunpowder, pouring the powder in through a small hole, stoppered by a fuse.
For the seed, your best bet would be something like the seeds of [cocos nucifera.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut) They're large enough to pack a sufficient punch to down a significantly larger target, such as a rabbit or even an armored knight.
The creeper would be required for a particularly small sort of bird to carry the bombs, something like a European swallow. An African swallow could carry the bombs on its own, of course, but those are non-migratory.
[Answer]
The problem that small creatures face is that they lack the size and penetrating power to do serious damage to a full sized target unless they manage to hit a vital area such as a jugular. Those vital areas also tend to be well protected by armour.
The obvious solution to this is poison. The birds would drop poisoned darts from a height, the fall giving them enough strength to break the skin, the poison then finishing the job.
Bird anatomy does not really lend itself towards the use of blowguns, something like a spear launcher adapted to darts and fired using the legs might work though. Their wings are needed for flight so are unlikely to be used for combat.
[Answer]
Honestly, I'd say they would be best used for intelligence. Spies, messengers etc. They are small, quick and hard to see/target. They should be used for their strengths, not forced into an attacker.
I would also say that their best weapon, are their beaks and claws. Attacking a person or animal in the face/eyes at the least is distracting and blinding an enemy is almost as effective as killing him, maybe more so. If you really want a little bird to be able to kill, then poison is your best bet. Poisoned claws would be best, though there are poisons that would affect humans but have none on birds, these could be used on a beak and pecked deeper into the flesh.
But I stick with, in general they would be best as intel agents.
EDT:
Because some think this isn't an answer in the 'spirit' of the question, I'm going to elaborate.
Large sparrows weight about [60 grams](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS603US603&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=weight%20of%20a%20swallow), the average human, ~81.6 Kg (180 lbs) (I'm picking a weight in the middle of the averages I found). That is a swallow has .0735% the mass of a human. A similar weight ratio would be for that same human to attack a [Brachiosaurus (30-80 tonnes) and 85 feet long](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS603US603&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=brachiosaurus%20weight)
There is not much a single human or even a small number could do to a Brachiosaurus with sticks and stones, or even swords, and the animal would just step on them to get them to stop or swipe them with it's tail. Their best bet would be to attack the head or try and introduce a strong enough poison. If they have time digging a pit for a foot trap to break it's leg could work too.
Now since I took the question to be about utilizing sparrows in battle, I offered a more realistic approach that would be extremely useful. Spies and messengers. The weapons that a little sparrow could take with it are going to be likely less than half their weight, 30g or so. powders of dust/poison and maybe pins strapped to their legs for protection (say against enemy hawks) are going to be about all they can carry.
If they are a known ally of a specific group, then the enemies would train hawks to hunt and kill sparrows. Best to keep a valuable resource like that fairly safe and secret and just be intel agents.
[Answer]
## Hit them in the eyes
A small bird lacks the strength to do serious physical damage to a large opponent. By necessity this means that the only way they can be effective is to choose attack spots where a small amount of damage can cause a big effect.
Any armored opponent will have protected vital areas such as the neck. However, they still need to see, and an incapacitated opponent is almost as defeated as a killed opponent, especially if it's on a battlefield where anyone can easily make a killing blow to a defenseless enemy.
As a ranged weapon against the eyes you have the following options:
* mechanical damage - miniature throwing weapons that a bird can hold - a small scale spear IMHO wouldn't be stable in flight, but a rapidly rotating shuriken-style weapon could be an option.
* mechanical irritant - a cloud of very small, sharp things - imagine the effect of sand being thrown in your eyes, but instead of sand use something like a bag of sharp tiny metal splinters;
* chemical irritant - for example, powdered chili peppers (the active ingredient - capsicin - is used in modern tear sprays) or acid. If delivered with a targeted throw to the area of eyes, even small quantities will cause a serious effect. Armored targets may be vulnerable to panic, as the only reasonable mitigation would be to wash the eyes with plenty of water, but helmets and gloves would make it hard to even instinctively rub their eyes.
[Answer]
Why on earth would a sparrow fight a pitched battle with humans in armour?
That armour has straps. Those straps are chewable. The human isn't always wearing the armour.
Sparrows are the ultimate guerilla fighters. They don't need to fight pitched battles. They can just turn up in a group of about a hundred and beak their way through your tents, through the straps on your stored armour, peck out the eyes of your horses, and be home in time for supper with minimal risk to themselves.
There's a story in Mushashi's book of 5 rings, where a swordsman is considered to have mastered the pinnacle of his art because he was able to hit a single sparrow. They're famously sword-proof.
A force of 100 sentient sparrows would render it utterly impossible to keep an army (or any smaller force) in the field.
Why on earth would they ever decided to fight a pitched battle?
[Answer]
Small birds like swallows only weigh around 30g. While I do not know their typical carrying capacity, one can assume it is negligible (sounds like a Monty Python joke). When your weight limit is only a couple grams, no realistic weapon is possible, especially if the opponents are armored (even just clothing would defeat the attack). Even melee weapons would be largely ineffective as they simply lack the mass to do any harm.
You might possibly claim dive-bombing with a chemical agent, but whatever quantity you could actually deliver would just be an irritant at best. If you want to go high-tech, you might use some exotic nerve agent so a tiny amount in the eyes would have an effect, or possibly an engineered virus, but that would be defeated by a face shield. Unless you envision them poisoning/infecting unsuspecting civilians, a little bird weighing around an ounce is not going to come wielding weapons of war (and keep in mind that their legs are not muscular - it can hold onto a branch with just enough to keep from falling off - they are not capable of significant manipulation).
Their only use in conflict would be as scouts/spies and messengers, while any opponent aware of these birds being intelligent would likely employ birds of prey to bring them down.
[Answer]
Many sparrow species flock *en masse* and can remain airborne for extended periods of time. Individually armed with a small, poisoned, armour-penetrating steel [flechette](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flechette), released from a deep dive, a sparrow could be accurate and effective beyond the range of archers. Most flechette designs are self-righting, meaning that a sparrow would be able to "reload" itself by grasping a new flechette in its feet without any human intervention. Unfortunately, weighing only about twice as much as the flechette itself, a sparrow would only be able to "fire" once before returning to base. (Assuming the sparrows could carry the flechettes on a line between them, this might conceivably be increased to three per pair, albeit with reduced accuracy.) This would mean that within an arrowflight, an archer would be far more effective.
Perhaps the most effective use of the sparrows would be psychological. While their average rate of fire would be extremely poor, a flock of 10,000 sparrows could unleash a devastating opening salvo - something close to the first seconds of an artillery barrage. This would make them an incredibly mobile area denial weapon, and their shadow would have a profound effect on morale - slowing, supressing and possibly tiring an advancing army as it marched with shields raised overhead for several miles. While a visible dive would be needed for greatest accuracy, high-released flechettes would be essentially invisible - a handful of these could heighten the psychological impact of the flock hovering overhead. Targeted attacks on enemy leadership, standard bearers, etc., would further sap morale. At a range of several day's march, mass attacks on resting or resupplying troops could have a debilitating effect.
[Answer]
**Drones**
* The sparrows are too small to carry much weight, so they should use a technological solution which means they don't have to.
* They are intelligent, so they can remote-control the drone using the sparrow-computer interface of their choice (perhaps a beak-controlled joystick?)
* As they are themselves flying creatures, they would have a natural facility for piloting.
* A drone - or a flock of drones - could shadow a sparrow in flight, defending it. Like the drones you used to be able to get as power-ups in the video game 'R-type'. They kind of hung around you and shot at the baddies with you.
As well as the drone-type pictured above, consider quadcopters (because they can travel at lower speeds, like a sparrow).
At our current level of technology (perhaps sparrow-tech is higher?) drones can already carry fairly heavy munitions, such as the [Hellfire tankbuster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-114_Hellfire):
>
> Hellfire II's semi-active laser variants—AGM-114K high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT), AGM-114KII with external blast fragmentation sleeve, AGM-114M (blast fragmentation), and AGM-114N metal augmented charge (MAC)—achieve pinpoint accuracy by homing in on a reflected laser beam aimed at the target. **Predator and Reaper UCAVs carry the Hellfire II**... The AGM-114L, or Longbow Hellfire, is a fire-and-forget weapon: equipped with a millimeter wave (MMW) radar seeker, it requires no further guidance after launch—even being able to lock-on to its target after launch—and can hit its target without the launcher or other friendly unit being in line of sight of the target.
>
>
>
Clearly no-one would want to mess with a sparrow that had control of one of those.
For an option with a less threatening appearance, and for reconnaissance and perhaps light 'bodyguard' duties, the sparrows should consider something like the [Black Hornet Nano drone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano), which is itself approximately sparrow-sized, and therefore should fit in pretty well in sparrow society:
You could also consider vehicles and machines which make the size and strength of the operator basically irrelevant, such as **tanks**, **fighter jets** (since these are now all fly-by-wire there's no reason they couldn't be flown by an intelligent sparrow) or (a more sci-fi option) ***ginormous sparrow-controlled battle robots***.
[Answer]
Disclaimer: this answer is going to be multitudes less realistic than the others posted here.
Okay, now that that's out of the way... Razor beaks. Tiny little armored plates, sharpened and placed over their beaks, to give them extra razor-sharpness and punching power. They can act like tiny little homing bullets, aiming at vulnerable gaps in armor and pecking the heck out of it with all the malice and hatred their tiny bodies can store.
Edit: Woops, ranged weapons, sorry.
Another idea would be for them to simply carry bags of irritant, such as itching or sneezing powder, and indiscriminately carpet bomb enemy formations. This wouldn't do much in terms of damage, but it would dampen morale and hamper concentration.
Proceeding with my idea of carpet bombing, they could also drop bags of teeny-tiny [caltrops](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caltrop). This would hamper movement and be irritating at least and painful at worst. Dip those things in feces or poison and you have yourself a truly rather potent weapon, which can cause infection if it pierces the skin.
[Answer]
Grabbing the technological high ground for this exploration of avian armaments, I propose the beak mounted laser range finder, which when paired with laser-targeted anti-tank missles should provide the sparrows with a significant battle field advantage over even heavily armored human-sized targets.
[Answer]
Why not either:
1. A spring loaded single use spear that could be loaded by beak and claws when landed
or
2. A single/multiple use firearm
or
3. A single use crossbow (e.g. like a hand crossbow)
The thoughts are they could be loaded while landed using beaks and claws to manipulate the ammos...firing would have a claw-trigger or beak-trigger (like hold a cord in a beak and tug)
4. Would be like pebbles/rocks dropped as bombs -- and, depending on technology, actual bombs
[Answer]
I picture a lightweight fabric system attached to the bird with two spring loaded dart launchers mounted just behind the eyes.
The fabric system would be similar to a bandolier wrapping cross wise along the back and front. The front straps will have attached to them two pull cords which could be activated by a tug from one of the sparrow's feet.
The tug on the pull cord will release the spring and launch the dart (preferably poisonous) at the sparrow's likely terrified victim.
[Answer]
Missiles.
During WWII US developed experimental [pigeon-guided missile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon). Human allies can build them, sparrows would guide them by pecking on target, and flying away just before impact.
[Answer]
From a different tact, you could consider that they have used their intelligence to domesticate a highly effective and loyal "attack" animal species. Training tigers, or something, over centuries to follow their will. Sidenote: I laughed out loud visualizing that.
[Answer]
Sparrows would only be able to carry very light items in their claws. They would also will have trouble aiming the item in the direction they are flying, as it would require them to have one leg in front of the other.
To overcome this they could carry something like small [caltrops](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caltrop). Caltrops do not require to be aimed in any direction, the sharp edges can be poisoned, the sparrow can easily avoid the poisoned edges with its little feet.
The caltrops might get under the armour through the spaces between plates and even if they don't get through the clothes at first, the sharp edges can work their way through over time.
As others have stated, the sparrows will likely miss the intended targets often, but the caltrops will remain on the ground and be a danger to horses and people stepping on them.
[Answer]
Abilities of sparrows denied to humans:
1. Flying
2. Flocking (thanks to other answers)
3. Aerial Manoeuvrability
So potential attacks are:
1. Blizzard: Descend on a human encampment with sharp, poisonous or caustic weapons in a flock, leaving a huge number of small cuts, barbs, burns
2. Carpet: Anywhere the humans look like they are heading, you lay instant minefield of small explosives in their path; the explosions and smoke should largely delay them
3. Large animal leverage: A flock is scary to a large animal, particularly one that has seen these angry flocks before, so you can drive large numbers of terrified beasts towards any human caravan or encampment.
4. Vertical bombardment: You can drop anything from high enough up, so a nice shard of something with an explosive on the back could make for a rain of sharp pain. A mustard-gas releasing bag on the backs of the shards could create instant panic.
5. Surprise: Sparrows could hide in heather or other low scrub foliage, and just emerge suddenly en masse forming an unexpected swarm per the blizzard attack above
6. Sorcery: If they are equivalent to humans in intelligence etc, there is no reason to assume they don't have sorcerors, so any feat of magic that humans might deploy against a larger foe would be available to the sparrows against humans.
7. Zero impulse gun: A normal gun has a recoil problematic for a sparrow. However, a tube with explosive at the centre and both a bullet at one end and a ballast plug at the other would have no net recoil; the bullet would be blown towards the target and the ballast would be blown in the opposite direction. A grid of sparrows could fly over the target, fire at the target and scarper, leaving a second wave of projectiles (e.g. poisonous ballast) to drop on the target after the initial shots.
[Answer]
EDIT PER YOUR ANSWER: Then the answer has to be magical weapons. The difficulty will be: how magical? Too magical and it may be a slam dunk defeat -- depending on how magical the humans are. Not enough magic and you're still stuck with sparrows dropping (magical) pebbles.
I think the big thing you have to determine is: do the humans know they're fighting sparrows or not? If a human army is marching a long distance to fight a kingdom that they don't realize is run by sparrows, you have a lot of room for maneuver.
The sparrows could at first poison/taint food and water. Then begin to attack horses and wagons necessary for carrying supplies. Have a burnt-earth policy to deny the humans food via foraging.
(I really, really think you'll also need sparrows willing to die in the fight as suicide attackers. Otherwise, as I said above, you'll have to resort to the sparrows having better magic than the humans. Other suggestions like "eat leather straps", etc, would eventually fail as the humans adapted and added nets around things, put chemicals on the leather straps (suicide for the attacking bird), etc.)
The whole idea would be to make the human supply lines difficult to maintain, and to essentially terrorize the humans who would be shocked by little birds driven to kill in suicide attacks. The sparrows could make it look like the humans were going up against some crazy mage king who could drive even the smallest of animals to suicidal attacks. Imagine what will happen when they get close enough that the mage emerges and fights them directly. (Or with the help of larger animals or monsters.)
Simultaneously, the sparrows could let other human groups -- unfriendly to the kingdom attacking the sparrows -- know that the army was stretched thin and far from home. Perfect time to attack.
ORIGINAL:
Can the weapons be magical? (I.e. do you have a high- or low-magical story?)
If not, can the sparrows be a lot like sparrows but actually larger? Or have larger warriors that have been specially bred for war?
Or maybe their allies could soak them in gasoline and give them tiny sparkers, so they set themselves on fire and plunge into their enemies' camps, supply wagons, etc? Maybe 10,000 flaming sparrows would do the trick.
Or perhaps the Sparrows could be loaded up with dozens of plague-bearing fleas and could plunge into their enemies' camps. Sort of a two-step, biological attack. If their enemies were medieval-level technology-wise, it would do the trick. Of course the sparrows and their human-sized allies might also have some, um, complications.
Without some edge like that, they'll be more comical than deadly. (Unless their targets are unsuspecting, in which case you might as well have them drop poison in their targets' food/drink. Especially in a low-magic world, it would be really hard to figure out that your people are being poisoned by cute little sparrows.!)
[Answer]
Sharp darts, dropped from as high as possible, preferably with poisoned tips.
A sparrow can't carry much, and they'll be tricky to aim, but if the sparrows are determined and have enough intelligence and patience and attention span to keep it up, they could approach at high altitude and keep dropping all day until they connect. A high-flying sparrow is nearly impossible to hit with something like a bow from the ground, and many attacks which miss may be completely unnoticed by a traveling group of humanoids.
[Answer]
I'm thinking a blow dart of some sort (obviously with a mouth piece that would fit a beak)
It would be aerodynamic and strap onto the back to allow the bird to fly still.
maybe it would sort of fit onto the beak to allow claw-free operation
poisonous darts could be targeted at enemies weaker points (eyes, neck etc) meaning the dart wouldn't need a huge amount of force and this could be something that a bird could produce (they can sing pretty loud so I'm assuming they have the 'wind' to shoot a dart)
Not medieval but it is a primitive tech
[Answer]
Medieval towns and everything else are extremely vulnerable to fire. And, if nobody has prepared anti-sparrow technology, they can fly in anywhere, and start a fire burning out all of their opponents.
Also, poison the wells.
Acid-bombs.
[Answer]
A race of sentient sparrows is going to be at a large disadvantage in direct combat with human-sized foes, simply by virtue of their diminutive size. If this race has been sentient for any length of time, they would be well aware of this and likely avoid direct combat in favor of spellcasting and [asymetric warefare](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare).
Spellcasters of all stripes dream of the day that they can magically fly to prevent those nasty sword swingers from dirtying their robes. These sparrows can do this from 1st level, giving them a huge advantage. Even a lowly [1st level magic missile](http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magicMissile.htm) is going to out damage and out range any physical weapon a sparrow could wield. A couple dozen such sparrows flying over the battlefield could assassinate any opposing leadership, and fly home while their larger minions (and [magical summons](http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/summonMonsterI.htm)) benefit from the chaos.
As other have mentioned, sneaky tactics would also play to their natural attributes. Soon as the threat is known, start sending in rogue/assassin birds every night. With a little knowledge of human anatomy, it takes only seconds to cripple an unconscious target with a tiny [fighting razor](https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2014/02/14/cockfighting-weapons.jpg). What army would be able to keep up moral when they can't rest for fear of being [killed or maimed](http://www.kshb.com/news/national/cockfighter-accidentally-killed-by-rooster-with-a-razor-blade) in their sleep?
(Note: I assume the fantasy standards of "Wizards slinging magic missiles" and "Rogues backstabbing" translate to your world!)
[Answer]
How about something as simple as carrying and dropping ball bearings or marbles? Dropped from a height they could be quite painful if they landed on a bare head, and once underfoot it could create a "slippery" situation. Imagine all those flesh-wounds.
[Answer]
While these are all great ideas, the sparrows aren't suicidal and human ingenuity can overcome almost any advantage the sparrows have. Masses of birds? Coordinated archer attack, blow darts en masse, etc. Stealthy assassin birds? Magical and/or conventional barriers and alarms should deal with that. Falling projectiles? Have your mages form a force field to block or divert them.
Therefore the best answer is *magic.* Let's say the sparrows have a magical ability to form a gestalt collective; forming this collective is called "flocking together," while joining such a collective is called "becoming one with the flock." As the sparrows join together, they gain the following abilities:
1. Telepathic link between all sparrows
2. Drastically increased intelligence and processing speed
3. Telekinesis (requires concerted effort; up to four sparrows can lift and "throw" an arrow) and other forms of psionic energy projection
4. Spellcasting
5. Temporary enhancement and/or modification of flock members
Now we have a *real* threat here! With 1, their value as intel gatherers is MASSIVE, as anything they learn, the flock learns as well. This will also allow the flock to unleash multiple simultaneous *and* coordinated attacks. 2 means that they are smarter and think faster than the humans; so not only are they always a step ahead, but they can outsmart those who catch up.
With 3, sparrows can fly down, yoink the enemy human's weaponry away, and then fly up and *return them!* Aw, isn't that nice? No, because they're dropping lethal weaponry from 100 feet or more in the air! Having a flock of sparrows swoop down, flying into your soldier's faces (as well as your own), and then form an ominous shadow overhead is one thing.
Being able to see your archer's arrows glowing red and being slowly leveled at you in the ominous shadow is quite another, though!
Notice, however, that "Other forms of psionic energy projection" are available. This means they can fire blasts of energy (a la Starfire) or dominate mind of whoever's leading the attack against them. Anyone who questions the mind-controlled general will then have to deal with the birds.....(shudder)
Given these, 4 is just to give them a chance against possibly overpowered mages; intelligence does you no good against those who can simply wipe you from existence with a single powerful ritual while they're protected by their force fields, right?
5 means they can do silly/terrifying things like circling around a single member of the flock and "chanting" (cue eerie birdsong or rhythmic cawing) and transform him into a giant, muscular super-sparrow capable of becoming a biological missile and flying *right through* enemy defenses, or perhaps enchant a female sparrow to lay eggs which will hatch such super-sparrows.
If all this seems too overpowered, why not give them enchanted googles with crystal lenses? It'll make them look even cuter ('cause big eyes are cute) and have the added benefit of turning their 'death glares' into lethal (albeit tiny) laser beams!
] |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs [details or clarity](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Add details and clarify the problem by [editing this post](/posts/184837/edit).
Closed 3 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/184837/edit)
So, assume that there's a superstructure roughly the size of Pluto (~1,475 miles in diameter is the figure I found) that an organization doesn't want to be easy to find. Hiding it in the void between solar systems in an out-of-the-way corner of the galaxy seems like an effective way to do so, given the sheer amount of distance involved. It is supremely unlikely that someone would just stumble across it- it would take reality-breaking levels of luck for them to just happen to pass within visual range- and this seems like an effective measure against discovery.
The only problem I can foresee is scanning technology. What would be an effective way of preventing scanners from picking up the superstructure? Or, at the very least, disguise it so that it appears to be something else that nobody would bother taking a closer look at?
[Answer]
**Really, really, really difficult.**
Space is just *that* big. To give you an idea of how big space is, in the science fiction novel *The Stars, Like Dust*, one of the plot points is that they're seeking a (supposedly unmapped) star system which was found by a random jump within a nebula. One of the characters points out that the odds of jumping correctly to *any* star system was one 1/250,000,000,000,000,000. And that was an entire star system within a nebula and star systems are huge, dozens of orders of magnitude larger than Pluto and you're hiding this in an entire galaxy. The effective way of hiding it is generating a sufficiently random method of obtaining a set of blank space to put the space station in, and hide there. You will simply not be found, no matter how hard the enemy looks, unless they have access to literally quintillions of space ships all seeking you out.
[Answer]
>
> Hiding it in the void between solar systems in an out-of-the-way corner of the galaxy seems like an effective way to do so
>
>
>
It is, *if you have potential access to all of those star neighbourhoods*.
Scanning the immediate neighbourhood of any given star is not *too* difficult, lengthy, or expensive. And your superstructure *will* radiate some heat due to simple thermodynamics. In interstellar space I would expect nothing to radiate above the cosmic background, and doing "milk runs" to a suitably *also* hidden solar system to resupply large quantities of frozen helium to act as a thermal sump would be really expensive.
Using FTL, scanning is made even easier because it allows you to look "back" in time: by making ten FTL jumps, one light-year apart, towards a likely zone, you get to see how it was for the last ten years (so, you need to guard not only against the *current* superstructure emission, but also against its, probably much larger, emission during construction and before baffles and stealth systems were installed. That emission is expanding throughout the galaxy at the speed of light, and can be detected and traced back).
But the stars are really many, so if you don't know *which* is the star the superstructure is nearest to, the need to run the "simple, fast and cheap scan" around *all possible stars* quickly balloons into a difficult, slow and horribly expensive endeavour. **Mission accomplished**.
A further possibility is to hide not too far from a very *noisy* system, that makes scans difficult. Provided that there are a lot of them, so the possibility of an extra deep scan near noisy systems avails nought: you don't want to be in the last place someone would look, because that is the *first* place where someone cleverer would look.
Something I would definitely do is disseminate *decoys*. Generating a small quantity of heat and radio disturbances is easy and cheap, so preparing a thousand decoys would be no great trouble. You find a trans-neptunian object that *might* be your superstructure, you plant inside a radio noise transmitter with random activation scheme. Then, whoever stumbles by will have to run extra scans to investigate, which will both make them lose valuable time and resources in striving to find something that isn't there, and warn you that a search is under way and what resources it may have (if you get one decoy hit per year, or two per years in the same area, or several all over the galaxy, it changes things).
Also, you want to built and distribute the decoys from some place at a random distance from the superstructure (i.e., anywhere else in the galaxy), so if anyone has the resources to thoroughly analyze the decoys and their placement, they will converge on the decoy's source, not on the superstructure.
# More on decoys
As @Bohemian noted, you don't want the decoys to *look* like decoys. You would set up something that has a plausible reason of being, and *just happens* to duplicate the emissions from your stealthed superstructure.
For example, you get a cold trans-neptunian object and install a suitably powered WiFi mesh on its surface. The mesh connects sensors around cheap carbon crystals covered in lead, and all it does is report continuously "Device operating properly. Nothing to report" packets. Should someone find the network...
>
> "We have analyzed the structure, Captain. It is a blend of some very simple and a little bit of very advanced technology, but very logical."
>
>
> "Explain."
>
>
> "There are some three thousand spheres all over the planet, apparently deployed from orbit. They are wirelessly linked, and it is their emissions that we detected. Each sphere is radiation-shielded and encloses a crude event detector not unlike those in use on Earth in the Twentieth Century. They are all connected with an advanced relay buried near the North Pole."
>
>
> "So if one of them detects anything...?"
>
>
>
>
> "Exactly, Captain. A very sophisticated medium-range omni-directional subspace transmitter at the Pole triggers an alarm. The explosion we detected the day after tampering with one of the spheres was in all likelihood the real relay station, thirty light-hours distant and running cold. It woke up, transmitted the true alert to its masters through means unknown, then self-destructed. The Pole central clearly misunderstood our tampering for whatever event it was designed to detect, and sent the alarm."
>
>
> "But what should have *normally* caused such an alarm? What are those sensors *for*?"
>
>
> "Unknown, Captain. Some extremely energetic event, some kind of subatomic particle perhaps, capable of bypassing the thick radiation shield, and yet interact with the carbon-silicon-aluminum matrix inside. Nothing known to Federation science could do this. The matrix is cheap, but clearly carefully designed for this specific purpose. Unfortunately, the builders apparently did not take into account the possibility of someone tampering with the detector itself. But the Oort station self-destructed in an *extremely* energetic manner; what you would call a serious case of overkill. They wanted to be *sure* nothing could ever be recovered from it."
>
>
> "A dead-drop alarm... whoever did this was *scared*. Really, really scared. Of what? Of *whom*?"
>
>
>
(some months later)
>
> "We have found fifteen planetoids converted to sensors in this arm of the Galaxy alone, Captain. There probably are many others, scattered at random. All within two light-years from the nearest star. We're now just cataloguing them with long range scans to see whether their distribution yields any insight; landing for samples would be illogical, seeing as how they're all essentially identical."
>
>
> "Their builders are, or were, hiding from an enemy in possession of some technology we don't even comprehend, and potentially appearing anywhere in this part of the Galaxy. The builders themselves are probably extinct, but..."
>
>
> "The one they hid from may not be. We are considering deploying the same kind of sensors they employed; we don't understand how they could work, but the sensor matrix is easily duplicated and their operation is straightforward."
>
>
>
[Answer]
***Hidden in plain sight:***
There are lots of small planetoids floating around out there, and we are continuing to find more of them. This is pretty much what the Kuiper belt consists of. Most of them are cold, airless balls of rock with little to nothing to interest anyone. In your future universe, I'm assuming there's some sort of FTL system that allows travelers to reach such bodies if they desire. The key is to make people not desire.
Since there are so many airless balls of cold interstellar rock, let's assume those who want such things can find them. Hopefully, there is no real demand - unless you're sneaky, a slightly warm ball of rock near a star has way more going for it.
Given enough tech, an advanced civilization will be tracking all these things with telescopes and the like, but academically. There's no real motive to care. So pick one, preferably one that has been investigated and found completely boring, and claim it for Intergalactic Amalgamated Metals Inc (fictitious shell corporation). Build your superstructure inside the planetoid, or fake a planetoid (less desirable, since a magically appearing planetoid is interesting...)
Of course, Intergalactic Amalgamated Metals Inc goes belly up because the planetoid is so uninteresting, and "abandons" their mining operation. So now you have a reason for ships to have gone there, reason for structures (should anyone bother to scan them), Ownership of your worthless rock so you can discourage visitors, and justification for ships to visit (the new owners are inspecting the site).
The only risk is that people may be interested in an abandoned mine, so the records should show there is no reason to go - the owners blew it up so uninvited visitors couldn't sue them, or there's a (fill in the blank) hazard that makes it both pointless and dangerous to go there, like an industrial accident has made it radioactive.
[Answer]
It all depends on what you mean by "scanning technology."
Space is, as we all know, very very big. There are probably billions of rocks moving around and between the stars. Our models of planet system formation say they should be there, but we haven't actually seen them, which tells you something right there.
Most of these rocks are (supposedly) much smaller than Pluto, but they would still add enough noise that scanning would be very hard.
With *today's* scanning technology hiding would be trivial. The only reason we can see Pluto is because it is so close to us.
But who knows what future technology will bring? You know, because you are the author. You can decide both how future scanners work, and how future stealth technology works. As long as you are fairly consistent about it, nobody will complain.
## Gravity
The one thing we cannot hide today, and we probably never will, is gravity. Even if we discover artificial gravity, Pluto is probably too big to hide. OR, it will use too much power.
With today's tech, we cannot see gravity directly, we can only see that other objects are moved by it. As long as you stay far away from everything, you are safe. **Today.**
Future tech might see gravity directly and more detailed. That would make another Pluto stand out from the much smaller rocks around it.
*Unless* it is hollow. You have told us how big the thing is, but not how heavy it is. The obvious defense against a gravity detector would making your object as light as possible. But that will also make it fragile, so there is a question of what is worst.
## Power and heat
You haven't told us what this object is going to do. If it is just a storehouse it won't
need power, but if it does something more active, it will use power. And that means it will radiate heat. If there are people on board, they will want to live and work in reasonably warm rooms.
Heat can be detected fairly easily, but space is still big. A rock glowing a little bit will only be detectable from relatively close by.
Of course, this will change. Detectors will be better in the future. How much better, only you know.
One can limit power usage and room temperature, but probably not very much.
There are likely to be trade-offs where they can hide from one type of detector, like gravity, but only by using power and glowing hotter.
One can, for a short while, let the heat build up and not escape. This is like holding your breath, not recommended for long periods.
More reasonable is controlling the directions heat escapes. Let refrigerated panels shield the object in directions you expect scanners to be, that is nearby stars and shipping lanes.
The downside of this is that the object will glow brighter in other directions. Refrigeration takes power, and power gives heat. If an enemy ship approached from an unexpected angle, they have lost.
## Travel time
A supply ship departs for parts unknown. It returns two weeks later, empty. A reasonable assumption is that there is *something* one week travel time away.
That in itself is not very interesting, but if the enemy combine travel times from several different directions the possible locations shrink rapidly.
This will be fairly inaccurate, but it allows them to let their scanner ships concentrate on a much smaller region.
This will be a spy vs spy game. Obviously they aren't going to mark their supply ships "Secret Base Supply Ship", but the enemy can find out in other ways. Keep your secrets secret!
The enemy can be aided by massive computer analysis. This is likely to happen long after the fact, where they can infer the *building* of the object many years afterwards by going through old computer records.
[Answer]
It will be found pretty easily.
Technology evolves in leaps. The first time we suspected something was an exoplanet was in 1917. We got the first confirmation in 1992. On August 1, 2020 we knew of 4,301 exoplanets ([it's all in this link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exoplanet)). That's a huge leap in exoplanet detection - from 1 candidate to 1 confirmation in 75 years, then 4,300 new finds in 28 years. This year an AI scooping on old data from NASA [found further 50 exoplanets](https://news.sky.com/story/ai-algorithm-identifies-50-new-planets-from-old-nasa-data-12057528).
Just the same - [we know of a few objects that might be rogue planets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet#Known_or_possible_rogue_planets), which is the class of object your structure would be. These are hard to detect, and the smaller they are the harder they are to pinpoint. In the past we could only detect things much larger than Jupiter, but three of the current candidates have sub-jovian masses. In a couple decades we might know of hundreds or thousands of these, and we'll be able to map their orbits around the galaxy.
If your organization has the technology to hide it in the interstellar void, then someone will have the means to find it. I can just imagine a bunch of nerds analyzing star orbits and going "hey, why is Proxima Centauri off its projected path for the next 10,000 years?"
Two scenes from Star Wars come to mind:
1. When the protagonists of Rogue One hack into a database to obtain data about the Death Star;
2. When Obi-Wan Kenobi is [outsmarted by a child](https://yodaquotes.org/truly-wonderful-the-mind-of-a-child-is/) while trying to find a planet that is not in the stellar maps available to the Jedi Order.
>
> OBI-WAN
>
> This is where it ought to be... but it isn’t. Gravity is pulling all the stars in this area inward to this spot. There should be a star here... but there isn’t.
>
>
> YODA
>
> Most interesting. Gravity’s silhouette remains, but the star and all its planets have disappeared. How can this be?
>
>
> There is a brief pause. Then a CHILD puts its hand up. YODA nods.
>
>
> JEDI CHILD JACK
>
> Because someone erased it from the archive memory.
>
>
> CHILDREN
>
> That’s right! Yes! That’s what happened! Someone erased it!
>
>
> JEDI CHILD MAY
>
> If the planet blew up, the gravity would go away.
>
>
> OBI-WAN stares; YODA chuckles.
>
>
> YODA
>
> Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is. Uncluttered. To the centre of the pull of gravity go, and find your planet you will.
>
>
>
[Answer]
DWKraus's answer - **Hidden in Plain Sight** - is excellent.
I'm just going to develop that idea a bit further, in a way that's too long for a comment.
DWKraus' answer boils down to: don't hide it - show it, but as an either utterly boring or unattractive phenomenon. With several good ideas on how to do this. I'm going to focus on the boring, "can't be bothered" aspect, inspired by two authors.
1. Douglas Adams (HitchHiker's Guide). Making anything invisible is incredibly hard. It's much easier to surround it with a *Somebody Else's Problem* (SEP) field. People observe the thing, but instantly turn away and forget about it.
2. Iain Bank's [idea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whit_(novel)) of "interstitiality". In that novel Banks's protagonist is a member of a quirky cult, one of whose rules is that, when forced to enter the normal, "unclean" world, you must never do things in the usual way, but find a way to slip through the cracks between systems, customs, normal way of living. (The Hungarian concept of the *kiskap√∫* or "small [side] gate" is similar, but refers to getting things done in an overly bureaucratic state).
What I'm suggesting is to engineer the invisibility of your planetoid, but using social rather than technical engineering.
How, in the context of your world, might you encourage anyone who might be interested, who happens to stumble across evidence of your planetoid, to actively not want to investigate any further - to react not with curiosity but with indifference, or even with an active desire to do anything else (clean the bathroom, de-claw the cat)? In other words, how to create a real SEP field?
Perhaps the disguise this planetoid adopts, in official records, could connect it with a difficult, burning issue, which people would rather just not deal with. A recent traumatic war; a pandemic; some religious prohibition. Whatever impression your planetoid projects, it needs to be tiresome rather than challenging, evidently boring rather than noteworthy or enigmatic.
Or, using the idea of interstitiality: you disguise it (using an artificially-created emissions spectrum, for example) as one of millions of objects which fall between two jurisdictions. For example: according to Galactic Exploration Institute's records (which you have "improved" for your own purposes), this object is being surveyed by the Institute for Galactic Exploration; according to IGE's records, it's the GEI who are responsible for investigating it. Both the GEI and IGE are immensely bureaucratic, and they loathe each other.
[Answer]
Hiding it is not a problem. Minimize all transmissions from it, make it as close to a black box object as possible, and burry it in random noise.
The provlem is, how do YOU know where it is? There is no GPS system for the galaxy. There is no galactic coordinate system. You can't put a dot on a star map and say 'there it is', because no star map is static. You know you put it somewhere, but where is it now?
If there is no way for the other side to detect it, there is no way for you to detect it.
As soon as you put some sort of tracking beam on it for your use, so you can find it, it is no longer invisible for the other side, either.
[Answer]
For humans - very hard, for computers, who create a 3d representation of disturbances- not so much.
You need two observatorys, that can capture all wavelengths, in all directions simultanously in hiRes and store it.
One can be near earth, the other- needs to be ahead or behind in flight direction of the solar system, best would be synced otherwise regarding orbits to earth.
From those two captures, a 3d model of all background oclusions to the neighbourhood could be computed. Apply physic predictions and orbital mechanics and you can map the void between the stars pretty good.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax>
You could even add some automated probes, that track "intersting occlussion object vectors" - something obscures a nearby star, you nudge a bunch of probes away from the observatory, tracking the one for which the object stays occluded the longest.
Loads of fun.
[Answer]
Given that it can make FTL "jumps", all you have to do is move it every so often so that even if it is detected it is long gone by then.
As others have mentioned the radiation it gives off and gravitational pull it exerts are limited by the speed of light, so in order to detect it and then jump to its location it would have to be in the same place for at least as long as it takes light to travel from it to the nearest observer.
So then all you have to do is pick a random place that is at least one light year away from any possible detectors (preferably much further) and then have it move every six months or so just to be on the safe side. If jumps are expensive then have it hide even further from people and jump less often
[Answer]
If the largest concern is detection via infrared radiation, then one possibility would be to hide closer to a (uninteresting, probably a red dwarf) star.
After all, if you need to emit enough radiation to heat your object to 50K, then if the other objects that you are mimicking are only 10K, then you'd stand out. However, if you were closer to a star, and so you should be at 300k, well, you being 340K would not be that exceptional.
And, with a bit more effort, you could take an advantage of variable albedo to further hide your heat signature. If we have an object with higher albedo towards the star (e.g. mostly white), and lower albedo away from it (e.g. mostly black), then it would be naturally cooler than if the albedo was evenly distributed (and this is not a violation of thermodynamics; it happens because the object is thermally more tightly coupled to the cold interstellar space than the hot star).
Now, if the object is rotating (and most natural objects will be), then this effect averages out over time. On the other hand, if we have an artificial object, we can deliberately change the albedo, for example, one low-tech way would be to expose white shutters when facing the star, and black shutters when facing away.
This results in a thermal deficit over a natural object; we can use the away-from-the-star side as a thermal dump (and if we dump the right amount at the right time, we'd generate the same heat distribution as a natural object).
To detect this from thermal anaylsis, the scanner would have to get close enough to see that the albedo of a specific spot on our planetoid changes over time; that is plausibly out of scope for a general galaxy-wide scan.
[Answer]
Communications systems...
They csn hide in a bok globule, which is a solar mass dark cloud, perhaps more common than stars but uncountable currently because black against black backgrounds.
The hidden base would probably send and recieve communications and use energy, probably directional electromagnetic waves like light or radio of some wavelength.
Only energy that is emitted by the station energy systems or its communicatons can be detected by deflection from gravity or reflection by cloud or a panel of the station something.
] |
[Question]
[
I have a world where the "supernatural" is all sufficiently advanced technology. With examples like Gods, Demons, and Angels are AI's whose physical forms are swarms of nanobots/nanites. This being said the inhabitants don't know this and believe it to be magic.
How could they go about summoning this demon seeing as they have no sufficiently advanced technology themselves? I've hit a roadblock with this since I don't know how they could summon this demon without having the same technology.
Also, "magical" artifacts actually being hidden technology doesn't work on this case because artifacts like this do not exist.
[Answer]
There are two kinds of summoning, when you really get down to it. There's the summoning where the summoned wants to be summoned, and there is the summoning where the summoned is compelled to be summoned. Define your demon, and its behaviors, and you define how to summon it.
It may want to be summoned, in which case this is extremely easy to explain. The AI merely chooses a sign which the summoner must make to invoke it. This works for any summoning, AI, metaphysical, or otherwise.
It may also be compelled. There may be rituals that simply cannot not fail to summon this. This would be based on a hard-wired response within an AI. Perhaps one has to hold one's breath until the AI feels compelled to check up on you and make sure you are okay. Or maybe the pattern you scribe on the ground to summon it is actually a trap that the AI just can't seem to see past. These summonings have a strong cause-and-effect feel to them.
In the middle, you have the AIs that don't *mind* being summoned, but they're not going out of their way to be summoned. To summon them, you have to do something which calls them out. Perhaps the AI is trained to look for humans with extraordinary joint mobility. You might develop a ritual which includes hyperextending the joints to attract the AI, and then acts in a way which keeps its attention.
I own a snake. When I go up to the cage, my snake comes out to look at me. She looks genuinely curious, though I don't quite know what she's thinking. All I know is that she likes to follow my finger as I move it back and forth on the other side of the glass. Who knows what goes on in the mind of a snake.
An interesting side effect of this is something I have learned to call "pigeon dances." There was [a study done on pigeons a while back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner#Superstition_in_the_pigeon), where they had an automated feeder which dispensed food at random times (based on a randomized timer internal to the dispenser). The pigeons obviously wanted to cause food to appear, so they tried things. Eventually, one of them did something at the same time as food got dispensed. They then tried this again, and again. Eventually they did it when the food got dispensed again. So they had to think "what did I do different?" Maybe they were lifting their left wing before, trying to get food, but *this* time they lifted their left wing and then bobbed their head. Surely that must be it. So they started going around lifting their left wing and then bobbing their head.
Eventually these pigeons developed elaborate ritualized dances to summon food from a randomized food dispenser.
Your humans might develop the same, especially if they are not zealously devoted to the scientific method (and even *if* they are devoted to the scientific method!) Perhaps the rituals they perform are 98% pigeon dance, and just 2% what the AIs are looking for. That might be all that is needed. Depends on your AIs and their personalities.
[Answer]
## You need a trigger word.
Right now, I can summon a big red round demon with the trigger phrase "hey Siri." My parents summon a materialistic demon with the trigger word "Alexa."
Your demon bots (and nanites, etc) network with each other and if the summoning is done within earshot of any one of them, the message will go to the right demon who can respond, or not.
## Say it with fire.
If you don't think the bots will be close enough to hear people frequently enough for this to work (summonings don't always have to be successful, but you want at least a 10-20% success rate), you can use visuals.
Mineral dust (or goo or liquid) thrown on to a large bonfire at night can create sparks and flames in particular unusual colors that could be seen for miles in the right location. Make sure the right location is known to be an important part of the summoning. The top of a hill, for instance.
Just one bot has to see this for the word to get out.
>
> Yo, Megabotilus, the village at the South fork of the Tangerine River
> just shot up blue sparks. That's you dude.
>
>
>
It may seem unlikely that the bots will notice such goings on but even now, in any populated area, the right trigger words often work (on somebody's device within earshot). I mean small children and parrots have [accidentally placed orders via Alexa](https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/funny-accidental-amazon-alexa-ordering-stories/) and so have TVs, as the device doesn't care if the trigger word comes from a live voice.
Unless the demons (et al) don't ever want to be summoned, having a network of watchers and listeners is pretty easy to do. In more rural areas, the summonings could only work in certain locations, or even certain days for really remote places. And that's not hard to set up. In fact, we could probably do it now...
[Answer]
Interestingly, in unix land, we call any program running autonomously, a daemon.
To interact with these daemon, one must know it's name, the commands available, the method of delivery of those commands, and the format of any data you wish to be processed.
"Hey Siri, tell me tomorrow's weather at my location" sounds innocuous enough, but imagine if it still existed in a world where English was a dead language. To the unlearned, it would sound like some spooky incantation, as would the result. This is why Latin-like words are used in many similar situations: To give the words an arcane feel, from an ancient otherly world.
Extrapolate this further: Between our current time and the time of your story, there is the total integration of the internet into nanotechnology:
"Hey Siri, I need medical attention", which would trigger little nanobots to heal wounds, becomes a spell of healing in the perception of the dwellers of the time.
"Hey Siri, I'm lost" becomes a locator spell. Your limit is your imagination.
An electronic door with a password becomes a magic door.
The "Demon" could simply be a personal visual interface for the internet, and it could be capable of learning new languages, but requires the English "Summoning spell" of "Hey Siri", or "Ok Google". They all look different because the original owners could customize the look and sound of the avatar.
[Answer]
Change the premise a little, and you'll have a more interesting lore with more possibilities.
# Everything is better with nanites!
Most of the inhabitants don't know it, but they can know it, because they have the same nanites in their bodies. Summoners, magicians, wizards, enchanters, witches, warlocks, alchemists, everyone is unwittingly a magical being.
The gods themselves, who exist as entities networked in all the nanites in all the creatures in the world, made it that way so that they can keep their status as gods, but they might as well have the same human origins. As such, becoming more in touch with your nanites is the same as having better control of your nanites
At the highest level of nanite control, you can be a god yourself. Or worse, the gods will turn you into a subservient demon if you try to enter their domain.
In the case of demons, they are also just subject to the reality-bending rules of self-made gods.
---
### Magic Spells
Demons can be summoned by magic words, which the gods can "hear" by reading the vibrations of your own larynx, since they have nanites there, like having a mic in your *own* throat.
### Magic runes
Some demons can be summoned by writing pentagrams or runes, which the gods "see" by reading the images coming into your eyes, since they have nanites there. Think of QR code recognition, but with your *own* eyes.
### Emotion Manifestation
Others can be summoned by sheer will, or intense emotions, or some combination of ideas, since gods can read your thoughts with nanites that read every firing of every neuron. You can be very afraid of something, and a certain adrenaline and heart-rate threshold will let a demon materialize before your very eyes... as the very thing you fear!. It can work with other emotions.
### Enchanted Artifacts
Better yet, some artifacts contain a specific set of nanites that require specific sets of instructions to unlock its utility functions, like it has to be *powered by blood*, with which the owner-determining function uses the DNA or the blood-type in that blood so that it only authenticates *royal blood*.
### Alternate Realities
Since gods have access to your brain, they can override sensory functions and simulate real-world sensations with virtual ones and voila! You're in a catatonic state, trapped in a virtual reality, a *nightmare*, a hell. You can even mix real-world sensations with virtual ones and confuse your inhabitants to unfathomable levels of hallucination and madness.
### Possession
Similarly, other demons can be ordered to *possess* people by letting a demon take over the conscious utilities of that person, essentially letting that demon wear that human body.
---
With nanites, you can rewrite reality with imagination. Combine some of the above, and you get some really complex magic systems that most readers will never ever question.
---
**NOTE**: Just call nanites as something else, like *quantum mana*, or anything related to magitek. Also, explain it in a more mystical tone that readers will have no idea what they're in for.
**P.S.**: I've had this idea for more than a decade, but I don't have the time to work out a masterpiece, so go ahead live my life for me.
[Answer]
Since you have very tight constraints -- everyone thinks the creatures are magic and the humans don't have advanced technology of their own -- then the meaningless rituals that human perform to summon demons, angels, and gods only work because that is what the creatures want or need, that is they gain some benefit from the interaction.
I would imagine the whole magic thing is a charade that they themselves created to get humans to do their bidding. While they could appear as a flying spaghetti monster or burning bush just tell humans what to do, that might cause other creatures to do the same. Then, the humans are confounded and confused about what is real and who to follow and either end up fighting horrific religious wars or saying the gods are crazy just ignore them. But, whatever the real reason, it doesn't suit the AI's needs or goals.
So, when the AI want someone to do their bidding, the drop a "magic lamp" in some poor kids path or write up an ancient scroll filled with mumbo jumbo and make sure some old guy with a big gut and a pointy hat finds it so he can summon the great and powerful demon Knowlej who grants him unknown knowledge in exchange for some task.
They are just playing the long con to get something they want.
[Answer]
# Humans "infected" with nanites can communicate directly with the god or demon, which can then decide to appear, or be compelled to appear
Since you're using Nanorobotics with these "supernatural" AI beings, you could have them implant nanites into the humans without their knowledge. Maybe they fly their way into an ear hole, or burrow themselves under the skin and into the blood stream (assumed to be a bug bite, maybe)
How ever it happens, the nanobots would make their way to the brain and can send/receive messages to the humans. Then when they are "spoken to by God" or "The devil made me do it!" it's really the demon / god communicating with them through this device.
Perhaps they do this to a sect of people and they become the being's "Clergy" and can be forced to administer ritual food/drink to people en masse, or implant them at birth as a blessing or baptism.
To have the gods / demons communicate with these separated nanorobotics, I imagine you'd have a network of low-orbit satellites that they would fight for control over via hacking, sending viruses, putting up firewalls, something like that.
Once you've established how this communication would take place, you can decide how the AI will be summoned, if it would be compelled through a pre-programmed ritual/phrase, or if it is by choice of the god/demon when invoked.
It's not very clear what level of technology the humans are at, just that they don't have *advanced* technology. I'm assuming that the level of technology they have is fire, and maybe the wheel. I can see this working up to a level of space exploration, where the satellites would be discovered.
[Answer]
What is a common method in primitive cultures of summoning demons? Pictograms. Runes. Magic symbols that shamans paint that interact with the spirit world.
Your nanites exist everywhere in the world, unseen, yet with a basic hive vision system that mindlessly observes the environment.
Until a shaman builds a fire, chants a chant, dances a dance, and with a charcoal-based paint draws out the magic rune EXECUTE()
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/gb6Kx.png)
Each tribe would jealously guard their shaman's rune knowledge, and it would be passed down from shaman to shaman within that tribe. Rumours start, of a rune so powerful that the tribe who knows it can command armies of demons, and so our tribe prepares for war before the enemy can work out the last elements...
[Answer]
In some Yorubá religions, you summon an orisha by making an offering of something they like. Depending on the deity you wish to summon, you should sacrifice a black chicken, whisky, cuban cigars...
Let's take Eleggua, for an example. Take a look at [this page](http://santeriachurch.org/the-orishas/eleggua/) and scroll down to *"Offerings for Eleggua"*:
>
> Eleggua will eat just about anything, except pigeon. The younger, child-like roads of Eleggua are typically offered wrapped candies and toys, while the older roads might enjoy hard candies, toasted corn or popcorn. Eleggua enjoys goat, rooster and bushrat, as well as smoked fish.
>
>
>
Once the offering is done and the rituals have been performed, Eleggua will allow one of the faithful to channel him.
---
In your case, it may be that the nanobots are just about everywhere - might be a worldwide network of them. We can't see them because they are, well, nanobot small. Clusters of these bots run multiple AI's simultaneously, and each AI has its own programming and/or a personality. Performing some rituals, with or without offerings, triggers an AI into responding. The response usually includes a condensation of nanobots so that they take visible form; Or they can enter someone's blood stream and interface with that persons nervous system, allowing a human to "channel" an AI.
For example, if my mind was copied into the virtual world and made an AI, I would respond to offerings of pizza, Marvel comic books and black coffee without sugar. If you offered those while chanting any nerdy meme I would condensate the nanobots into a form that would not seem out of place in a show such as The IT Crowd, and help you with matters of logic and programming.
---
The part where AI's act like deities and respond to religious practice is actually in the plot of a seminal book for cyberpunk literature. I am masking it so as to avoid a reverse spoiler, in case anyone is reading it:
>
> William Gibson's Count Zero, from the Neuromancer trilogy
>
>
>
[Answer]
This has already been done in real life for years.
<http://www.linfo.org/daemon.html>
Summoned from the command line... or by event or condition:
>
> A daemon is a type of program on Unix-like operating systems that runs unobtrusively in the background, rather than under the direct control of a user, **waiting to be activated by the occurance of a specific event or condition**.
>
>
>
I suggest the name, "Maxwell".
^^
[Answer]
# Resonant Frequency of junk amateur radios interacting with A.I. Signal
From my experience with Analog Electronics this instantly came to mind.
Allow me a second to prime you into radio frequency theory:
Electronics have a thing called conductance, Direct Current (~0Hz Frequency) needs a direct path to things to close a circuit from point A to point B, relying heavily on electrical resistance of the material. However, as you go into radio frequency (>0Hz) conductance shifts, and starts happening without the need for a direct path for point A and B, as it starts becoming sensitive to factors such as capacitance and inductance of the circuits. A pairing of [impedance](https://electronicsclub.info/impedance.htm) will define a [Resonant Frequency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resonance) for the circuit.
You can use this concept to assume "omnipresence" of the A.I., since it is effectively propagating everywhere given enough power/frequency and receivers much like radio itself; "keeping an ear" out for incoming or disrupting activity.
As for interacting with it,
if you give your humans *some* understanding of technology (magic) and offer them a [tuning capacitor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_capacitor) you can begin to shift the overall impedance of circuits. This can be used to "mindlessly" adjust the following:
* An FM/AM transmitter, it will carry a signal (usually of a sine wave) up to a certain frequency, which can then be picked up.
* If you have an FM/AM transmitter and you manage to get the same frequency/amplitude as the A.I. signal you will begin colliding with it, disrupting nearby receiving beacons,
* If you have a receiver, you will be picking available signals at the Resonant Frequency of the circuit.
Basically, you have "wizards" who know how to build very shoddy boomboxes and pirate radio "frequency sweepers" that pollute the bandwidth of local receivers. This notifies/angers the A.I. who then manifests (either aggressively or what else). Extra points if the wizards often do not know what the resonant frequency of the circuit really is and largely tweak components by eye balling everything while they chant nonsense. Different AIs tune/communicate in different bands and modulations.
[Answer]
The spell to summon an AI-based demon could be something similar to [Adversarial Examples](https://christophm.github.io/interpretable-ml-book/adversarial.html). Basically, an artifact of the learning algorithm which causes the incorrect prediction from seemingly unrelated input. [Humans are vulnerable to them as well](https://www.rd.com/culture/optical-illusions/), so AI will not be immune too. They also (sort of) [can occur naturally](https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.07174).
The original adversarial example could be found accidentally and a weird ritual was developed around it, not understanding its nature.
[Answer]
While generally, when we say summon, we think of a summoner and some form of ritual. However, instead of having someone summon an entity of higher power, what is there to prevent them from summoning themselves? If you are willing to loosen the concept of summon to be a transfer of self (i.e. mentality, consciousness, behavior, etc) to another world, this idea could work.
The Gods, Demons, etc got bored and found humans to be interesting and appears themselves. Since you mention that these supernatural entities are AI based, we can go down the route of having an AI hijack a facility and bootstrap itself from scrapes.
For example, if an AI can take control of a basic robotic facility, it can rewrite the robots/machines to become its workers and gather material to build the nanobots/nanites itself. Humans don't need to be the one that construct the technology; they just need to provide the capability to do so.
Afterward, the AI can inject/copy itself into the new skeleton and exists in reality. If you do go down the copy route of having the AI copy itself, you can always twist the story into some sort of Terminator's Skynet story where the physical being becomes evil.
If you have to have a human summoner, you can always add in something on the course of having a person found out about this construction and decided to help the entity him/herself. It could be that a loud noise that attracted the person's attention or maybe he/she saw a robot mining some rocks. Afterward, maybe the human was tricked, controlled (via electromagnetic interference), threaten, etc to help with the process
This could add more routes to the story where maybe the human knows about the technology and could repurposed it to create another robot to fend of the supernaturals or use the technology to rule the world.
] |
[Question]
[
Stanley Miller's experiment was an amazing step forward in unifying inorganic and organic chemistry. It was also a landmark development for the theory of chemical evolution.
[Miller-Urey Experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment)
However what if the experiment was done at planet scale? Some trillion years later humans decide it would be nice to play god with another planet and decide to carry a planet scale experiment (And they can do that since they are highly advanced by now). They create a red dwarf and put it up with a planet which basically happens to be a planet scale recreation of miller's experiment.So My basic question is
**How long does this planet take to evolve intelligent life (If it ever does) ?**
[Answer]
This question cannot be answered as we simply do not know.
We have a sample set of 1 - us.
Based on that sample set the answer is 4.5 billion years, however we have no idea what factors would make that a much shorter or much longer time.
[Answer]
Estimating from the [original experiment](http://www.abenteuer-universum.de/pdf/miller_1953.pdf/%20Original%20experiment), we can statistically determine the likelihood of a molecule of a given size being formed.
Over the course of one week, the just over 50 g of starting material yielded (extremely roughly) 2 g [glycine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycine) (molecular size of 10 atoms), 2 g [α-alanine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alanine) (12 atoms) and less than 1 g [aspartic acid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartic_acid) (16 atoms), and a near negligible amount of others, none detected were larger than 18 atoms. Measureing only products, this gives us an average molecular size of 12 atoms with a standard deviation of 2.44, matching fairly tightly to a [normal distribution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution) (a standard bell curve).
The smallest known truly self-replicating evolution-capable molecule is the [ribosome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome), composed of 90,000 atoms. That is 37,000 standard deviations from the mean, so we could expect something the size of a ribosome to form once in 2.958×10297,274,578 molecules produced by the experiment.
A planet the size of Earth contains roughly 1.3×1050 atoms, and if we assume 1% are converted per week (by weight), as the data suggests, and are removed and replaced (for convenience) it would take 2×10316,227,766 years to produce the amount of molecules needed.
TLDR: If effected by no processes other than those described by the Miller-Urey experiment, it would take billions of billions of times longer than the universe will exist to generate anything like life, let alone intelligent life in a planet scale version of this experiment.
[Answer]
The thing is, the Miller-Urey experiment was never intended to recreate life, or anything close to life. It was very much a first step, showing that in theory, it was possible to create biological precursor chemicals from simple precursors that could have been available in an early earth's atmosphere. Since then, we've found dozens of other paths that can create those chemicals, and even found them on comets and other objects in space. Starting with a Miller-Urey experiment simply makes no sense.
Now, if the question is "If future god-like humans set up a planet with appropriate conditions for organic chemistry to begin, how long before you would get intelligent life?", we still can't give you a good answer, but at least the question makes more sense.
Judging by our sample size of 1, we can make some vague generalisations to get an approximation of an answer. First, we can assume that intelligent life would need to be multicellular. Without a multicellular structure, life is too small to build specialized organs like brains. On earth, it seems that the step from unicellular life to complex multicellular life was the most difficult step to take - it appears that simple [multicellularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicellular_organism#Occurrence) has evolved 40+ times, whereas complex multicellularity only seems to have emerged six times (animals, fungi, plants, and three kinds of algae), and only one of those lines is suitable for the development of intelligence.
The best evidence we currently have suggests that it took around 4 billion years for [animals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal#Origin_and_fossil_record) to evolve. After that, the [first land life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian#Flora_and_fauna) emerged relatively quickly, about 500 million years ago. From there, the emergence of intelligence is just a matter of evolution and some selective pressure tending towards big brains. On earth, that took at most 500 million years - we don't know if intelligence emerged at any time before us.
But this is just a sample size of 1, so any conclusions we can come to are extremely tentative and black-swannish. We don't know if earth was unusually well suited for intelligent life, or unusually hostile for intelligent life. We don't know if intelligence emerged many times on this earth before being wiped out by mass extinctions, or if we're unique in all the history of the world. (We can be reasonably sure that we're the first *industrial* civilization, for a variety of reasons).
[Answer]
The true situation in the primordial Earth (we now know) is distinct from the situation in the noted experiment, and **far more complicated**. If the experiment were carefully controlled to prevent other things, it would never progress to life.
[Answer]
What we do know is that any theory that predicts that a planet-sized Miller-Urey experiment would produce life in an average time of millions of years or less; any such theory is consistent with reality. Signs of life were found on Earth dating as far back as we have solid rock to check. That's a huge range of possibilities for how long it would take.
From there, it took about 3 billion years to develop multicellular life. From there, it took a few hundred million years to produce hominids. After that, a couple million years and we have humans. From there, tens of thousands of years and we have an industrial revolution. It's been less than two centuries since then.
The biggest variable in this picture is how long it took for multicellular life to form. Once it arrived, it exploded across the planet. We have no idea what the trigger was that caused that development. There's no reason to suspect that event couldn't have happened a billion years earlier or later.
But as far as Miller-Urey is concerned, developing life from no life could have happened instantly or could have taken many millions of years. The one data point we have provides us no ability to distinguish those timescales.
[Answer]
somewhere between 3 billion years and infinity/never.
evolution is not goal oriented, so getting intelligent life is more or less random once you have the body conditions that can support it, and getting those conditions also has a largely random aspect.
] |
[Question]
[
I know aluminum was extremely hard to refine until the 20th century, which is one of the reasons why it wasn't used much. But what are the drawbacks to using it as armor or weapons in this type of setting? Would it be too brittle, or tough to smith into shape?
[Answer]
Aluminium is too soft to build strong armor from it.
On the Mohs scale aluminium just has a 2.75 while iron, for example has 4, copper has 3.
The Mohs scale is about how hard it is to scratch a given material and the higher the number the harder is the material.
That means that while copper can scratch aluminium the opposite is not true.
Edit:
While there are multiple properties to look at none of them alone shows what is good for armor and the kind of armor you want to craft.
Let's look at toughness:
>
> In materials science and metallurgy, toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing
>
>
>
So assume you want to craft rigid armor. If it is as soft as aluminium but has a high toughness any meaningful blow will dent it without fracturing. No fracturing is good but a big dent in the breastplate means you can't breathe freely anymore. That has happened a lot with iron/steel armor in medieval times but it would be much worse with aluminium. Because of that soft but tough materials are just good for flexible armor that doesn't keep the dent, or at least not over a large area.
Back to aluminium.
Aluminium armor could be good for presentation purposes like for ceremonial guards. The armor looks good, needs little maintenance and is light. If those kinds of armor ever see combat it would be short skirmishes not prolonged battles. So the problem described above would not matter as much as for armies.
There are other kinds of armor that might be enhanced by addition of aluminium like brigandine or jack of plates where metal plates are added to cloth. In those the malleability isn't as much of a problem and the lesser weight could be beneficial.
[Answer]
For a weapon aluminum is a poor choice since it can't hold an edge well and, due to the low density, can't concentrate force like iron (in a warhammer, for example). For PARTS of a weapon, it might be serviceable.
As for armor, depends on what you want it for. You can make chain mail from aluminum and it is comparatively light. This may work to resist slashing attacks. However it doesn't have the strength to stop piercing attacks, like the thrust of a dagger or an arrow head. The rings will spread and burst. So you can double or even triple up on the rings (or make them very thick) but then the armor starts to weigh as much as iron or steel. Same with a breastplate. Ok for turning a slash but unable to stop a thrust (either punch through or deform and crush the soft tissue underneath). This can be easily demonstrated with aluminum cookware versus stainless steel. The rigidity and strength of steel versus the same thickness of aluminum is readily apparent. And the aluminum cookware is significantly lighter.
One benefit will be a reduction in rust, as well as lighter weight for the same thickness of metal and the ability to take on a high polish. So aluminum would probably be great for a child's suit of armor or a parade suit, made for flash, not efficacy. Or if you are facing Magneto :)
[Answer]
Yes, when thick enough
The Aluminum castings we use my factory are about about 8mm thick and quite tough. It's unlikely any sword and strong man will be able to do much other than bend it a bit. If these castings weren't so expensive, I'd take it out back and try to smash it for empiricism. I have broken (snapped) a 4mm aluminum cover by tightening bolts out of sequence, but there where factors such as torque and leverage at play which would not be involved in the physics of a sheer strike.
In a related point, Plate Armor is designed to dent! chest plate fits over padding at a distance from the wearer's body. If the armor absorbs a strike, it has room to bend without hitting the occupant. A semi-soft metal may be a benefit to armor because of the ability to bend instead of break.
Given sufficient thickness, Aluminum Armor is plausible.
[Answer]
One weakness of aluminum versus iron or steel is its lack of a real [fatigue limit](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fatigue%20limit) (aka Endurance Limit.) Fatigue is the accumulation and enlargement of small cracks and imperfections when the material is stressed repeatedly.
To cause fatigue in iron and steel you have exceed a certain threshold of stress. As long as the stress is below that point, t[he metal does not weaken](http://www.asminternational.org/documents/10192/1849770/05224G_Chapter14.pdf), no matter how many times you repeat the stress.
The problem with aluminum is that it is subject to fatigue from much smaller stresses than steel. Even a small stress will cause some fatigue, and over time as the stress repeats, the fatigue increases and eventually the metal breaks.
Take a steel bar and an aluminum bar of equal strength, and repeatedly bend them both back and forth. The aluminum bar will weaken and break much sooner than the steel bar.
In the case of armor, repeated stresses both from impact and from normal stresses of marching, riding a horse, and especially the stress from repairs will cause fatigue, which could cause sudden, surprising failure.
Another problem with aluminum from a medieval perspective is that it's much more difficult to [forge weld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_welding) due to its lower melting point, more rapid oxidation, and the inability to use the color of the glow as a gauge of temperature. Aluminum is highly reactive with oxygen, and quickly forms a coating of oxide which will prevent a good weld.
One further small issue with aluminum is its lower mass. A more massive object has more momentum than a lighter one. It's simply harder to push around. Of course, lighter armor has plenty of benefits, easier to put on, less tiring, and so forth, so this is a minor disadvantage at worst.
[Answer]
From [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Physical):
>
> **Aluminium is a relatively soft**, durable, lightweight, ductile, and malleable metal with appearance ranging from silvery to dull gray, depending on the surface roughness.
>
>
>
Emphasis mine. Medieval armor design was based on hardness, stiffness of steel. Weapon needs hard edge, too.
>
> Aluminium has about one-third the density and stiffness of steel.
>
>
>
So to have the same stiffness, you basically need the same mass, and more thickness - only drawbacks.
Of course, modern aluminium alloys are better than that. At the same time, modern steel varieties are better, too.
[Answer]
Aluminium [is used (wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_armour#Aluminium) in modern armour for amoured fighting vehicles such as the [M2 Bradley (wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Bradley). This demonstrates that the idea isn't ridculous.
In the case of the Bradley, the aluminium (presumably an alloy, most references to aluminium actually refer to Al-based alloys) is laminated. Wikipedia doesn't say what with, but in your case even a thin skin of steel over an aluminium plate could give a hard surface over a tough backing. This would be like ironclads, in which much of the strength came from wood, hence *clad*. Such an approach would be lighter than steel alone. Aluminium frames, even hollow tubes bent into shape could form a strong structure to hold its shape against impact and support a shell of steel over aluminium.
As Al alloys are quite easy to work, the steel skin might even be chainmail.
Inspired by your corundum answer: You could even replace the steel (if casting the aluminium) by a suitably hard stone embedded in the matrix. Of course individual chunks would get knocked out and broken, but so do [ceramic trauma plates in modern armour (wikpiedia again)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trauma_plate#Ceramic) and they're widely used.
[Answer]
## **TL;DR: Aluminum armor is plausible in the form of corundum.**
As many others have mentioned, pure aluminum foil/sheets is a poor (though light) armor choice. However, if someone really wants aluminum armor, we have another option. I understand it's not *exactly* what the question was answering, but let's explore it anyway for the benefit of others.
Crystallized aluminum oxide, better known as corundum, is a surprisingly feasible armor choice. It's extremely strong, the definition of a 9/10 on the Mohs scale. Normal steel has a hardness of 4-4.5 and hardened steel has a hardness of 7.5-8. What this means is that a steel blade, even a tempered one, wouldn't scratch the armor. In fact, the armor would be more likely to scratch it!
However, I understand hardness isn't the only consideration for armor material choice. We also must consider its weight. The specific gravity (A highly specific version of density) for corundum is around 4.1 The specific gravity of steel varies slightly, but is normally 7.7-7.8. This means that corundum armor would be nearly half as heavy as steel armor, weighing in at only around 26 kg!
We should also consider the availability of the material and manufacturing costs. This is where steel has a clear upper hand. Corundum is found only rarely (It's literally sapphires and rubies) and only in small sizes (rarely over 4-5 grams). This means that you couldn't have an armor made entirely of corundum (except if you allow magic, which I'm doubting based on the question), but you *could* have armor made entirely of small corundum gemstones inset in steel links.
Finally, if we're literally going to have an armor of small, glimmering gemstones, we might as well make it look like this:[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/iRWR9.jpg)
1 I tried converting this to density and then multiplying by the volume of a suit of plate armor, but then I realized two things: 1. You can just compare the SGs, and 2: The volume of plate armor is *really* difficult to find.
[Answer]
**Armor**
To disagree with the other stated ideas here, I think Aluminum could be a surprisingly good armor material.
Disclaimer: I don't have great sources on this and I am definitely not a materials engineer so please correct me if I'm wrong
From what I can tell aluminum is about a third as dense as steel, about a third as stiff as steel, and about half as hard as steel. That may sounds like a bad material, and it is if it is difficult to make in large quantities, but it also has some advantages.
1. Because it is a third as heavy, you should in theory be able to make it about three times thicker than a steel alternative while being about as easy to wear and use. This more than makes up for the lack of hardness, and actually has a significant advantage just by being thicker. That advantage is that when slicing through it, you have to pass through three times as much material, which means three times as much friction and mass to displace, which means that you may actually have better piecing/slashing protection from aluminum armor than from steel armor by weight.
2. Because aluminum is softer than steel, it is more likely to deform rather than totally break. This is particularly good when dealing with blunt impact because it absorbs a portion of the energy of the blow by bending, similar to crumple zones in a car
3. Another advantage of being softer is that it could in theory be easier to shape for the smith, which would also potentially make it easier to repair when damaged. This may be contravened by needing to be thicker, but I don't actually know that much about smithing, so I'll leave that question to someone with expertise.
4. If you need lighter armor at the expense of protection, aluminum would make for great chain mail. It would still do well enough for glancing/slashing blows, though it would do much worse than iron or steel at stopping a piecing weapon. The major concern (and I don't know how this would work in reality, but I would love to see a practical test), would be if the steel slashing weapon (lets say a knife) might just cut through the aluminum rings and get to you anyway.
**Weapons**
Also, just to make this answer complete, I agree with the other answers about using aluminum as a weapon material. That would not work well because being soft makes it not hold an edge, and bending on impact is bad for a weapon for the same reason it is good for a set of armor, it spreads out the force of the impact. Additionally, if you are trying to cut someone else wearing iron or steel armor, your aluminum weapon won't be able to penetrate it at all.
[Answer]
The simplest problem is that it would have been cost a king's ransom to make. As you say it was hard to refine, and as a result of that, incredibly expensive.
>
> emperor Napoleon III reserved a prized set of aluminum cutlery for special guests at banquets. (Less favored guests used gold knives and forks.)
>
>
>
This is quoted everywhere, unfortunately I can't find an original source, but this was already the 19thC. The earlier you go the less commonly available it is.
[Answer]
Chris H already has pointed out that aluminium is used is some modern armour, so this is just about weapons.
If you look at a modern climbing axe, it has an aluminium shaft. If you look at a modern javelin, it (often) has an aluminium shaft. If you look at a modern trenching spade, it has (often) an aluminium shaft. Aluminium is much better than wood for pole arms which won't break, though you probably will want the tip or blade to be something which is harder.
[Answer]
The only true benefit for using aluminum is that it is light, but in the case of body armor, that's not necessarily too good of a thing. Of course, this isn't the main purpose of armor, but heavy armor prevents your opponent from knocking you back too much. Most importantly, though, is that aluminum is used because of how easy it is to mold and bend, the exact opposite of what you want for armor.
] |
[Question]
[
The people of A. are a race of small, lemur-like people that build their villages deep in the forest on treetops. Since they live directly surrounded by forest in a vaguely Mediterranean Climate with short rainy winters and long, very dry summers, forest fires are a huge deal and can be devastating. For this and other (religious) reasons, fire is seen as a necessary evil, dangerous and volatile. It is handled with extreme caution and avoided whenever possible.
They have good night vision, so they rarely need lamps and they have almost no metalworking to speak of. (They prefer to trade with nearby dwarven settlements for weapons and tools.) Each village usually has some kind of ‘fire pit’ on the ground where they clear the surrounding trees, but this is again more of a necessary evil and they try to use it as little as possible.
Now the question is – what kind of food would naturally develop in such a culture? Both everyday food and special ‘treats’?
**Some additional information:**
The people of A. are omnivores, vegetarianism is very rare. (It would make sense that most of them are lactose intolerant.) They avoid building anything on the ground or clearing the forest. Level of technology is medieval-ish. Their general food sources (at least the ones I already came up with) are as following:
**Hunting:** very common, both with hunting parties for larger game and traps for smaller game. Fishing is common if larger rivers ore lakes are in the vicinity. Insects are considered tasty snacks.
**Livestock:** mostly small, near-flightless birds, larger villages will have herds of semi-domesticated deer. Almost all villages keep bees.
**Agriculture:** small, hanging gardens for herbs and vegetables. **No grain**, except for the occasional import. The forest around the village is usually altered and cultivated to include as many fruit- and nut-bearing trees as possible.
[Answer]
I'll only touch on the things we cook the most, fruits and nuts you've got covered and they don't *need* to be cooked anyway:
You can eat many animal products raw, especially when you're not raising them using intensive farming practices that increase pathogen and parasite exposure, but you can also cook fruit, vegetables, meats, poultry, and fish without using any heat at all. Chemical cooking examples include the vinegar in Sushi, and many pickles, and the fermentation of... well actually I can't think of anything that *hasn't* been fermented by someone at some time to either preserve it or make it more edible/palatable.
If they have access to worked metal goods they can theoretically make use of sunlight to heat food without the need for a flame.
So for everyday foods a lot of nut based dishes, including soaking in juices or alcohols and grinding for ease of transport, nuts supply a high energy to weight ratio and will probably fill the [caloric staple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_food) role in a grainless diet. For treats I'm thinking Honey and seeds, since cereals are an import they will be expensive and relatively inaccessible, Honey is always expensive and relatively scarce so confections using Honey and Sesame or Wheat would make a delicious and rare/expensive treat for a group on the described diet.
[Answer]
In Mediterranean climates sun drying is a pretty effective method for preserving food. The warm and dry summer is a good help when it comes to drying food.
You can sun dry fruits (tomatoes, almonds, figs, apricots, plums, etc.), herbs (time, rosemary, camille, etc.) , fish, meat and store them for the winter.
[Answer]
I know this answer sounds stupid but probably just raw flesh.
The Inuit, living in an environment with little fuel reserves, ate raw fish. Your lemur-people would most likely have evolved to digest raw meat better. In addition to that, fruits and nuts.
That does make fire seem rather obsolete though.
[Answer]
**Booze!**
[Acerglyn](http://www.donosborn.com/homebrew/acerglyn.htm) is mead made with maple syrup. Your elves could make other brews according to what was available seasonally in their forest. Humans have a rich history of making booze out of just about anything fermentable (except, very strangely, the Amerinds apparently did not make booze out of maple syrup...).
Other example of sap-based alcoholic beverages are [pulque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulque) made of agave sap, [palm wine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_wine), [coconut flower sap liquor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SdJ49z0EdE)("Fresh Tatikallu complete healthy Liquor") and so on.
Of course your elves would make mead out of their honey.
Booze is fun but it is also a very practical way to preserve carbohydrates. Sugar calories are not easy to store, especially as a sap or juice. Everything wants to eat carbohydrates. Fermented, these calories are preserved by the alcohol content. The calories are still good.
Calories from ethanol were important for our ancestors, especially those who were not getting many calories from other sources. I have heard that irish laborers in 1800s England got a lot of their calories from gin. [This study](http://www.scielo.br/pdf/bjmbr/v37n6/5096.pdf) showed that malnourished rats can maintain body weight with up to 40% of calories provided by ethanol.
Booze is also a fine artisanal export product.
Just remember what happened to Rip Van Winkle if you decide to go out drinking with the elves.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/n6D2l.jpg)
[Answer]
# Ceviche?
Last time I visited Miami I ate my weight in ceviche. For those who don't know, it's a way of preparing "raw" fish by "cooking" it with the acid in citrus juice. It's absolutely delicious and requires no heat or fire whatsoever.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceviche>
[Answer]
If you have a large communal firepit that is carefully controlled, Then there are a number of cooking methods that would be useful to your people.
[Smoking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoked_meat): The consecrated meat!
If your people build the fire inside something like a longhouse, it could serve as a place for religious gatherings as the sacred smoke fills the air. That same sacred smoke rises to the upper level where consecrated food stuffs are stored, and be the means of the smoke, are preserved. The fire must never go out! Go feed it some more wood from that mesquite tree!
[Clay Cooking](http://www.rootsimple.com/2013/12/campfire-cooking-fish-in-clay-vegetarian-options/) :Disposable Cookware!
The short answer is to have them wrap foodstuffs in a leaf then seal that in clay. Throw it into the communal fire and after a few hours, use a stick to pull it out. Break the clay and you have a tasty treat!
[Spice it up!](http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents/Spices.html): Mummify your meat.
Salt has long been used as a food preservative, and I imagine your people will use it a lot as well. Salt is not the only food grade preservative though. Various spices have been used for this purpose as well. Also, seeing as salt is going to be a relatively difficult to obtain substance, they may lean even more heavily on various herbs.
There is also [Pemmican](http://www.hi-tm.com/Documents/Spices.html) you get chunks of meat, fat, and dried fruits for great food for long road trips! You might have to work out something with he holy smokers.
Or they could just eat things raw. This will probably be the most common method during the warmer times for your people. The food preservation techniques like smoking, salting, and curing will be used to see them through the winter.
[Answer]
If they do not use fire for cooking, and your questions implies that they do not, then they would not cook their food, but this does not take much off the table - they might trade for cooked food, as a rare 'treat' (though this may not be considered as normal food, and viewed with suspicion through its association with fire).
Otherwise, they are free to eat what they like and can digest.
Some food may be kept allowing rotting so that it may subsequently be digested better (letting bacteria break it down first). This is not unusual for us, but we usually refer to it as 'fermentation' or 'maturing'. Traditionally game meat has been treated in this way.
This might be their favoured cuisine.
[Answer]
You specified that your people are 'lemur like'. [National Geographic](http://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/r/ring-tailed-lemur/)says that `They [lemurs] forage for fruit, which makes up the greater part of their diet, but also eat leaves, flowers, tree bark, and sap`, so all of these should be options. It also notes that lemurs are herbivores (your people are omnivores).
In most cultures, the ability to not just collect but *preserve* food is essential.
Because of the lack of fire, smoking and other things which require heat for boiling such as making jams would be difficult in the absence of naturally occurring heat sources, while the Mediterranean climate means that freezing is unlikely to be an option.
Looking at each of your listed food sources in turn:
### Hunting
If your people are able to eat raw meat without getting sick, then most of what they hunt will be eaten fresh and raw. If they need to preserve it then there are four main options: curing, fermenting, drying and pickling.
They can **cure** their meat with salt (to make things like proscuitto) or acid (to make things like ceviche), they can ferment it (to make things like lutefisk), they can dry it (to make things like biltong) or they can pickle it in vinegar.
### Livestock
Meat can be eaten and preserved as above. If they aren't lactose intolerant you have a whole world of dairy products, but even if they are you can still drink their blood (like the Masai do). Bees would of course give honey too.
### Agriculture
Again, most of what is gathered would be eaten fresh. Nuts keep for quite a long time without any extra preparation, and fruit and vegetables can be cured, pickled (like gherkins), dried (like tomatoes) or fermented (like kimchi) just like meats.
In addition, fruits can be preserved by sealing them in honey, and of course sugary things can be fermented to make alcohol (wine and mead, since your people have no grains).
[Answer]
Just wanted to point out that you can "cook" meet without the existence of fire. It is speculated that the Huns which where a nomadic tribe that travelled for days on horse, used their natural body heat and that of their horses to "cook" meat, by placing it between their body and the body of their horses while riding.
Maybe similar techniques would rise in a culture like that. Maybe some people would use their livestock to generate heat to "cook" meats.
[Answer]
I mean you sort of answered your own question when providing the food sources
**But I will do my best to list some of what they could do with it:**
* Sashimi (or the one that is straight fish): if they can domesticate deer then they can fish. PS: rice only needs to be boiled for us humans, these guys could contain an enzyme to process it naturally.
* Civiche: put an acid like lemon on fish
* Salads: duh
* Raw fruits and Vegetable: might seem odd given our modern diets but this was natural in many early cultures.
* Dates: a wonderful fruit that can be dried and last for long times.
* BEER!: dont need to boil beer, though you do need grains >
* **Mead: they got the bees, it's fermented honey.**
* fruit cake: there are bars/cakes that could be made from taking dates, nuts, and honey as a binding agent to form various dishes customizeable by whatever fruits you wish to enhance it with.
* **Volcanically spring boiler/deep fryer:** (had to list this) they could take a volcanic spring and boil their food in it (no fire). They could also extract all the water and replace it with oil to deep fry their food (would get a bit grungy but desperate times...).
[Answer]
There is a bunch of cooking procedures and recipes that do not need fire at all:
**Raw, but with style**
[Tartare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steak_tartare), [carpaccio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpaccio), [Sashimi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sashimi), etc. Raw meat or fish, finely sliced, chopped or minced, often accompanied by a vegetable garnish.
**Caviar**
If there is no sturgeons available, you can replace it with any other type of [salt-cured](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_(food_preservation)) [Roe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe).
**Cold Meats**
[Chorizo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorizo), [Salchichon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salchich%C3%B3n) (there are some types that require smoking, but most only need [curing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_(food_preservation))) and [Iberian ham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jam%C3%B3n_ib%C3%A9rico) can be made without fire of any type, and while they are traditionally made of pork, there can be also made of deer, boar, or any other type of meat. There are many,many other types of cold meat, but these are good examples.
**Don't forget the sauces**
[Mayonnaise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayonnaise), [Aioli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aioli), [Pesto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesto). Just to name a few in which no fire is required (In most cases, only the ingredients and a mortar).
**Burial cooking**
The korean [kimchi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimchi) is a recipe made with vegetables fermented in jars buried on the ground. Innuits have [Kiviak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiviak), which are whole birds fermented inside a buried seal skin (your people may need access to a cold environment, like a mountain top o really cold cave system). Other examples would include ancient irish people's [Bog butter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_butter) or chinese [Century Eggs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_eggs).
**Compost cooking**
You can create compost from vegetable organic matter: table scraps, grass clippings, rotting fruit, fallen leaves,the manure of large herbivores, etc. When properly prepared, the core of compost piles can reach easily 150 to 180 degrees, which could allow for (slowly) cooking many recipes. Afterwards, you get to use the compost as fertilizer and for soil amendment, as usual.
[Answer]
Mostly cooked tubers or cooked fruit, along with cooked meat/fish.
This is becasue the **biggest necessary evil they will have is cooking food**, especially tubers, meat, and certain fruits. Basically all other uses of fire, save perhaps pottery, is more of a convenience than a necessity. Let's compare studied human forest living cultures both are primates so this is a decent comparison. Mostly cooked tubers or cooked fruit, along with some meat/fish and occasionally some honey and nuts.
They will not be able to store food effectively in a tree top mediterranean climate. The have no salt for salting (forests tend ot be very salt poor), no grain for dry storage, it is a warm climate, and forests keep the air humid so the worst possible conditions for storage, so then need food continuously, thats fine thats true for many cultures. These cultures solve this by cooking what they do have, cooking food will let them get a lot more out of the food they have. Starches, fats, and protein availability are all greatly increased by [cooking](http://www.pnas.org/content/108/48/19199.short), to the point it is argued humans did not develop our large modern brains until after the invention of cooking doubled our caloric intake. Chemical storage (pickling, sulfuring) is not an option on a large scale without a preexisting food surplus to fuels the chemical creation. Smoking is one of the few storage techniques available but you need fire for that.
More importantly cooking is a big necessity in forest cultures. Grains are basically non-existent in forest ecosystems, tubers instead make up the dietary staples. Many forest organisms(especially tubers) develop toxins to protect themselves. Root vegetables like Cassava(Manioc) are famous examples, and the staple food of many forest/jungle cultures. Cooking destroys those toxins, making them safe to eat and greatly increasing what things CAN be eaten. Any forest living culture is going to see the value in this and exploit it immediately after discovery.
NO religion will be able to suppress this, since any clan that does cook their food will be able to field many many times more fighters in any conflict or just grow way faster than everyone else. The advantage is just too large to get around, many more foods, and many more calories from the food you do have is like having firearms when everyone else has stone tools.
**Now let's work on how to minimize fire use.**
Likely they will use a single communal cooking fire and, depending on village size, may all eat together (hunter/gatherer bands do this partially to ensure food sharing) but it also takes less fuel. this will let them minimize fire use. the single communal fire will likely have a large smoke rack hung above it and may have a kiln dug below it. It may even be built like a large kiln with mud brick or dirt walls to protect the forest. The more they can get out of the one fire the better. The only other option is very small fires in small ovens in each home.
Community size is an important thing to consider. The bigger the community the less hunting and gathering will be sufficient to support it. To get medieval levels of population density they are going to need large scale farming or livestock.
You may want to use the [Yanomami](http://Yanomami) are considered one of the higher standard of living forest horticulture cultures and their diet is mainly cooked manioc and plantains, with some meat, fish, landcrabs, grubs, fruits, with nuts, honey or rare fruits as treats. They also grow a lot of tobacco as well as various medicinal and hallucinogenic herbs. They use slash and burn agriculture but there is no reason you have to.
just for an idea this is manioc and it can be made into bread, soups... basically anything you can do with a potato you can do with manioc.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cV3J2.jpg)
[Answer]
I would think a sort of fruit-based jerky or dried fruit. Based on the climate you have put forth, maybe the species could stock up on ripe fruit during the rainy season. Afterwards, during the dry season, they could mash the fruit into a fibrous pulp, and stretch it on a wood frame (similar to those used by native americans to dry/smoke jerky and tan hides) to dry. When the fruit is dried, it would have the consistency of a thick fruit leather.
**You also stated that hunting is very common among the people of A.**
If fire is out of the question, an unsmoked, salted jerky-like meat substance might be a suitable option. The preparation of this substance could be similar to the preparation of the fruit leather. The meat could be cut into thin, fatty, slices, and salted and/or honeyed. The meat could then be stretched onto the wood frames, and let dry.
**A couple questions:**
Do the people of A. have access to any metal? (Although I doubt they do, considering the fact that they are afraid of fire, and metal must be smelted.)
If so, the reflective properties of polished metal could be used to heat food substantially.
Do they have semi-advanced weaponry?
Eg. Swords, bows, arrows, catapults, traps, ballistas, etc.
Just curious.
[Answer]
**Jalapeños!**
A fruit that contains the heat of a fire but without the danger. Cook something that is mildly warm, insert jalepeño, and you get an illusion of flame-cooked food.
[Answer]
Heat from a fire is not the only way to cook/preserve food. Some alternatives (most but not all previously mentioned):
* Drying
* Pickling/salting/brining
* Fermenting
* Solar ovens
* Sugar/honey curing (you said most villages keep bees)
* Oil preservation
You didn't mention mushrooms but your forest dwellers probably see many kinds of seasonal fungi that will keep well if dried.
Going in the opposite direction, many grains and seeds are quite nutritious and tasty when sprouted.
If you want to throw in an exotic touch, farming food insects could work.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm in the middle of sketching out a new story, settled on a post-apocalyptic version of our present. The main feature of this environment would be blind, mindless, aggressive and contagious versions of humankind. A variation over the zombie genre, if you want; they're not zombies, but they may as well be for the sake of this discussion.
My "zombies" are mostly blind, but are keen to react to sounds - at least sounds that seem out-of-place in the natural environment in which they live (because I can't have a zombie horde going mad near a river, for obvious reasons). When no "target" is detected, the zombies just stay on their feet, doing absolutely nothing.
Knowing this, the human survivors may have developed ways to attract as little attention as possible. My main colony would be settled in a place zombie-free, but it may be needed to send scouting party out of the safe zone to salvage scraps.
In this setting, the scouting party may need passing through an heavily zombie-populated area - or, in general, make as little noise as possible when traversing an unknown environment.
So, my question is: how do you move silently? I'm considering a variety of factors, from using finger-spell or others non-verbal signs of communication to the actual movement itself.
I figured out that the scouting parties would need to walk with the minimum amount of noise possible.
I'm considering making them go out bare-footed or just with socks, or other kind of soft footwear, because it should make less noise than the standard boot, but I'd like some reality checks on this.
It seems from a shallow google search that even soft tennis shoes may serve well - without having the risk of harming one's foot while walking or running.
Other measures would require tight clothes over flappy ones, avoiding metal objects that can clank together, and so on.
What do you think? I'm mainly concerned about footwear at the moment, but other ideas are welcomed.
[Answer]
**Gear**
The fist step is make sure you have the right equipment. Your soft-sole theory is a good one, as Native American Hunters wore soft-sole moccasins so that they could move quietly while hunting. Then, as you say, tight clothes that don't rustle (much) when moving are a must. Any smooth, soft cloth will work well for this.
When it comes to gear, everything necessary for travel must be secured and within easy reach. The less movement someone has to make, the better. This means equipping only essentials for the task at hand. Packs will be great for things that just need to be carried from place to place, but smaller is better: less opportunity to snag on things. The same rules for quiet materials apply here.
Weapons should be the quiet type. Most people think of melee weapons as being inherently quiet, but this is not always the case. A long, metal blade sliding from a sheath can be quite loud in some cases. To this end, axes and similar style weapons that can be hung from a loop may serve better, and also be multi-purpose.
**Training**
Once you are properly outfitted, it is time to be properly trained. Silent movement is a practice in tactics - that is, knowing how, where, and when to move.
First you must listen to the place you're in. If it's completely still and silent, so must you be. Learning to take advantage of every other noise that is normal is a must. Wind and water is your best friend, as these noises disguise the odd sound of movement through an area.
Where to move is dictated by objects on the ground and types of ground. Bare dirt and wet grass are good at muffling footfalls. Dry grass, sticks, dry leaves, etc. are like land mines for quiet moving, and should be avoided.
As for how to move, the [Fox walk](https://birthdayshoes.com/how-to-walk-barefoot-faq) is method that both early and modern trackers use to great effectiveness. The basic premise is to move the legs slowly while walking. The first contact with the ground should be with the ball of the foot, followed by he heel, and then the body weight. The real trick lies in not placing the weight of the body down until the footing and silence are guaranteed.
Everything must be done slowly and deliberately. The traveler's kit must be painstakingly assembled with this in mind. Once these truths are internalized and preparation is made, it is very possible for people to move silently in almost any environment.
[Answer]
Any of the following applies:
* It's easier to remain undetected if detectors are not there: plant noisemaking devices a few hundred meters away from where you need to go. These can be (e.g.) noisily flapping kites held not far from ground, but outside "zombie" reach". These things, to be effective, should be used as "distraction" only when needed, otherwise "zombies" would adapt to them and they would lose their "luring" effectiveness.
* Cover any noise you may make with louder noise (e.g.: follow a noise creek, travel together a buffalo herd, etc). If nothing suitable is available a strip of the above "noisemaking devices" can be planted artificially and slowly made as loud as required to cover as soon as "zombies" adapt to them.
* Be really silent: use a hot-air balloon. If the travel is highly repetitive it's possible to setup a "sky cableway" using a few balloons and a long line (it should bust be strong enough to pull balloons, not to hold them).
[Answer]
Thick socks over your boots like every boy's own adventure story.
Terrain is important here, but the biggest thing is going to be keeping your regular paths clear. The classic giveaway is stepping on a stick, make sure there aren't any sticks, glass bottles to kick etc on routes you have to use regularly.
Silent clothes are next, no zippers, metal buckles etc. Nothing that's going to jingle as you move. No exposed metal that might just happen to tap against another piece of exposed metal. Nothing baggy or loose that's going to flap in a wind. The same is true of all equipment.
Hand signals work both in noisy environments and places where you need to keep silent so there are standard ones you can learn.
Use natural background noise to cover your movements. You specifically mention a river, but a noisy river is going to be your best friend for moving around near these zombies.
[Answer]
Human used to walk barefoot for thousand's years so there would not be too important problem with this once the foot is used to walk without protection.
You just have to avoid sharp object like glass debris or open cans, both for injuries and sound.
Next, since bringing food and supply is necessary and using hard container can be mandatory, you have to wrap everything with cloth and even bring spare one for scavenging.
At last, it's best to prefer noisy environment like next to a river, or when it's raining. Artificial environment, with solid and flat floor, are more favourable for stealth than natural environment where grass and leave make sound when touched and can conceal sound hazards like twigs.
[Answer]
More of a lateral answer and highly dependent on the ressources available:
In all places where noise cannot be prevented (at a looting place, at your car park, ...) use noise-generating devices. Ideally they should produce noise equivalent to the one at the location.
You mentioned your "zombies" won't be attracted to natural sound sources. If it's normal to hear a gate rustling open and cars driving around or gunshots being wildly fired around 24/7 in a location, no zombie will care if there is actually a door opening or a gun shooting. If the noise is loud enough it can cover other, more usual sounds like a silent talk.
Keep in mind that you need a little bit of infrastructure. The easiest and most general solution is probably a loudspeaker coupled with long-living batteries or a small powersource (generator or solar). They should be installed in an inaccessible location (mounted on a high wall, a tower or on a bridge where you pull up the entrances). It will probably take a few days or weeks for the zombies to adjust, so it is no solution for a quick raid.
I suppose you also can't use it inside or near human settlements. The constant noise would probably drive the inhabitants crazy due to sleep deprivation. Also, I guess that the noise of a human settlement is to diverse to be accurately represented by a recording.
[Answer]
>
> My "zombies" are mostly blind, but are keen to react to sounds - at least sounds that seem out-of-place in the natural enviroment in which they live (because I can't have a zombie horde going mad near a river, for obvious reasons)
>
>
>
If zombies are attracted to strange or out-of-place noises, you might be able to train the zombies to ignore the sounds of people moving past by making them a normal part of the environment. Place solar or battery-powered speakers in places (paths, roads, shelters) ahead of time that mimic the sounds of people walking, talking, snoring, sleeping, stepping on sticks, etc.
The zombies might go nuts over them at first, but they won't get far with eating a speaker. Eventually they'll just ignore the sounds, because you can't have a zombie horde going mad near a river.
This happens in real life with scarecrows. You need to move the scarecrow rather frequently, or else the birds will notice that it's not a real person and just ignore it.
[Answer]
There's no real need to move stealthily, you've identified a huge weakness in the zombies: When there's no stimuli around they stand still.
What you need to do is build a bunch of noise makers that attract the zombies to a particular area. Depending on your level of technology available, you can have them be full on drones controlled remotely or through AI, or something simpler like a spring driven cart. Heck, you could even make loud broadcast towers that drive zombies to a particular area, leaving roads clear for people. It also helps round them up for destruction, if you perfect an area weapon that can be used against them.
[Answer]
Rain.
I'd go for times when there is naturally a lot of noise. I personally like to be in the woods at night. And when it is raining I cannot hear any animals moving about around me. When it is not raining and there is little wind, it is possible to hear lots of little noises from some distance.
So, in your scenario, I would try to move during the day (blind scavengers), use sneakers or move barefoot, and do so when it rains.
[Answer]
This is something that bothers me about the whole "mindless hordes" problem:
The survivors seem equally mindless.
If technology has REALLY fallen back to "horse and buggy":
Cobble together some hand-cranked air-raid sirens, Get a group of riders together (Think along the lines of "Pony Express" (If you are feeling nostalgic; you wouldn't need to change their original ads very much.)
Draw them off. Post some guards for stragglers. Loot happily.
[Answer]
Scouts walk slowly, deliberately, picking their foot placement carefully, avoiding any noise making substances. We are talking about a step a minute.
All gear has to be secured so there is no clicking, tapping, or such.
Shoes must have soft soles.
Here is your problem. How are you going to exfiltrate the scraps without making any noise? I would consider employing an [active noise cancellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_noise_control) device on your cart.
] |
[Question]
[
The world's been hit with an apocalyptic event, and humans are forced underground for survival inside large bunkers suited to house a couple thousand people. The bunkers are well supplied with modern technology, but aren't fully self sustaining. Over time, the need for these bunkers to trade and connect becomes evident. However, there are some obstacles in their way, mainly:
* The world above is hostile, and with their current resources and technologies, it's unlikely a group of people would survive more than a couple of weeks outside.
* They know there are other bunkers within the two week trek, but have no idea where other settlements are.
* They can create simple tools like compasses and other navigation tools, but lack the ability to create more advanced things like vehicles.
Here are some other factors that might help in answering the question:
* The world above is a hostile due to an unnatural Ice Age and constant severe storms, settling/surviving above would take too much energy, and reaps little benefits.
* The settlements are powered by solar arrays supplemented by natural gas.
* They have old world walkie talkies, but no radios and not enough knowledge to make those walkie talkies into anything more than what they're intended for (two way, short ranged communications)
With that in mind, is there a way for them to find each other, short of brute forcing and mapping out everything? and, more importantly, how do they establish trade that is safe?
[Answer]
It seems odd that an organization would set up multiple 1000 bed bunkers and not provide some method for them to contact each other. So any search for other bunkers should start by a thorough review of whatever documentation and paper work already exists within your current bunker.
If you find no clues there, your best first step would be to increase the visibility of your bunker. Build a tower and paint it orange. Start and maintain a signal fire. If there is a loadspeaker system or air-raid siren on the bunker complex, use it periodically such as at dawn and dusk. These actions will serve two purposes...
* They will help your search parties find their way home at the end of each foraging mission.
* They will make it easier for other bunker's search parties to find you.
Now all you need to do is start a methodical search of the area within one week of your base. Have your searchers keep their eyes open, looking not only for other bunkers but for radios, search-lights and other technical items which would facilitate communication. Also have them mark your territory, leaving spray painted messages and arrows everywhere.
If the weather is so bad that there is no threat of roving bands and pirates, then it is safe to advertise your bunker's presence and hope that other bunkers are doing the same.
[Answer]
## There are several methods for location depending on your world...
### Triangulation
If your world's weather doesn't prevent walkie-talkies from working, then they can try to use those for location of other shelters. If a signal is received, they can then use triangulation to determine a location. It's a trivial task to set up. The biggest limitation of this method is walkie-talkie range. While they often publish ranges of up to 50 miles, a quick Google search of product reviews shows the best non-commercial/non-military grade units usually max out at around 2 miles in real-world use. Obviously, military-grade units should have better range and might therefore be more practical. The lack of interference from other radio sources may help, too.
If you upgrade your walkie-talkie radios to CB radios, the range can be increased higher. Or switch them to short-wave radios and the range can be quite far -- line of sight at a minimum.
Though adverse weather will reduce your radios' ranges. This is probably the weakest method, though keeping a radio channel open at the home base "just in case" can help.
### Signs
If your shelters *want* to be found, they can plant "flags" to help others find them. Signs at set distances pointing the way, high enough to be seen above any trees, etc. would work well for this. Think of things like billboards where the shelter paints "shelter XYZ is 2 miles south" or provides compass headings. Low-tech and easy. If billboards won't work, ground markers will. Teams, over a period of time, can build markers as simple as large arrows made from rocks pointing toward their home shelter.
### Signal fires
The shelter can gather brush or use their natural gas reserves to light signal fires. The bigger the fire, the further away it can be seen. If the wind isn't high, then smoke can also be seen and tracked for miles around during the day. At night, the fires would be visible at a distance. This also would be a good method to dispose of any non-recyclable material the shelter consumes.
[Answer]
What you describe sounds like climbing mountains or travel through deserts. Hence the best solutions is to behave like you're climbing a mountain or you're travelling in a desert.
You must create caravans that travel short distances and create a commercial post, in your case a new bunker or a shelter, or using the analogy of a mountain, an encampment that is constantly supplied by sherpas. Each shelter should announce its location to the surrounding area.
After some time a map will be created showing the bunkers and shelters, good location shelters will turn into permanent settlements, like commercial posts between two bunkers.
[Answer]
Allow me to suggest that the same technology that was discovered back when Steam engines ruled could be co-evolved here without a stretch of credibility: namely short wave radio. It has the advantage of being able to reach ( as long as ionosphere is undisturbed) virtually the whole world, it can be produced by
1890's -era hardware technology and hand-manufacturing techniques. A simple above-ground antenna could be constructed over time, negating the need for long term surface exposure. When combined with a simple "morse" code or its equivalent, short wave radio would allow your subsurface refugees the same as we have today with SETI and other extraterrestrial communications, we broadcast, we listen, we hope.
[Answer]
This is so simple that this answer will probably end up on the low content and length queue.
They would use seismophones, [seismometers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismometer) and seismographs to detect the underground activity of other bunkers. It would be easy to build a seismometric communications. Any heavy machine banging away at a large piece of rock or metal with a hammer or stamping tool, could send vibrations through the Earth's crust.
Then it's only a matter of digging in the right direction. Eventually a system of tunnels will connect the bunkers together.
[Answer]
**For Trade:**
>
> They can create simple tools like compasses and other navigation
> tools, but lack the ability to create more advanced things like
> vehicles.
>
>
>
I assume you mean like modern vehicles such as cars, planes, etc.
Rail or even trade routes is out because of the shifting icy landscape. Air travel is out because of the storms, although if there are seasons of calm, it might be possible to travel great distances using hot air balloons... but the volume of trade would be limited by weight.
What remains are overland caravans using a sled and some animal to pull it. Even if its a human powered sled, transporting goods on a sled is something that should be considered minimum level technology.
**For Communication:**
For the purpose of finding more settlements, an air balloon should be able to identify new bunkers by spotting their solar panels. A quick landing could verify whether it is occupied (and could provide a new "colony" for overpopulated settlements). Actually any active settlement would require regular cleaning of the solar panels, so it should be pretty obvious from the air at a settlement is occupied.
The air balloon crew could also use the radios to reach out... and be the mail delivery service of the new world.
If the settlements are in previously urban areas, there should be plenty of electric and telephone wires (non-fiberoptic) that SHOULD be relatively resistant to weather. Put together crews to splice wires from all of the unusable raw materials and create a telephone between settlements. Old style manual operator switch boards would be needed to replace the modern computer switches, plus power to the telephone wires and you can have a simple hardwired communication system.
[Answer]
These are all underground bunkers, most likely they will leave in sensors that will [detect earthquakes and such](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake#Measuring_and_locating_earthquakes). I suggest turning up the sensitivity to detect more subterranean activity or creating something that can be sensed by the other bunkers, simple explosives should be effective.
going the simple explosive route the bunker that starts this can send Morse code to communicate. This will be visible to every bunker around, so there will be no secret meetings.
[Answer]
They could meet by pure chance on a foraging mission.
You could increase that chance by having a landmark near both of them, maybe the bunkers were built in a circle around a city, or near a lake and they meet in the city by chance. Or they see evidence of others when they visit and eventually track them down using good old fashion tracking skills.
In terms of 'how they know that trade is safe': This way they could trade in the city, rather than letting the others know where their bunkers are, and build trust over time.
[Answer]
The obvious answer is they trade with people, who trade with other bunkers. Hardy caravans of stoic outsiders who are prepared to run goods between settlements - both existing topside ones and the bunkers - will gradually find bunkers as they travel and explore.
But you need to attract the trade caravans. Once they've discovered you, why would they bother to use you as a trade node? One immediate idea is that a self sufficient bunker must be able to produce food, probably growing fruit and veg -this might be hard outside in your blasted icy wasteland so the bunkers have something the outsiders want.
However, you want the bunkers to trade with each other, so they need to need things other bunkers have and be able to produce surpluses that other bunkers need. Requiring trade is easy, if a bunker's hydroponics packs up then they need food. But you need to find something they have - and more importantly, **produce** - in surplus that another bunker would require? I'd suggest you should manage these inter-dependencies with different systems breaking down in different bunkers. Say, one struggles to grow food, another struggles to pump up natural gas.
Then you have:
* Bunkers are discovered.
* Trade goods can travel between them.
* Trade is required/desirable.
[Answer]
NOT ALL IN ONE BASKET...
Assuming that the duration of their stay underground hasn't caused any mutations or lost of eye sight and whatnot. I would start by addressing the current status quo. Why has it shifted into a need to reach out from the safe zone, or more solidly, why is the safe zone no longer safe. This would most likely come about during a town meeting or similar.
Plan, vote, execute.
In a modern society to get anything done there is a committee who delegates and ultimately decides on the course of action, thusly creating the Plan. A vote on which of the committees ideas holds the best weight in the eyes of the people. They would focus on these 3 topics:
* Method - most logically by foot, protected by clothes, carrying maybe a bedroll or tent. This is because the people have forgotten to pass down rounded education to their children and thusly now only have limited intellect.
* Explore - teams of explorers, if possible multiple teams are best. Send one up, send one through. Have an "air team" and a "cave team" Where they each struggle differently in their own hostile environments. But when out in the real world explorers should be building waypoints or emergency bases. Places to run to in extreme situations when you can't get back to base. These waypoints could also eventually create a grid of safe spots used to travel and trade, possibly, as well as map markers. Because knowledge is power especially when passed down.
* Educate - at this point education needs to be emphasized as lost intelligence is the worse thing any society can deal with. Schooling should be continued or emphasized as extremely valuable for survival. Especially by the experienced to the young.
The most logical path is explore ALL avenues and expect NONE to flourish. Do not put all eggs in one basket. I would hope the committee would agree that sending 2 or 3 or more search parties would be best. One via external extreme hostile environment, one via caves and tunneling, and more in other directions if possible. Small teams of 5 to 10.
That said, the cave exploration would stop quickly once they reach a material harder than handtools will allow them to cut through. It would take decades to tunnel with handtools any real or usable distances. Explosives would speed things up but could cause more damage than help.
Luck would have 1 team find an underground river complex, a reason to send multiple exploration parties. Rivers are like roads and can be utilized for travel and trade. Obviously they would need to be able to build boats.
Luck would also have a 2nd team find old not yet collapsed abandoned subways, or sewers if near a major city. Using the rails or water to carry trade goods.
Luck would also have a 3rd team find pre-existing tunnels within the natural gas mines. Maybe stumbled upon once depleted.
Logically though no one would return without a plan.
All of that said is why I, as a member of that important committee, wouldn't put all my eggs into one basket. Think of it like this, its easier to hit an unknown target in pitch darkness with a shotgun rather than with a handgun.
[Answer]
>
> How would purely underground settlements find and trade with each other?
>
>
>
I have had the same idea several years ago.And it is a great track to follow! My idea was about a fully ice covered earth (Snowball Earth). I mean no way out of the the underworld! Underground settlements find and trade with each other was a matter of survive or not.An army of diggers was the story focus.Forget radio technology, no way it works inside hard rock. Sound is your friend. Inside rock sound goes further and goes much faster. Like World War II the best submarine tool for seeking by friends/foes was a man ears, the hidrophone operator ears.
<http://uboat.net/articles/id/52>
>
> Captured underwater noise was transmitted directly from the hydro-phone to operator's ear-phones. The each ear-phone was connected with the one hydro-phone. By strength of noise in particular ear-phone, the operator detected from which side (starboard or port side) the noise coming. The ship turned round until the noise was now same in booth operator's ear-phones. When the noise was same in the both ear-phones the ship's crew knew that the ship is on course to the source of the noise, i.e. to the submarine. Range of that first underwater sound detectors was up to 4 nautical miles, accuracy was from 15 to 20 degrees.
>
>
>
I dont finish my tale because where I live it is impossible to publish. But I think it could work great for a length novel. Good luck.
] |
[Question]
[
I am writing fiction about Earth becoming a rogue planet. I'm thinking about how future archeologists would deal with 21st century history. Datacenters might be treasure troves for them, as long as the data can still be retrieved.
What I don't know is wheter a hard disc or flash memory unit can be destroyed by cold, directly or indirectly - or if the data in it may be erased.
Can computers be destroyed, or the data in them be wiped out just by being exposed to an arbitrarily low temperature? If so, what would that temperature be?
Indirect destruction is ok - I remember that in the book *The Martian*, the protagonist bricked a laptop by trying to use it in the atmosphere of Mars - the LCD instantly boiled due to the low pressure (I consider that a loss because he didn't have the resources to fix it). But here I'm thinking more about temperature.
(Note: [bricking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brick_(electronics)))
[Answer]
# Sorry, magnetic data does not last.
**Flash memory** degrades over time. The relevant industry specification JEDEC JESD218A endurance specification requires a flash memory chip that’s turned off and stored at 25˚C to retain data for 101 weeks. Not even two years.
In practice, you start encountering single-bit failures within 5 years, and complete storage collapse within 20 years. It'll be quicker if you live at high altitude, or if the storage location is not air-conditioned and thus experiences temperature swings.
**Mechanical Hard Disks drives** fare a bit better. While most of the mechanical aspects of the drives fail quite quickly (2-7 years) when inactive (an unpowered hard drive will fail *sooner* than one in continuous powered use), the actual data on the platters will last a bit longer.
But the magnetic domains on the storage will creep, fade, and decay in a process known as "[bit rot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation)". This failure rate will vary a lot, depending on environmental factors and the manufacturer of the media. Hot is bad; cool but non-freezing temperature is better. Ice formation is *very* bad. Vibration is bad. Radiation is very, very bad, even the everyday normal background- and cosmic radiation.
A drive in an underground data center that was originally climate controlled, with effectively moisture-sealed air and with significant radiation protection from cosmic rays due to its location and no Radon source(not dug into granite), will be about the best possible location. Yet even there, the media will have some errors within 10 years, *many* errors after 20 years, and apparently blank storage platters after 100 years.
Magnetic and electrical storage simply do not last -- they are optimized for low-cost, high-speed reliability in the short term only.
**Other media**
Just about the only bulk data storage that we normally use that will survive on a decades-to-centuries timescale is printed optical disks. Note *not* home-written, dye-based optical disks, those are worse than all the others here, lasting less than 5 years! We are talking mass-produced, stamped-in-metal-foil-on-polycarbonate-disk CDs and DVDs. With even a modicum of protection against the elements, a good quality DVD should retain its data for millennia or longer. They will become brittle and delicate, but a good archeologist is not bothered by such things.
Note that we can build a magnetic hard drive to retain its data indefinitely. At least on the century timescale. The process involves forming the platter with distinct "islands" of magnetic material, instead of the continuous magnetic domain that is normally used.
But NO current commercial drives work like this, because the manufacturing cost is immensely higher, the maximum storage density is a magnitude lower than for normal drives, and the read rate of the drive is also correspondingly lower.
But it would be possible to build a magnetic hard drive that will last "forever", for such purpose as a Time Capsule, Data Ark, ultimate backup of important military data, etc.
But it would need to be planned and manufactured for just that purpose. Consumer-level data centers would not be using such tech.
There are also storage methods that will last for centuries, even millennia.
It is not so hard to store data indefinitely, all that is needed is a storage that focuses on long-term safe storage, not ease of access, speed of access, or minimizing of cost. (all three of these are prime drivers for datacenters, of course!)
Example: the microfiches stored in a mine, suitably inerted and stored paper books, some forms of DVD, etc.
There will definitely be huge amounts of data available to archaeologists, but common usage datacenters will not be a part of that.
[Answer]
Forget those consumer data centers. They will lose their data quickly, radically, completely, within your lifetime.
Archaeologists probably are interested in data 500 years old and older.
The German government is currently [storing one barrel of microfiche per year](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarastollen), containing what they perceive as relevant information, in an unused mine. Those microfiches are made to last and to be readable by low tech. They are guaranteed for 500 years and plausibly readable after maybe triple that time. A real treasure for archaeologists!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NYPUR.jpg)
In Southampton, a company developed a glass storage disc that may outlast our civilization. The data stays readable for 60 million years, if you treat the disc gently. Sadly I have never heard from them again after they made their announcement. Your archaeologists would need quite high-tech laser readers to decipher those, though. I'll leave a [link to the announcment](https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page) for you if you're interested; and [a second link to the advertisment site of the company](https://www.5dmemorycrystal.com/).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pNzrM.png)
[Answer]
While low temperatures are beneficial to integrated circuits because they inherently slow down diffusion processes which on the long run would tamper with the precise arrangement of the circuital elements and all its stacks, they are still a source of damage for the circuit.
In particular with temperature going down, any material will shrink at a certain rate. If the contraction rates of adjacent material is too different and there are no other means of releasing the built up stress, some material may crack. The lower the temperature drops, the higher the chance that a crack occurs. This is the precise reason why deep space probes need a thermal source to stay warm.
I doubt that a data center electronic would be designed keeping in mind operating at the temperatures of a rogue planet, thus the scenario I described above is very likely to happen.
[Answer]
There are already very good answers on this question, and I'd like to point out something a bit out of scope from the question, which I believe is relevant.
There is a lot of data that, if you don't know the format of, is indistinguishable from noise. So even if the data survives on the DVD, drive, disk, microfilm or whatever storage medium you end up using, the format of it will be most important to would-be archaeologists. And that is ignoring the technology necessary to read said data in the first place.
Try reading a word document without word installed and you might get an inkling of how hard it might become. You might be able to hand-wave it away though...
[Answer]
Magnetic media, look at the other answers. Flash storage is even worse.
There are however writable DVD's generally sold as mdisc that manufacturers claim will last 1,000 years, due to the use of inorganic storage layers. They are read compatible with DVD devices.
Inorganic blu ray media is similar to mdisc and will probably also be legible.
The trouble then becomes finding an operable reader.
Since optical storage is used by cloud providers for lesser used data, and blu ray is generally inorganic storage, more may be readable than you think, subject to finding a working drive. Organic dye based dvd-r is likely to rot as per the other answers.
[Answer]
The atmosphere will freeze solid. Mainly over the oceans. It will be liquid for a while.
The process will produce rather harsh climate that will collapse most buildings.
And don't even get me started on how brittle everything becomes at -40C. Below everything is worse. Uneven thermal shrink + already brittle material = every single chip or magnetic record is gone.
Sorry, but no.
Paper may survive better, if exposed only to vacuum + cold and not to strong winds. Better if a storage is prepared beforehand, in a mountainous region (in order to avoid flooding with liquid nitrogen) and deep underground (to use some geothermal heat).
] |
[Question]
[
Assume you are a secretary of education in a country facing serious labor shortages.
The Dear Leader has already ordered a closure of all unnecessary fields,
which includes everything beside STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), Medicine & Accounting.
Now it's your job to trim years from primary & secondary education.
What's the maximum number of years that you could trim from the current 12 (8 primary, 4 secondary) without sending unprepared high school graduates to college?
[Answer]
First 4 years of the elementary school are basic subjects, you can't cut anything there. In the next 4 years of the elementary and 4 years of high school the "unnecessary" subjects begin. Assuming they are 50% of the student workload, your maximum is 4 years,all other things being equal. Since you don't have enough teachers & science labs, I would aim for something more realistic like 2 or 3 years at most.
[Answer]
**No need to trim anything.**
Your loyal students will volunteer to enter the labour pool every year. Exactly as much as the Great Leader asks.
**The students can do it, yes!**
How to actually do that and also retain sufficient college education? Simply volunteer the bottom 10% scoring cohort every year. This way the student population will get better and you get your labour as well.
Now this will get old very fast, but no problem! Your best students will volunteer to study, say, 10% faster and the bottom 20% will get volunteered for the year after.
**Maximum mileage.**
Rinse and repeat until your loyal medical service indicates that the maximum mileage is reached. Say, 50% passes the original program in half the original time and the bottom 50% drops out.... erm volunteers into the labour force.
Time to start similar programs in other area's by then I suppose.
[Answer]
**1 or 2 years, tops.**
That's if you want to keep level of preparedness near current Western standards, which isn't a lot, sadly.
The average brain needs to reach a certain level of maturity to be able to digest complex concepts. Also, too long lessons are inefficient. A 4 hours long math lesson would be so mind boggling for a child of 10 (or anyone, 4-hourers are awful for attention) he may even learn less than a 1.5 hour.
**Alternate suggestion: Keep the same duration**
Instead, repurpose the extra hours you get from slashing the nontechnical fields.
-Before the age of 14:
Fill in with reading comprehension practice (i.e make them read, a lot). Text is the most compact and fastest way to store and transmit knowledge. A good reader has a much better ability to learn than a barely literate one.
Of course, you'll want to be picky with the reading material. After all, you want good readers, not cultured readers.
Also, keep PE. Actually, increase PE hours and make them uncomfortably closer to military drills. You want fit, obedient youglings.
-After 14:
Reduce schooling hours to 4. Have them work part time.
You need workers *now* and you have to do something with those who are bad at maths, after all.
Also, fresh-out-from-university engineers are... Larvas, really. They won't be of much use until they get work for one or two years. If your engineering students work on something related while they are getting their degrees, they'll be much better workers than otherwise.
[Answer]
Rather than trimming years off education, bring the school into work.
That is, incorporate "labouring" time in education and call it physical education. Include helping your "elders and betters" in the underlying social expectations, and instill this in the child from an early and formative age.
Consider teaching some skills later, for example teach "survival maths" instead of higher maths like calculus, which is left to late-high school, which is after the earliest leaving age.
And start schooling earlier in life - kids can do some hours at a kindergarten or pre-school from 2 years, and work up towards a 6 hour school day by the age of 5, and an 8 hour day by the age of 10.
If you're short on labour, use the older kids to look after the younger kids. This also teaches skills to raise more labour over time. This is playing the long game though, so assumes Glorious Leader is forever.
You don't want a bunch of illiterate former students in your labour force, so make schooling a lifetime process. Instantiate Night School classes or Adult Education (either optional or compulsory) to continue educating your labourers. Also foster a culture of knowledge sharing, like reading over television.
Finally, consider a "high school leaving exam" where student must perform a series of day to day adult things to graduate
Some ideas for school-leaving exam - once student can perform 85% of this or better, they may leave school and join the workforce, and get a social status boost, and a pay increase:
* Buy some food items using exact change from a mixed purse. Points off for buying lollies, or not getting the right list items.
* Make a nutritious family meal from approved list of ingredients.
* Wash the dishes and clean up
* Change a baby's nappy
* Clean and tend a cut in someone's finger
* Discuss Glorious Leader's latest... something... with the examiner in a mature fashion.
* etc.
Point of this is that a smart 8-10 year old might be able to leave school, but an 18 year old might not be able to perform the same tasks. What happens when school kids can't achieve by a certain maximum age we leave to your imagination.
[Answer]
In the United States, schools generally take almost three months off every summer. From a labor perspective, this is wasteful. Teachers can't do any teaching when schools are out. So three months of the year are lost. There are 12 years of school, each with 180 days. That's 2160 total. There are two ways that this time could be used more efficiently.
In the first, the students rotate. A quarter of the students take off summers, but the rest take off different times per year. Each teacher teaches for 240 of the 260 days. This increases the availability to students by 33%. Teachers may demand 33% more salary, but you don't need more people. Technically this doesn't decrease the number of years of schooling, but it does address the labor shortage.
In the second, the students go to school year round. 216 days instead of 180. After 10 years, that's 2160 days, same as 12 180-day years. This reduces the number of school years by 2, effectively making teachers 16.7% more efficient.
A challenge in this is that it doesn't allow for summer sessions for students who fail. Considering your description, I'm guessing that such students would be flunked out of school entirely. Why waste such limited resources on someone who isn't learning?
[Answer]
[I assume that you would slash other fields and not literally close them, as one would need some teachers for this education project anyway]
OK, let's try:
1) It seems that minimum compulsory school starting age can be 5 and it would be no miracle:
source: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education#Per-country_variations_in_the_age_range_of_compulsory_education>
2) What's the starting benchmark? (USA? Some other country?) Because according to PISA test top Asian countries beat the USA by ~90 points which is equivalent of 3 years of schooling. Yeah, good luck in bringing Confucian values to the West...
(for calculating for other countries: <https://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf> )
3) No idea how much can be gained from slashing program... one year? two?
So under the most optimistic scenario, including earlier starting (for practical purposes presumably starting to squeeze more program in to kindergarten and getting an extra year from it - I could imagine getting 6 years. Of course that would after such system would actually start working, which would take a while. And that would be presumably the first regime would block social media for purpose of efficiency boost...
[Answer]
All of it - separation of 'work' and 'education' is rather artificial and produces a lot of problems. What happened in middle ages if you were born into a blacksmith family? You naturally learned about the job since being the baby, you engaged more and more in family business, and by 12, you could basically do everything (depending on strength).
I consider our schooling systems, where doctors are surprised to find that the everyday reality of the job doesn't correspond to their romantic imagination about it after 15+ years of study ineffective.
[Answer]
# Educate only as much as is appropriate to the industrial needs of the nation
Since we're in a "Dear Leader" situation, education now includes only the skills required for the greater glory of the nation.
The cities will be the hubs of engineering prowess, but consider that a welder or riveter does not need a degree, he needs a steady hand and a good eye, but that does not need to be compromised by excessive education. Administrators need to be educated only so far as to be able to perform their tasks. Farmers need only so much education as required to look after their crops and animals, it's not hard to outwit a field of grain, obedience is the skill to look for here (because nothing can cause a famine like central control).
Those who show greatness in their work should be considered for further training to progress to more complex tasks for the greater glory of the nation.
All this being considered the children should be sent into work rotations early. Those who show no particular academic ability should be left in a job that suits their intellect with what remaining education required to be completed on the job.
Splitting the youth into two groups, each spending a month in education and a month working from the age of 10 should allow you to maintain a steady working population and double the capacity of the educational institutions. As each child drops out of the education system at whatever age they choose, they already have a set of skills to continue working in the task they were doing in the working cycle. This will also reduce the burden on their parents of paying to support them.
* Encourage those of intellect and ability to stay in the education system to achieve greater things for the glory of the nation.
* Encourage those without intellect or ability to stay in work that suits them, also for the greater glory of the nation.
Methods of "encouragement" used at the discretion of the Dear Leader.
Too much education is a bad thing, it leads to rebelliousness in the population. A tendency to think for themselves, this should be discouraged. The majority of the population should be encouraged to be obedient.
Greater glory to the nation.
[Answer]
You could cut off as many years as you like, as long as you decrease the difficulty of college accordingly. If college is no harder than kindergarten, you could probably enroll them at age 5.
Of course, I assume you intend to keep the difficult of college the same and just try to press-gang the students through.
I'd like to point out that the answer depends greatly on the quality of the curriculum students have received so far. I happen to reside in a state in the USA which switched over to a curriculum centered on passing standardized tests. The result has been startling: highschool seniors moving into college are complaining that they are *vastly* unprepared for college. All they learned is how to pass tests. For us, there's no reasonable way to cut a year out of schooling, and it's going to be a decade before the damage we did by "teaching to the tests" can be undone.
The best that we can hope is that we can read between the lines in our Dear Leader's actions. Closing all disciplines except STEM is an absurdity in any educator's mind. The only way this could ever be valuable is if we were in a life-and-death war which needed massive STEM innovations in the next decade. This would have to be a poignant enough war to risk virtually everything we fight for (while STEM does produce value culturally, it's not focused on it... the loss of all other cultural efforts would be devastating). In such an environment, we would be able to restructure the entire system.
In such a situation, we don't need well rounded humans. We need robots. We need a bunch of H. sapiens bodies whose minds have been plumbed to act like nodes on a giant computer grid. Dear Leader would certainly know exactly what sort of technological tricks were needed before cutting all of the rest of our society off.
In this case, I think you could cut it off so that children go to college at 12. That's based on the success I have seen from Chinese students at memorizing their math and science topics. We would want to take up their approach to STEM as fast as we could.
Of course, the real answer there would be to do away with schooling entirely. It sounds like we really should just be turning all our children into warriors, like the worst impoverished 3rd world countries do...
[Answer]
Literature can go. You don't need it to make medicine or build bridges. Composition is a little more important but can probably be axed entirely (your supervisors and people can deal with letters that show a poor understanding of connotation) too. Go back to the days of language class and reading class, where you worry only about understanding clearly-written text and formulating a grammatically correct sentence and not all that tone, themes, structure nonsense.
Reducing history learning is probably a good thing, actually, at least for you, the presumably absolute leader of the nation trying to cut corners in education. Teach the stuff that makes you look good, forget the stuff that makes you look bad, teach the stuff that makes your enemies look bad, forget the stuff that makes them look good. Make sure the story of that one kid who opposed the state is taught. Especially focus on his failure to do his schoolwork satisfactorily and his eventual demise. In fact, make his grave the logo of the education committee and make the students pledge allegiance to it daily.
Skip biology, skip anatomy, skip geology, focus on physics and chemistry. Keep health, though. In fact, double health. This will allow you to remove more biology and anatomy. The students don't need to know how their bodies work to maintain them.
Arithmetic can be condensed. Mandate the use of calculators to save time skipping the execution of concepts such as long division.
Physical Education can go, too. Assign "run for 60 minutes" along with homework every day and assign them pedometers so you can be sure they do it.
Art and music, goes without saying.
Now using my own experience as a springboard, these cut corners have eliminated:
* 7 combination lit/comp classes
* Let's say 6 history classes
* 1 biology, 1 anatomy, let's say 3 classes' worth of assorted geology, biology, anatomy concepts dispersed through the different grades which will allow you to condense
* Let's say 3 classes' worth of assorted arithmetic
* 12 PE
* 2 art, 2 music
And gained:
* 1 health
This is a total savings of 36 classes. Again speaking from my own experience, at 8 classes per school year, this saves the state **4 and a half years per student.** Rearrange your education system to be organized by semester and this becomes 9 semesters. Start them a year earlier and **you can have your "fully"-educated high school graduates gathering diplomas as early as 12 and 13 years old.**
[Answer]
Well, i shall first find out how many STEM and doctors that are needed. Then there will be a state exam to gradually remove people who have no ability to qualify for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), Medicine & Accounting.
At every level, the bottom 20% are graduated for released to the labor pool. So if you are a poor student, you years of education is 0. And you will work with great joy for our Dear Leader.
I expect I can shorten the education for most people to just 3 years. Just enough to read and enjoy the slogans of our Dear leader.
[Answer]
None. Especially for STEM.
And what does labor shortage have to do with not educating “soft” fields, arts, and literature?
] |
[Question]
[
I know that there was question about political system based on your wealth. This is little variation of it:
**What if your amount of votes was waged according to what you pay to the system?**
Rules:
1. If you turn legal age, you are allowed to vote (and be elected)
2. No matter what you do, you have always at least one vote
3. For every dollar you paid on taxes you get one extra vote
4. For every dollar you received from state (social or other supports). you lose one vote
5. No extra buying of votes is allowed. If you want to have extra votes, pay your taxes properly.
6. Your "voting account" is added up from election to election and are "nulled" once new government is estabilished
7. If you have less than fiscal year between elections, data from last closed fiscal year are used.
Othervise, usual parliamentary system is assumed with government having 4 years for usual turn
Some examples:
>
> If you are only receiving social supports and government lasts 4 years, you have 4 votes in total in next election.
>
>
> If you turned legal age a day before elections and you pay no taxes, you have 1 vote.
>
>
> If you are super rich person who avoid taxes, effectively paying nothing to the state where you reside, you gain same amount of votes as someone on social support.
>
>
> If you taxed 0,99 dollars in fiscal year, your problem. Only full dollars are counted, no rounding (State wants to gather money)
>
>
> When you vote and you have >1 vote, you have to spend all your votes. Basically you check "I vote for cat lover party" and if you have 3 votes, the cat lover party will get 3 votes.
>
>
>
In my imagination, this is system which should make prefference on these who pay to the system. While rich people can have some influence, lots of rich people avoid paying taxes.
But I feel this system is flawed and cannot figure out why.
So, what woud be implications if everyone followed this system?
[Answer]
I predict a rapid transformation into an oligarchy as soon as people realize the following flaw:
By increasing taxation on your voters, you can arbitrarily increase the weight of their votes. The trick is doing so without alienating your voters, by doing other things for them that do not fall under the umbrella of paying them, such as passing legislation that benefits them. For instance, the lawyer party would increase the amount of damages that can be awarded in civil law, or introduce new laws to increase the amount of civil suits brought forward.
Therefore, every year the strong interest groups would get richer, and therefore stronger, and therefore richer, and therefore stronger, until money and political power is concentrated in the hands of a select few.
[Answer]
The system is highly unstable. In a democracy, as soon as someone has either 1/2 of the votes or 2/3 (depending on the exact rules of the democracy), they can change the system. It is unlikely that a population of 100'000 or (much) more can agree on how to completely replace the government, that's why it rarely happens.
With the proposed system it doesn't need 100'000+ people to agree. Taxes are inherently flexible. Most people use that to minimize taxes, but by maximizing taxes for one year, a few billionaires would be able to get a scary vote count. Call it an investment. Add some advertisement and a publicity campaign (which they already use in the current system), and a 2/3 majority is in reach. Once you have that majority, you do as the socialist party did in Germany 80 years ago: you implement a government system and policies that benefit your people, by putting your arrogant neighbors in their place, securing Lebensraum for your people, fighting against the rising threat of communism, and removing ethnic groups who are born evil - on the downside, **you lose the sanity check** democracy provides, which would tell you all the stuff you did was evil and stupid.
[Answer]
**This system would encourage "tax farming":** Taking credit for the collection of taxes.
Currently, many transactions are taxed. **Whether the buyer or the seller is considered to pay the tax is currently fairly arbitrary.** For example, in the United States:
* Income taxes on employee wages are deemed to be paid by the employee.
* Unemployment insurance taxes on employee wages are deemed to be paid by the employer.
* Social Security and Medicare taxes on employee wages are deemed to be half paid by the employer, and half by the employee.
* Sales taxes and gasoline taxes are deemed to be paid by the end user.
* Carbon taxes are deemed to be paid by the owner of the power plant or oil refinery.
* Business & occupation taxes (a kind of gross revenue tax) are deemed to be paid by the employer.
* Customs duties are deemed to be paid by the importer.
* Property taxes that are based on the value of the property (as opposed to the value of services provided to the property) are deemed to be taxes paid by property owner.
* Property taxes that are based on the value of services provided to the property are deemed to not be taxes.
* If the government is a party to the transaction, often the transaction is deemed to be tax-free.
**Suppose the party in power wanted to increase the votes of a category of government employees.** The party could make the following changes:
* These employees' pay would be deemed to be taxable, with the payroll taxes deemed to be paid by the employee. The employees' nominal wages would be boosted to offset the change in taxes.
* These persons' purchases of mandatory government utilities (such as water, sewer, and drainage charges) would be deemed to be taxes paid by these persons.
* Business and occupation taxes would be broken out by employee headcount (or employee salary) and deemed to be paid by the employees. Governments would pay B&O taxes to themselves, and deem that these employees have paid such taxes.
* Union dues for government workers would be deemed to be taxes paid by the government workers. The revenue collected from these taxes would be paid to the unions, as payment for services rendered by the unions.
* **These changes could easily double the voting power of government workers**, while minimizing the voting power of business owners.
Suppose that a different party was in power. **Suppose this party wanted to minimize the power of government employees, and maximize the power of business owners.** It could make the following changes:
* All payroll taxes would be deemed to be paid by the employer. The employees' nominal wages would be reduced to offset the change in taxes.
* Taxes paid by businesses would be deemed to be paid by the owners of the businesses.
* Taxes paid by governments would be deemed to not affect anyone's voting power.
* Businesses' purchases of mandatory government utilities (such as water, sewer, and drainage charges) would be deemed to be taxes paid by the owners of the businesses.
* B&O taxes would be deemed to be paid by the owners of the businesses.
* Sales taxes would be deemed to be paid by the owners of businesses that made the sales.
* **These changes would eviscerate the voting power of the poor, and of people whose income is primarily from wages. Their voting power would be transferred to the owners of businesses.**
[Answer]
It obviously gives those who make more money more political power, but we already have that: it's called lobbyism and campaign donating. So I won't ponder too much on that.
The problem with this system is that it's not the people who decide how much taxes they pay or subsidiaries they are entitled to. The politicians do (when rich people don't pay taxes, it's because of tax loopholes *the politicians made for them*, either intentionally or unintentionally). So this system would motivate politicians to tax those who support them and subsidize those who oppose them.
Example: You are a politician of the cat party and got voted into office by all the cat-lovers for your non-compromising pro-cat stance. But you only got a paper-thin lead over your opponent from the dog party. Next election, you want it to be a much safer win. So what do you do? Simple. Impose harsh taxes on cat ownership, so cat owners gain more voting power. Also, severe tax-cuts for dog owners. That way any dog-lovers will lose voting power.
In the next election, the voting power of your supporters will have increased and that of your opponents will have decreased. You will easily win the election, even though you made politics which are directly opposed to the interests of your voters.
The obvious solution would be to have the citizens decide how much taxes they pay and how much subsidiaries they take. Unfortunately, large parts of the population of most countries are largely apolitical. They only go voting because it's free. If you put a price-tag on votes, you will drastically reduce voter participation. With people not caring about their voting power, people will max their options to receive as much money from the government as possible.
If you want to create an incentive for people to pay their taxes, then voting power is simply the wrong carrot to put on the stick. I could imagine some which would work far better, but that would be the topic of another question.
[Answer]
There would be lengthy debates on what constitutes "support." How do you handle people who get a salary from the government? Soldiers, civil servants, government officials. Assuming there is an exception for those payments, people would argue endlessly if their case falls under the exception or not.
* Say veterans get health care. Are those part of a pension package they have earned or are they government benefits?
* Say people get compensation for jury duty. Benefit or earned salary?
* The government might decide to subsidize industries for strategic reasons, e.g. to preserve domestic aircraft manufacturers or agriculture. Is that "support" or are people paid for the job of preserving strategic assets? Anyway, would it count if people are subcontractors of such a company?
[Answer]
Well, this system might be more workable if it wasn't `$1 = 1 vote`. It scales up so rapidly.
I'm a student in the United States which has relatively low taxes, and I still pay around a grand or two a year in taxes to the federal government. That's so many more than one vote, no one with only one vote would bother voting. My guess is no one with much less than 10,000 votes would bother.
What about tax returns? As a student, I get the vast majority of the taxes I paid back. Do those nullify my votes?
My state has no income tax, do state income taxes count toward federal elections? How would my state run elections if there was no tax to work off of? Would they count sales tax? I probably wouldn't bother to track my sales tax all year for another hundred votes or so, when other people have thousands.
Rich people pay very low tax rates (in the US), but often they pay much higher nominal dollars, regardless of how much maneuvering they do. This question really boils down to: **What if we give millionaires thousands of votes and poor people none?**
[Answer]
The system would immediately be run by the rich, with negligible input from everybody else. Right now, we are worried about how Super PACs may be corruption our democracy. With the system you envision, there's no need to waste money on Super PACs, trying to get people to vote for your candidate. You can just buy them outright.
From [this](http://taxfoundation.org/blog/top-1-percent-pays-more-taxes-bottom-90-percent) article, the top 1% of the US currently pays more in taxes than the *entire* bottom 90%. There's a lot of fuss about the rich not paying their taxes, and percentage wise there might be some argument there. However, from a raw number of tax dollars, the 1% simply put more in the US coffers than the 90% do. That means the 1% don't even need to sell you on their candidate. They can literally outvote you, simply because they pay so much more in tax money than you do. It would take one round of voting for them to vote in only pro-rich people, spend 4 years putting in legislature to protect their position, and become a ruling aristocracy. Why? Because you handed them the government on a silver platter... literally.
[Answer]
### Background on taxes
There are (large) differences, but the tax system is set so that everyone (who can) contribute to the society (at large). Furthermore, there is usually the concept of redistribution implemented: the richer pay more than their less fortunate neighbours. The generally admited use of taxes is to benefit all the citizens equally: schools, hostpitals, army, police, etc.
However, there are contribution from the government that are focused on certain part of the population. On the one hand, it is quite unpopular to let a large part of the population die of hunger or in a snow storm for lack of housing. And if popularity wasn't enough, it can be shown that lower income spend everything in the economy: they buy food, services and products, contributing to the overall GDP. Both of these reasons convinced many governments to provide benefits ("social") towards these citizens.
On the other hand, companies create jobs, products, which will generate more taxes and lower the needs for social help. Many government provide some financial or other help to companies to facilitate their job creation. There are many ways to do that. One can be direct subvention. In some countries, a company may receive some money to build a new factory. It could be another direct help by reducing the taxes. It could be more general by having tariffs imposed to protect an industry, changing or setting laws (e.g. "online piracy"), etc.
### New Voting Rules
The votes that one has would be something like
$$V=P-S-D$$
where $V$ is the number of votes, $P$ the amount of taxes paid, $S$ the amount perceived as part of the society (roads, and the others mentioned in the previous part) and $D$ the direct money perceived as you mention in your question. To simplify, social help that are similar for all citizens are included in $S$ (for example, in Germany, parents receive 184€/months for a child, regardless of their income). Let's add indices $r$ and $p$ for the more and less rich members of the society respectively.
* We have, $S\_r=S\_p$,
* Due to the redistribution concept, $P\_r>>P\_p$,
* For richer members, they often receive no direct help, their companies might, but themselves none, so $D\_p > D\_r \approx 0$.
As expected it comes that $V\_r >> V\_p$. It was intuitive, but we got it explicitly detailed.
### New Regimes
Your idea was to convince the rich people to pay their taxes by giving them the extra votes. So they do get extra votes and would probably pay their taxes. However, they will decide on the government (extra votes), and probably choose those that favour them. How? Simply by creating more ways to get a higher portion of their taxes back without losing the extra votes: help, laws, taxes reduction, etc for their companies and not themselves. So you will get a government of rich people, elected by rich people to favour rich people.
In short, **you are legalizing corruption** and favouring lobbying.
[Answer]
A lot of answers so far (including mine) point out what the practical problems are. But let me add a more fundamental one:
>
> That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
>
>
>
It says the governed, not the taxpayers. The fact that some long-dead people signed a declaration centuries ago doesn't make it right, but this specific statement has stood the test of time rather well.
[Answer]
A few points your system is flawed:
* How about other forms of tax like VAT, Corporate Tax, etc.? Would your system mean every legal person (including corporations) would earn votes, or their tax money worth less? In the first case, the enormous influence they gain over the society would lead to catastrophic results, in the later case the equal treatment of legal persons would be harmed, which is one of the basin principles of democracy.
* In your system wealthy people - even mostly tax avoiding wealthy people - gain more influence which will almost automatically lead to enlarging wage gaps and social injustice.
* How about citizens temporarily working in another country? Nowadays they can vote in their home country, since they will return to live there.
* How about foreign citizens temporarily working in your country? Can a foreign power change/defeat your government by creating a subsidiary in your country with highly payed employees?
* In normally functioning democracies, retired people pay practically no taxes. That means you automatically close out the old people from the decision making.
[Answer]
Oh wow. There is so much wrong with this.
I see a relatively stable solution that could be enacted by the rich: everyone is their defacto-slaves (no income, forced to work to keep the system running) while they pay a nominal tax.
Not even hard to implement.
The rule about partial dollars not counting is troublesome: that threshold could be increased to, say, 1 million and most of the country is disenfranchised without any chance to overturn it (no more votes). One wouldn't need to change the threshold actually, a mandated deflation works, too.
A wealthy person can pay taxes in full to get political power and **profit from it by giving themselves government contracts.**
Reducing their employees' paychecks at the same time (more company profit, more taxes to pay), thus even less chance to resist this sort of thing.
*No representation without taxation* is an awful system.
] |
[Question]
[
Set some 50 years in the future, every spaceship in space is powered by a nuclear powered reactor and most of them came equipped with an ion propulsion engine for acceleration. I noticed that every spaceship's captain and engineers are drilled to wait for at least 60 hours before restarting the nuclear reaction again, especially after their ship had experienced a power phase out; it is clearly stated in the protocol and there will be a hefty fine for those who blatantly ignore it. I heard from some of those who has retired from the service mentioned that it could be to prevent nuclear poisoning, but come on, we are already in the space age and we still need to wait for the spaceship's engine to warm up? Why is that? any solution to expedite this?
[Answer]
## Your coolant takes time to melt
Back in the days of the Soviet Union, there was a class of high-performance submarine called the [Alfa class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa-class_submarine).
This submarine used a [lead-cooled reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-cooled_fast_reactor). By doing so, it managed to compact the size of the reactor significantly, create enormous thrust allowing the submarine to even outrun torpedoes.
This caused the U.S. lots of anxiety, until it was realised the downside of such reactors was that the lead must be kept constantly in a liquid (molten) form and if the reactor stopped running, it would solidify and create a huge chunk of lead in the reactor - permanently disabling the submarine.
As a result, maintenance of the submarine was a major problem - for simplicity the reactor was kept on an 'always-on' mode, however for large periods of downtime there were significant problems with heating and pumping this type of coolant at coastal facilities.
Your spaceships could have similar design characteristics to the Alfa class, requiring any of the following:
* The need for high-performance reactor
* The need to keep reactor space minimal (easy to imagine in a cramped spaceship)
* The inability to keep a reactor 'always-on' and requiring coolant pumping and heating
Such constraints are easily conceivable in a spaceship with design trade-offs required to offset issues of power, size and weight.
[Answer]
## XENON Poisioning
A fission reactor works by maintaining a delicate and precise balance between creating and destroying free neutrons. When U235 splits, it releases neutrons which can hit other U235 nuclei and cause them to split.
If the growth rate of that process is greater than one, you have an explosion. If less than one, the process fizzles. If exactly equal to one, the reaction is sustained.
Simple, really.
But, the reaction environment does not stay constant.
The U235 splits into other elements with varying half-lives and nuclear behavior. Xenon-135 is short-lived isotope produced from the decay of another fission product. Xenon-135 is an especially good absorber of neutrons, which makes it hard to get a sustained reaction. Doing so requires removing much of the deliberate neutron absorbing control rods, and makes the reaction, if it gets started, difficult to control.
[Here is a video explaining the problem,](https://www.google.com/search?q=xenon%20poisoning&oq=xenon%20poisoning&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l7.2319j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#) and the Wikipedia page: [Xenon Poisioning](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison%23:~:text%3DXenon%252D135%2520in%2520particular%2520tremendously,as%2520xenon%2520precluded%2520start%252Dup.&ved=2ahUKEwjclP3B6P7pAhWhSTABHe_XA-wQFjANegQIDhAx&usg=AOvVaw2MnAxSpmcBqlBZqWHKfpwF).
It is a real problem, and could result in a loss-of-ship event.
## A little more data inspired by comments
Xenon-135 is not formed immediately when Uranium is split. It is formed when Iodine-235 decays into Xenon-135. The half-life of Iodine-135 is short ([Wikipedia reference](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_iodine)), but because of that half-life the level of Xenon-135 takes a few hours to stabilize at new level. This creates a complex damping effect as a reactor's power (and thus the rate of fuel fission) increases, and instability as power is decreased.
Xenon-135 probably played a role in the Chernobyl melt-down and fire. The output of the reactor had been substantially reduced for a few hours, and then was ordered to be increased. The Xenon-135 load was higher that steady state for the reduced power level. To increase the output, the influence of the control rods needed to be reduced. It is likely that a localized reaction then grew out of control and ignited the graphite moderator.
This problem exists in any fission reactor that produces Iodine-135, and is not limited to a U-235 reactor. Thorium and Plutonium reactors must consider the levels of Xenon-135 in the control practices.
[Answer]
Because the reactor is sealed and inaccessible to crew whether operating or not, the maintenance cycle for a restart requires the use of dozens of tiny robotic drones to crawl through the pipeways and ductwork looking for and repairing minor cracks and faults. Although the chance that the damage to a reactor from a single phasedown would be so bad as to cause disastrous consequences without that maintenance pass is small, it IS nonzero, and it's definitely true that as maintenance cycles are skipped, the chance of a catastrophe skyrockets.
Thus, all prudent shipmasters allow the drones the full 60 hours that it typically takes to run a comprehensive cycle.
] |
[Question]
[
I'm building a medieval fantasy setting for a tabletop RPG, and have had the idea to make an introductory mission framed as the PC's final test in their training, prior to being licensed as adventurers (kind of like the "Superhero School" trope).
The part I'm questioning is how an adventurer's college could ever actually make sense. In real life, free companies and mercenaries were not organized or licensed, and were often a menace when not actively employed (indeed, they'd make a good villain). Likewise, privateers were licensed, but they operated at sea, not within their employer's borders. They could serve as the ruler's "black ops" teams, but that would cut my PC's off from the iconic RPG shenanigans and mission types. Small stuff like bandits or border disputes can be better handled by a professional army, not murder-hobos. In theory, a guild could fit the bill, but again, how would that not cause instability?
Does anyone know of other settings that have world-built something like this and done a good job, or real-world examples, or even just armchair pontificating on the subject?
[Answer]
**Think of it as a Guild.**
The Guild got a royal (or ducal, or imperial) warrant which graciously allows them to organize *dungeoneering* parties, see to their training, and come down like a ton of bricks on any freelance amateurs. A team of journeymen should be well-trained to handle such interlopers. The Sovereign doesn't do that themselves, that's what the Guild is for.
So the only way to become a *dungeoneer* is to apprentice with a Guild Master. At some point, the apprentices are examined to gain Journeyman status. By the time they *could* strike out without Guild approval and survive against monsters and guild enforcers alike, they're well on the way to becoming Masters themselves.
But it isn't all a protection racket. The Guild provides pensions and apprenticeships for surviving spouses and orphans, and it takes care that *nobody* goes into a dungeon who cannot tell a ward from random graffiti.
---
Note after a suggested edit: Journeyman is a guild rank and not suitable for translation into less specific but gender-inclusive language. If widows should become surviving spouses in general is a question about the setting, I'll accept that edit. And I *should* have thought that there are Queens, Kings, and designations in between.
[Answer]
Real-World-Example : Some US States require bounty hunters to have a license.
For the government, it makes perfect sense to limit the trouble/collateral damage that adventurers cause by:
* selecting people who look like they won't cause trouble (no criminal record, psychological evaluation, ... )
* teaching them how to interact with civilians and authorities in the course of adventuring without causing trouble
* indoctrinate them with a professional codex
* threaten them with revoking the license in case of codex violations
[Answer]
**Salvage company.**
**[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wwu3I.jpg)**
<https://magazine.boskalis.com/issue04/amazing-race>
Adventurers work for the Company. The Company sends out scouts to investigate lucrative opportunities, or receives news of such opportunities. Then the Company will assemble and outfit a team to go claim what they can. Company intel on the opportunity will determine who might be in the party, what sort of party they send and how the party is equipped.
Company assets are at stake. If the team members get killed or screw up or come home empty handed it is a loss of time and resources for the company. They want their employees to succeed because that is how they succeed.
This would be great for a role playing game because the Company will also be part of the plan - handlers, armorers, possibly non player characters who accompany the team either to fulfill a role or as observers. There are other companies who compete for opportunities and in addition to the hazards posed by the adventure / salvage site, there is the possibility of one or more teams from other companies arriving at the site. Competitors are not necessarily enemies. Your adventurers might fight these other teams, or trick them, or thwart them, or join forces.
---
That linked salvage company website is great. It really does look like exciting work. Landing on top of a dead ship and descending down into the darkened hull sounds like a real life adventure.
[Answer]
Armchair pontificating you say? That's my specialty, don't you know.
The main fictional example that comes to mind is The Witcher series where the monsters of the world are such that Witchers were created to give humans a fighting chance against them. While fantasy is littered with farmboys-turned-dragon-slayers and similar things, it seems odd that essentially normal humans could take on some of those monsters with any real degree of success.
One could argue that the Elenic Knightly Orders fill similar roles in the Elenium and the Tamuli. Although these are theoretically churchly orders with special dispensation to practice heretical arts, they seem to tick all the classic adventurer boxes at various times. Of course what we mostly see in the books relates to the champions of the Elenic orders, but there are hints that even those champions occasionally do work that isn't directly at the order of the Church or the state.
Back to the pontificating though...
Honestly, anybody who thinks that even a well-trained normal human with some fairly easy to acquire gear would do anything more than annoy an adult red dragon is mildly hilarious. Of course not all adventurers are out there providing handy foil-wrapped snacks for big bad monsters, and there's plenty of other work available for a trained and licensed "adventurer" class, or classes.
It turns out that armies a damned expensive to maintain, and if you don't send them out to do battle frequently they end up being useless when you need them. And if you're already at war with someone then it's unlikely your armies are going to be sitting around idle when it comes time to root out a group of bandits who are making life tough for your merchants and lower classes. So inevitably you're going to get private guards and - for those without the economic clout or constant need - guards for hire.
Imagine you're a merchant who really wants to make a profit on a shipment of rare spices or some such, but the only really profitable routes are beset by bandits. You get this opportunity maybe 4-5 times a year, so it's not worth the expense of maintaining a guard detachment. Much better to hire the guards as needed, pay them for their work and maximize your own profits. Who are you going to hire? A bunch of murder-hobo types or some certified and licensed professionals who are guaranteed not to just kill your wagoneers and take the goods for themselves? You're going to pay a visit to the local Guild of Adventurers, naturally.
But adventuring isn't just guard work, it covers all sorts of activities from theft to theological matters. And the Guild can either provide the manpower you need or find someone who can. Not just because they have a good health plan, but because they have schools training people to do the work. And if you want to do the work you do it under the guild, because murder-hobos are obviously not trustworthy.
To get to a system of colleges and formal training you'll need two basic things:
1. Demand - an environment with enough need for guards, thieves, tomb raiders, spies and so on to supply sufficient demand for not just warm bodies but *trained* warm bodies.
2. Competition - because nothing drives innovation and quality like a good trade war between competitors. You don't get really advanced schooling infrastructure without a good reason, and competition is a good one.
If the setting has enough work - banditry is common, easy monsters that the hunters aren't capable of dealing with, lots of old ruins and valuable loot dotted around the mountains and so on - and is gritty enough that your kingdom doesn't keep a standing army of elite soldiers just in case they're needed, then having a variety of adventuring guilds is probably not implausible. You might need to travel a few days to get to the nearest town large enough to have a guild chapter, or perhaps just send the job details to the guild house by runner to get the right team for the job.
The guilds aren't just there for the customers though, they're also providing vital services to their contractors. The best smiths also trained at guild-run schools, and if you need something special for a job the guild outfitters can probably get it for you. For a price. And when an adventurer walks into a new town it's nice to know that their guild papers will get them a reasonably-priced room and the opportunity to make a living. Just as long as their certifications are relevant for the locally available jobs.
[Answer]
**A college for licensed adventurers? Probably not... but licensed adventurers? Oh, yeah.**
@BlueCloud771's example of bounty hunters and @Willk's example of salvage operators are great examples. I can add to them the most common "licensed adventurers" of all:
*Fishing & hunting guides*
Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of fishing and hunting guides are engaged each year to give (mostly) amateur hunters and fishers the adventure of a lifetime. But let's add to that, too.
*Tourist guides*
These are people who range from travel agents to locals who know where all the parties are.
My point is, what's an adventure? In your world, you're likely thinking about strapping a two-handed sword to your back and some ~~stolen~~ gently-used chain mail and engaging the local licensed member of the *Monster Slayer's Guild* to help you get that dragon head you've always wanted hanging over the mantle. But compared to [climbing *El Capitan*](https://www.travelyosemite.com/things-to-do/rock-climbing/meet-our-guides/) or [white water rafting Victoria Falls](https://www.shockwavevictoriafalls.com/white-water-rafting) or [touring East Los Angeles](http://www.lahoodlifetours.com), it's just another adventure! They're all the same.
Now, not all tour guides need to be licensed. In fact, here on Earth most guides aren't licensed. I'm not a fan of big government, so I don't think that's a bad thing, but I can see if you planned to [tour Bolivian mines and set off some dynamite](https://www.iexplore.com/destinations/south-america/tour-the-silver-mines-bolivia) that it would be nice to know if your guide was an experienced miner with safety credentials that would rival a Boy Scout's merit badge sash — or the town drunk who happened to score some blasting caps.
**But a college?**
But if you think about it, there's not any place in the world (that I know of, to be fair) that *trains tour guides.* Tour guides either have (a) bookoo experience or (b) tons of training in a related field (like mining). 99% of the time, it's (a). Therefore, I can imagine the *National Organization for Killing Indigent Demons, Dragons, and Ingenious Nomadic Goblins* (NOKIDDING) imposing licensing restrictions to ensure the greatest safety and quality a tourist's money can buy.
All you need to do [to become a member of your local chapter](https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/roleplaying-game/how-to/start-a-dungeons-and-dragons-group) is to prove your worthiness by bringing the dripping heads of four monsters, demonstrate your proficiency with sword and bow before a panel of accredited judges, and pay your membership fee. That's the really important part... the fee....
**TL;DR**
Licensing? Yup, that's completely believable. College? It's your story, but pretty much all examples of guides, hunters, etc. here on Earth don't show a college that churns them out. But in some cases those guides benefit from college experience in related fields.
[Answer]
Aside from the excellent points people provided here, I have to add 2 things.
**Effective, governmental or otherwise, control.**
This is the biggest problem and the crux of the issue. If this is a normal setting with no magic that can aid the government then normal banditry is an actual issue as there no effective policing so treasure hunting is even worth as there is no chance to actually lose anything.
So point is before even giving a license a chance a TH, treasure hunter, has to ask: But why should I bother?
So in video games you can go to the nearest dungeon or portal to hell, get a lot of loot, walk to the nearest town and exchange that for a lot of gold.
In this model there is 0 incentive to get a license.
But contrast that with unlicensed hunting in a developed state.
The risk of doing that is much higher and the government can track and apprehend the person way more effectively.
So you have to figure out a compelling reason why a TH **has** to get a license.
I would suggest something like taxes or proof of wealth or something similar.
This is difficult in the medieval world but if your TH can't sell those gems he acquired from a dungeon in the nearest town without a license then a black market exists or they have to get licenses.
**Colleges has to be justified, but make them fit.**
If you want then make it. I'd go with a place where rich adventurer seeking nobles go to learn about treasure hunting and be trained under experts.
Mind you this has to be highly specialized and they have to offer something real and useful.
Consider a son of a lord. He grew up in wealth with access to a fencing master and riding instructor and tutors on all subjects. So why would he bother going to that college unless it has to offer something he simply can't find at home?
This also runs into: if I have enough wealth I can simply gather a large enough party of men at arms, basically knights in all but name, and get what I want.
So the college has to offer stuff not available to the wealthy enough to be able to afford it.
Magic or enchanting or specific dungeon related things might come to mind
**High risk high reward**
It can be a way to move people up the social ladder.
This is similar to a lot of armies. Finish a 15 years service contract and you are reward with a piece of land. Congrats you are now a landowner, we all know this model.
So maybe the college exists to do something like that. Perhaps A bunch of originally poor THs gathered and made the college so that even the poorest with noble hearts and steady arms can make their fortune.
So the college can offer the poor a chance to be rich if they pass the trails and get a license and work the dungeons. Or just continue living.
Now the length of the contract and rate becomes a matter of balance.
You want them to bring in a steady supply of money but not be something like 90/10 split otherwise this is just stealing.
You can even tie this is with more dangerous contract offering better TH ratio but at the risk of being very dangerous.
Probably the most effective method of insuring that the TH does not run away with the chest of gold they found in the dungeon is magic. As this is a thing.
Armies have effective methods of dealing with desertion. DEATH.
**You can also link the two**
So lets assume that the world holds enough dungeons so it is actually viable to get rich by raiding them. And so the government and college set up a system where only the licensed THs can legally own the stuff from the dungeons. And since you can **only** get the license after the college clears it, then you have to go there.
This seems like a corrupt system, politics is corruption basically, but you can make it somewhat better by actually teaching the people how they handle dungeons and not die and so on.
Maybe your world actually requires that. Like new dungeons constantly appear and maybe even offer a threat. And thus a living can be made from clearing those.
I also use dungeon for stand in or as an example for other stuff.
Replace it with Dwemer ruins or Orc parties or haunted places or whatever you feel like. I only offer ideas to expand the subject and you can pick and choose.
[Answer]
**Monster suppression as an occupation**
It's hard to survive if you've got monsters killing off your farmers or even just stealing your food. In a setting where monsters are fairly common, you're going to need to have people going out regularly to kill off all the nearby monsters that they can. It's not the glamorous, epic adventures you hear stories about, but it's absolutely vital for the health of the town.
Now consider some of the things this force would be most concerned about:
1. Staying aware of any places that monsters love to inhabit (i.e dungeons) and periodically clearing those out
2. Staying aware of monsters in the area and reducing their numbers
3. Finding out if stronger monsters move in nearby, which may require preparing a group to specifically kill them
4. Helping injured members to recover to full strength as quickly as possible
5. Training new members to replace any members lost to retirement or death
Depending on the fantasy setting, some of these goals could be accomplished in different ways. You might have a healer that can instantly cure wounds or even raise the dead. Paired with long-distance communication that could evolve into a sort of death insurance where dying just means that the next time they try to speak with a member and find they can't, they'll raise the member from the dead.
This all leads fairly easily into an Adventurers Guild. Part of the training would involve some of the simpler work, such as participating in the regular clearing of a dungeon or just going out and killing whatever monsters they can find nearby. Once they've gotten strong enough to be considered done with the training, they can either stay and keep the town safe, or start to go out wandering. Those who go wandering would hopefully come back after becoming much stronger and become some of the people who are able to take care of the stronger monsters that sometimes show up.
It's not too hard to imagine a guild like this spreading from town to town, especially with the death insurance. Each time an adventurer entered a town they would check in with the guild, make sure they're paying their guild dues, and if they die they'd be resurrected at a guildhall (it could make sense for them to be able to request which guildhall they want to be resurrected at). Any time an adventurer dies, the guild can get valuable information about potential dangers in the area (whether it be "OMG THERE'S A HUGE GROUP OF TROLLS GATHERING" or something more mundane like "the bridge broke while I was crossing it").
[Answer]
Why would you hire an expensive licensed electrician when you could just watch a few videos and fix up your wiring for free?
Well, for one you could easily electrocute yourself. For another, you could burn your house down, and if you’re really unlucky you could burn the whole neighbourhood down.
Hiring a licensed professional means hiring somebody who has been accredited by a reputable body - a reputable body of experts that has an interest in maintaining their reputation. The job is guaranteed to meet their standards, or they will harshly penalise the professional for harming their reputation. Disreputable organisations attract only disreputable professionals.
Adventuring can be dangerous, not just for the adventurer but for the community too. A band of common vagabonds might drive off the pack of ice wolves threatening the town, sure. But they might not actually be up to fighting Ice Wolves and simply flee with your money. Or worse, they could also destroy the whole town when they fail to realise that starting a giant bonfire will just attract every ice wolf in a hundred kilometres.
A reputable adventuring guild will instead assess the threat and ensure your adventurers are both capable of the work and supported with expert advice on the best way to handle ice wolves. Pricier, sure, but you know they’re not going to do anything stupid and get everyone killed.
[Answer]
## Coding Bootcamps
You can do the "final school test" without the "Guild of Adventurers."
Make it a bootcamp. Your players paid money - maybe all the meager cash they had on hand - to go through a certification process. Quest givers have many options for their murder-hobo needs, so having a certification from an "Adventure Bootcamp" can help them stand out from the other rabble.
We all know the best adventurers are trained by Carnegious Mellonous, but who has that kind of money?
Basically, crib from the University > Trade School > Certificate hierarchy that exists for professional training in the real world.
This also brings in a bunch of interesting narrative options. How did the players get the money for their certs? Did they pick really sketchy school? Maybe the school is super interested in their careers, because they need **someone** to be successful every now and then to stay in business.
[Answer]
## Certain monsters require specific qualifications to dispatch properly
Vampire ogres can't simply be killed, but require intense clerical training to seal their souls to prevent them from regenerating after several days. Offering to kill the local zombie troll without being properly qualified to burn the body with eternal fire of damnation is fraudulent and would have good reason to require a license.
Perhaps different monsters that litter the world have these kinds of specific qualifications, some overlapping, others not. Thus, adventuring parties tend to form in order to cover gaps in abilities.
## The Witcher is a good example of a fictional licensed adventurer.
Witchers aren't licensed by any crown, but they are few in number due to painful mutations that kill 7 out of 10 boys exposed. Though humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings *could* dispatch many of these monsters, their lack of superhuman mutations and broad monster knowledge can make it very difficult to deal with them.
It's not illegal for others can't try to do a Witcher's job, however Witchers are certified and trusted to deal with necrophages, specters, and other such dangerous monsters and have an amulet to prove it.
[Answer]
Modern military operations can consist of large forces (whole armies) or small groups. However when we think of medieval armies we tend to think of them as "most men win" kinds of groups. The downside to this is that they are NOT very mobile (Like how Rome got sacked while its army was trying to head home to defend). This is where your "adventuring" party can come into play. A fast response force to deal with "small" threats. Those bandits hit a village? Can't send the army they'll all be gone weeks before they show up! You need to send a small group that can carry their own supplies or live off the land. Preferably with horses to increase their response time (or make that an upgrade later).
"Does anyone know of other settings that have world-built something like this and done a good job"
I'm drawing a lot on the Queen's Riders in Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce. It makes logical sense to me. Also one of my favorite books/series I highly suggest checking it out.
[Answer]
The question isn't really whether or not this makes sense... the question is why would it exist, and if it did, what benefit is there for both the adventurers and the organization that will vouch for them.
**The Adventurer's Guild** has been alluded to repeatedly above and it might be the best example both in existing literature and conceptually in world-building. An adventurer's guild would be sanctioned by the government to make their earnings taxable, control the space adventurers could venture into (you may not enter the province of Snordgaard, or assault the Caves of Anvor), justify the harassment and imprisonment unlicensed adventurers, and so forth. It would benefit the guild because they would ostensibly control the adventuring economy including the acquisition of gear, payment for services rendered, and distribution of spoils (though they wouldn't have to mandate everything, depending on your vision for the organization). It would benefit the adventurers because they could be readily paired with people who want or need their services, and it would benefit the clients because they have some assurance that the people they hire aren't going to "take the money and run."
This can be implemented to varying degrees depending on how strict the government is or how crooked the guild leadership is, etc. Think of the bounty hunters in The Mandalorian; it's a loose structure with loose rules - you're not "licensed" per se but you gain status and bounties by building a reputation. At the other end of the scale, it can be fully endorsed and monitored by the local leadership, even being part of the government and managed by nobility.
To this discussion in particular, I'd like to introduce the idea of an **Adventurer's Consortium** made up of a governing board with representatives from each guild or school that participates: the militia, the school of mages, the beggars' guild (thieves), the temple of whatsit, the order of artificers and apothecaries, the local equivalent of the teamsters, and anything else that might apply. There could be an administrative position (the seneschal, etc.) that manages the day to day duties of the Consortium, manages individual and party licensing, farms out jobs, collects and distributes payment, settles disputes, and all the other stuff, which holds most of the power but is answerable to the board.
This could also permit "freelancers" who are not part of the consortium and are treated with a certain amount of disdain. They'd have more difficulty navigating the system but aren't expressly illegal.
Lots and lots of ways to make this believable. I'd even look at creating a history that explains why the consortium was created in the first place. Maybe a Medieval Avengers scenario and the government recognizes the value of having experienced teams ready to deploy at need.
] |
[Question]
[
Young sorcerers' talent starts to emerge when they are two or three years old.
The level of their power varies greatly and isn't correlated with their intelligence or sense of responsibility.
They copy their parents' abilities but also experiment endlessly in the same way that children play with toys.
Knocking things over at a distance is usually one of the first things they discover but it's not unknown for them to invent more destructive abilities. Also of course they use the power to get things that they want.
**Question**
Let's just consider the knocking-things-over-at-a-distance ability for the purposes of this question.
A powerful 2-year-old sorcerer could easily knock over an unprepared adult or an equivalently weighted stack of loaded boxes at a distance of 20 paces.
How can these young sorcerers be taken out in public so that a tantrum doesn't become a disaster? We can't lock them up at home in a padded room with no loose objects. In any case they might discover fireballs and burn the house down with them in it.
**Note**
In this medieval society, Sorcerers and 'muggles' mix freely. They go to the same markets and other public places. Sorcerers mostly trade in magic items and perform spells for money. The legitimate ones are members of the Guild and are forbidden from using magic for evil purposes.
[Answer]
**The answer is simple: you hold their hand.**
*(Source: The experience of raising a toddler who is currently wielding a highlighter under my desk while I write this. I'm keeping her fed with sufficient paper; so far the walls and carpet are unadulterated)*
One of the more terrifying things for a parent in today's society is cars. Cars move *fast*. You don't realize how fast they move until you are responsible for the life of a little ~~booger monster of vile...~~ angel. Your angel has no idea what 15mph will do to a body, much less 45mph. Your angel ~~gets what is coming to them~~ is completely innocent and needs to be protected in a remarkably deadly world.
*Excuse me one moment. The sharpie has disappeared from my desk. I really need to move those to a higher shelf. I do this to myself, honestly.*
The solution every parent learns is to hold the child's hand. Not only does this provide a critical physical safety preventing them from tearing out like a helion in front of a car, but it also provides a remarkable amount of feedback. The human body is geared for touch. You learn a remarkable amount about what the child is about to do just by feeling the way they respond to your hand. You can sense what they are feeling and they can sense what you are feeling. It gives you a way to guide them along in the right direction without yanking their arm from its socket constantly. (At least on good days)
So I would expect a child sorcerer would be subjected to the same technique. You'd hold their hand so that you can sense what they are doing. And, if they're about to cast a really big spell, it provides a lever to ~~manhandle~~ gently ensure the child's larger spells don't complete.
As for the tantrums, a child can already do a remarkable amount of damage. We keep a lot of our strength in reserve. It's how a mother can lift a car off of their child. Well, during a tantrum, the child has access to their full strength reserve and can do some rather remarkable things. As such, I would expect a similar approach as we have to tantrums today. You remove the child from the scene, and make them sit outside until they calm down. I'm assuming that, in these situations, the parents know enough to not be caught off guard. Any parent that lets their guard down during a child's tantrum is ~~only human~~ going to learn a lesson very quickly.
I would expect parents to learn how to damp the effects of their children's magic. This would get into the particulars of your spellcrafting system, but if the parents can exert a continuous effort to keep dangerous spells from materializing, that would be a major start, and fit in well with the ~~dead tired fatigue~~ joys of parenting.
[Answer]
Tantrums do cause disasters, on a semi-regular basis. However, once the parents have thus demonstrated their inability to control sufficiently powerful toddlers, the children get taken from them and placed under the control of the magically-powerful sorcerors who run the government, who adopt them into their families.
This both preserves the power structure of the current government by ensuring that no magically powerful individuals arise outside of it and ensures that all such sorcerors have a family tie to the current government, it also minimizes the damage that such children would cause. It's likely that these societies would treat such an adoption as an honor, since it would elevate the children from the common masses to the wizard nobility.
[Answer]
# Children's "power" scales with age
Look how hard heavyweight boxers get punched. How could a child ever learn boxing if they would get punched that hard!
Well, 5 year olds learning the basics of boxing aren't in the ring with Wlad Klitschko, they are in the ring with other 5 year olds. Those five year olds can't hit hard enough to do any real lasting damage to another 5 year old.
Similarly, a 5 year old sorcerer-to-be simply doesn't have the mental or mystical development to cast a spell as powerful as a fireball. The child sorcerer is not threatened by the spellcasting ability of an adult sorcerer. A five year old sorcerer is actually not a danger to a five year old. Therefore, it is safe for the five year old to practice his or her spells. The most they can do is cause some mischief.
[Answer]
Aside from the already marvelous answer about just good parenting @Cort Ammon.
For an analogy take a look at learning to walk... in an Adult. This happens after serious life events such as car crashes, or strokes (by no means the only ways). Adults have well developed muscles (quite) capable of causing harm. It still takes at least a few months to learn the co-ordination required to cause harm. Severely affected adults take years more. The muscles themselves are strong, but in an uncoordinated state they are effectively useless.
So treat magic the same way. It is a thousand muscles. Some people have many more muscles, some have far bigger muscles. Even if the child has a great many muscles of a great size, for the most part any venting is just going to cancel itself out. This is because the Child lacks the co-ordination to actual make the magic effective.
In this sense a really powerful toddler might unleash the flood gates of hell, only for hell to basically fight itself, and the only real effect is a few puffs of air moving in random directions. Certainly enough to truly frighten most animals, but nothing truly dangerous. Unless of course the adults sorely need an education in a child proof house/workplace...
A prodigy would be like many prodigious children, they would start to become apparent around 4ish. At this point the control over their magic would be 2-3 years in advance of their peers. Yes they could actually hurt at this point. The parents (even magically weak/nil parents) would by now know how to handle their kid. They weren't spending those years idle, they are older, cannier, and have been intelligently finding help. If the parent hasn't, then its parent training time, and society would have kicked in some social mechanisms for controlling the child (as cruel as that might sound, otherwise society would have perished).
[Answer]
Has magical capability been a part of this race and society 'forever?'
If it is an evolved rather than recently god-granted(or such) capability of the species, it stands to reason that many previous systems have existed that, by the existence of your current one, have failed.
Your sorcerors and muggles live hand in hand today but did not and do not always, nonetheless your society has found an equilibrium.
Over thousands of years of selection, sorcerors who are prone to the most extreme of behavioral and emotional tendencies have purged themselves from the gene pool, being a clear and present danger to not only themselves but those around them.
The trials and tribulations societies would have undergone to reach an egalitarian point (a thoroughly unnatural state) would have necessitated not only the children to experiment with their magic, but society to experiment also on ways of controlling it.
Folklore and magical theory(heh) have many routes to impairing magical expression, Christopher Nuttall used 'Zeros' in general and particular spellforms woven into a person's magic, others use cold iron, null-magic zones, pacts, etc
But aside from those thematic forms, it is natural that a child of 2 or 3 years capable of the application of significant force is more likely to injure themselves than anyone else, lacking as they do the dexterity or experience to safely direct that force.
In the absence though of particular impairment methods or selection-by-death characteristics, the behavioral instruction of children likely to develop magical capability would begin at the very earliest opportunity 'Do not use magic to do evil' would not just be a catchphrase, but a necessary bedrock of instruction and indoctrination. Before guardians taught their charge not to touch hot things, they would inculcate restraint and self control, we allow children freedom because we can, a society with 2 yr old sorcerors does not have that luxury when any one of them can become a killer, or a dead child, at any time.
Cort Ammon's answer is nicer but the child is 'realistically' (imo)far more dangerous than the car, being as it is less predictable except insofar that a normal child will certainly try to deliberately cause harm to somebody at some point.
One way around this would be to massively restrict the impact of 'instinctual' magic, to require magical expression be orderly and precise in order to function effectively.
Good luck.
[Answer]
**Anti-magic stuff**
You can put anti-magic bracelets on your kids so that their magic is suppressed. They take it off in magic lessons and at home sometimes but keep them the rest of the time and are only authorized to remove them when adult.
The magic bracelets also have a magic detector so that when child has a fit so strong the bracelet can't handle it, magic police can get to the place to handle it.
[Answer]
If magic-wielding toddlers were such a menace to the muggles population, I'm sure there would be entrepreneurial adult magicians who will sell magic amulets to the muggles to protect them from toddler magic. Due to the huge demand among muggles, and plethora of adult magicians, the amulets will be reasonably priced and even imported from third world countries. As toddlers grow into teens and adults they may learn more powerful magic to bypass those amulets, but that would be equivalent to teen thugs buying handguns to attack others, and it can be dealt with by a powerful guild of criminal justice sorcerers.
[Answer]
if this is a realm of magic and fantasy the existence of magic inhibiting seals isn't too much of a stretch. a simple armband with a seal on it and some sort of magic ant removal method would be more than enough to prevent a disaster
[Answer]
An adult sorcered can always counter any spell that his kid would start.
If the kid starts moving things around, the adult can apply an opposite force. It s very easy since kid's magic is much weaker than adult magic.
If the kid wants to burn thing, it can easily be countered with ice spells.
Really it's the same as for muggles. The parents have to be around and control their kids.
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.